Hudson River Tunnel Project to Pause as Democrats Call on Trump to Restore Funding

Construction of the Hudson Tunnel Project under the Hudson River will be suspended at 5 p.m. on Friday unless federal disbursements restart, according to the Gateway Development Commission (GDC), which oversees the project.

The commission said in a news release on Feb. 6 that construction will be suspended “if disbursements of federal funding obligated to the project do not resume.” It said that four major procurements for remaining construction packages are also on hold.

Pausing construction would result in the “immediate loss of nearly 1,000 jobs,” the commission said, warning that an extended pause could put at risk about 11,000 construction jobs on current projects, along with 95,000 jobs and $19.6 billion in economic activity that construction is anticipated to generate overall.

At a morning press conference at the project site, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) joined Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) and several New Jersey House Democrats in blaming President Donald Trump for the funding freeze and urging him to restore the money. Booker called the situation “political hostage taking,” adding that the freeze was raising costs and threatening jobs and commuters.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have also called on the president to restore funding.

The commission said that delaying completion also increases the risk the 116-year-old North River Tunnel, a leading cause of delays, could be shut down. The commission said a shutdown would sever the most heavily used passenger rail line in the country and lead to “billions of dollars in lost time and productivity,” affecting “hundreds of thousands of riders.”

According to the Federal Transit Administration, the current tunnel “presents reliability challenges due to damage from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, as well as the overall age of the tunnel and the intensity of its current use,” adding that because of that, “Significant delays to trains occur when problems arise.”

GDC Chief Executive Officer Tom Prendergast said in the release that the workforce “have not missed a day of work” for more than two years, but that would change on Friday because the administration “continues to withhold funding for this vital investment in our nation’s rail infrastructure.”

“Today is a setback, but it is not the end,” he said.

Sherrill referenced the lawsuit New Jersey and New York had filed earlier in the week.

“We have sued the president,” she said on Friday, arguing that the money was designated by Congress and that the administration has no legal right to attach new demands to it.

“This money is illegally being withheld,” Sherrill said.

The commission’s release said the majority of the project budget is funded by federal grants, and that the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the commission have been legally bound to the terms of grant agreements and loans since July 2024, when full funding for the project was secured. It said more than $1 billion in construction and investment has already been made.

The Trump administration suspended the funding on Sept. 30, 2025, so it could investigate whether funding to the project is “flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,” Russell Vought, the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, said in a post on X on Oct. 1, 2025.

In executive order 14151, Trump directed the Office of Management and Budget to terminate discriminatory programs, including diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Programs that promote DEI are “illegal and immoral,” the order said.

USDOT said in an Oct. 3, 2025, statement that “Illinois, like New York, is well known to promote race- and sex-based contracting and other racial preferences as a public policy.”

The transportation agency is reviewing several projects, including those involving the Hudson Tunnel, New York’s Second Avenue Subway, and the Chicago Transit Authority, “to ensure no additional federal dollars go towards discriminatory, illegal, and wasteful contracting practices.”

The GDC said it worked with federal partners for months “to meet their stated requirements for restoring funding,” before filing suit seeking a judgment that would release the grant and loan funds.

Friday’s on-site remarks also touched on reports that Trump raised a naming request tied to restoring the funding.

Several speakers referenced reports based on anonymous sources that the president asked Schumer to support renaming New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump as part of discussions about the project. The request was first reported by Punchbowl News and subsequently by various media outlets.

The White House and Schumer’s offices did not respond by publication time to a request for comment from The Epoch Times on the reported proposal. The two men met in January at The White House, with Schumer’s office at the time saying it was the top issue the senator discussed with the president.

After the tunnel commission warned in late January that work would have to stop without restored funding, a White House spokesman said, “It’s Chuck Schumer and Democrats who are standing in the way of a deal for the Gateway tunnel project by refusing to negotiate with the Trump administration. There is nothing stopping Democrats from prioritizing the interests of Americans over illegal aliens and getting this project back on track.”

The Hudson Tunnel Project is part of the broader Gateway Program, which aims to add capacity and resiliency to the Northeast Corridor. The commission describes the corridor as the busiest passenger rail stretch in the country, hosting more than 2,200 train movements and 800,000 passenger trips daily.