President Trump’s administration is appealing a US District Court ruling ordering the federal government to release funding for the Hudson Tunnel Project.
Construction on the project was suspended on Friday because federal funding has been withheld since October last year.
New Jersey’s acting attorney general, Jennifer Davenport, said the ruling by US District Court judge Jeannette Vargas on Friday was recognition that the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze funding were “plainly illegal”.
“The Trump Administration must drop this campaign of political retribution immediately and must allow work on this vital infrastructure project to continue. If not, I pledge to keep fighting in court on behalf of all New Jerseyans,” she said.
As construction stopped at 5pm on Friday, Gateway Development Commission (GDC) CEO Tom Prendergast said that after spending more than US$1bn and time on the project, “we will be left with empty construction sites in New York and New Jersey”.
He added that the construction pause was “a setback, but it is not the end”.
“GDC will continue to do everything in our power to get our funding restored and deliver the most urgent infrastructure project in the country,” said Prendergast.
GDC says pausing construction will result in the immediate loss of nearly 1,000 jobs. An extended pause would put at risk approximately 11,000 construction jobs on the current projects, as well as the 95,000 jobs and US$19.6bn in economic activity that construction is anticipated to generate overall.
Delaying completion of the HTP also increases the risk that the 116-year-old North River Tunnel – already a leading cause of delays – will shut down, severing the most heavily used passenger rail line in the country.
The majority of the budget for the HTP is funded by federal grants. The US Department of Transportation and GDC have been legally bound to the terms of Capital Investment Grants, Federal-State Partnership Grant, and RAISE Grant agreements, and Railroad Rehabilitation and Investment Financing loans, since July 2024, when full funding for the HTP was secured.
The federal government has suspended the release of its contractually obligated funds since October 1, 2025. After working with its federal partners for months to meet their requirements for restoring funding, GDC filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the US Court of Federal Claims seeking judgment that would release contractually obligated grant and loan funds for the HTP.
