Democratic mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani, joined Friday by party officials, called President Trump’s decision to freeze funding meant for two major NYC transit infrastructure projects an attack on the city.
“This is about Donald Trump going to war with New York City,” Mamdani told reporters standing above the site of the future Hudson River Tunnel on Friday.
On Wednesday, the first day of the ongoing federal government shutdown, Trump lieutenant Russel Vought declared he was pausing funding for the $16 billion tunnel project — meant to double train capacity between New York Penn Station — as well as a long-overdue extension of the Second Ave. Subway line.
In an unsigned statement, the USDOT linked the funding cuts to suspected non-compliance with a so-called “interim final rule” that had only been published the evening prior, restricting funding for projects using “race- and sex-based contracting requirements.”
“Let me be clear about what’s happening,” U.S. Rep Jerry Nadler (D-New York) said Friday, standing beside Mamdani, “On the first day of the government shutdown, the Trump administration shamefully froze funding for two of the most critical infrastructure projects in the entire nation, under completely phony pretenses.”
“Trump’s revenge politics have put 150,000 good paying American jobs on the line,” Nadler said. “These are jobs that are held by Republicans and Democrats alike.”
Both projects are funded via “full-funding grant agreements,” in which the federal government picks up a portion of the tab not covered by state and local partners.
USDOT has agreed to pick up $3.4 billion of the tab for the Second Ave. Subway extension, a project that would bring rapid transit to East Harlem for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century.
The feds similarly committed $6.9 billion to the Hudson River Tunnel project, on top of $3.8 billion in federal funding from the Department of Transportation’s Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail program, and $2 billion in federal dollars fronted by Amtrak, which would controls the rails set to run through the tunnel.
Work continued on the Hudson River Tunnel on Friday as the Democrats spoke. Workers in high-visibility vests and hard hats could be seen moving among the excavators in a deep pit at what is slated to become the tunnel’s eastern exit near W. 30th St.
But with federal payments on hold, state money will not be reimbursed, and it was not immediately clear how long work could continue. MTA sources told the Daily News this week that no federal reimbursements are immediately due for the Second Ave. Subway project. But sources familiar said that a reimbursement had been scheduled this month for work on the Hudson River Tunnel.
“Yes the work can go on for the moment,” Nadler said, as contracts on both projects have been awarded and partially paid. “If the money doesn’t come through, then work will stop.”
The result, Mamdani said, is uncertainty.
“Donald Trump and his sycophants have thrown all of this into disarray,” he said.
“We are discussing people who are very clearly not serious — people for whom New Yorkers are simply pawns in a political game,” Mamdani continued. “And yet we know that the consequences of these unserious people will be immensely serious for the people who call this city home.”
“It shows how little he thinks of the people from the city that he likes to remind us that he is from,” the mayoral candidate said of Trump.
