NEW YORK — A federal judge on Friday ordered the federal government to release funding for the Hudson Tunnel project while a lawsuit moves forward, setting the stage for construction to ramp back up.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas came in the suit brought by the attorneys general of New York and New Jersey, one of two legal actions taken this week to end the Trump administration’s freeze on tunnel funding.
Vargas said in an 11-page ruling that the states had shown they would “suffer irreparable harm” if the project was forced to shut down. That is one of the standards for granting a temporary restraining order, along with a likelihood the plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of the case and that the injunction is in the public interest.
The ruling came after workers spent Friday winding down construction, preparing it for a halt of unknown duration. The Gateway Development Commission, which oversees the project, said in a Friday statement that it is hopeful the ruling “means funding disbursements will resume soon, and we can restart site operations and get our workers back on the job.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced in September that it would withhold funds for the $16 billion tunnel, citing a need to review the project’s compliance with a 2025 federal order regarding contracts for disadvantaged businesses. The Gateway Commission says it has shown compliance with that order, but subsequent comments by President Trump and a White House spokesman have tied the funding hold to the fight over the administration’s immigration policies [see “Hudson Tunnel project could halt …,” Trains.com, Jan. 28, 2026].
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