WASHINGTON —New York’s Gateway Tunnel project may be halted, based on a brief comment in a lengthy news conference by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, Oct. 15.
While not identifying by name the project to add two tracks under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York’s Penn Station, Trump suggested it was the latest in a series of projects supported by Democrats to be targeted during the shutdown of the federal government.
“Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects,” Trump said, referring to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to a transcript published by the political site Roll Call. “… I mean, the project in Manhattan, the project in New York, it’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated. Tell him it’s terminated.” Trump has blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for the shutdown, although Republicans control both houses of Congress as well as the presidency.
Trump did not elaborate further, and it was unclear if that meant that billions of dollars for the project awarded during the Obama and Biden administrations were being cut off. The first Trump administration did not support the project.
Vought previously funding for the tunnel and New York’s Second Avenue Subway extension was being suspended pending a review of contracts in regard to the Trump administration’s efforts to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. [See “Trump administration freezes …,” Trains.com, Oct. 1, 2025]. The New York Times reports the White House referred questions about the comment to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond. The Times previously reported work on the tunnel, in progress on both sides of the Hudson, had continued since the funding freeze, although it was unclear how long existing funds would last.
Schumer, in a social media post, called Gateway “the most important infrastructure project in America — period,” and said an effort to kill it is “petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters, chock off our economy, and kill good-paying jobs.”
There is a consequence to elections. With the beyond-horrible, stratospherically repulsive Zohran Mamdani poised to become the next mayor of New York City, supported by New York State’s uber-disgusting governor, you can forget Gateway.
Gateway is needed. It’s a project that has to be done. This is the main line of the northeastern states. But the people who vote for Mamdani and Hochul have killed it.
Federal taxpayers aren’t going to support the genocidal Zohran Mamdani’s city.
Want to know how bad Mamdani is? Read the book review on Page A13 of today’s Wall Street Journal.