New Jersey Democrats are calling on the Trump administration to “immediately restore funding” to the Gateway project, which the president recently said was “terminated.”
In a letter to President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy led by Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer and signed by most of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, the members urged the administration to “release all withheld reimbursements and continue scheduled disbursements” and “commit publicly that no additional projects approved under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be subject to similar termination or funding freezes for administrative or policy reasons outside of due process.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration said it is planning to withhold billions of dollars from the Gateway project, which would build a tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York, as retaliation for the shutdown, which is still ongoing. But despite Trump’s assertion that Gateway is dead, it’s been unclear what effect the comments have on the project. A Trump administration official told POLITICO last week that there were no plans within the Transportation Department to terminate the project.
Laborers’ International Union of North America vice president and eastern regional manager, Mike Hellstrom, estimated last week that the Gateway Development Corp. had around a month and a half’s worth of funding on hand. Gottheimer on Thursday said he asked NJ Transit and Amtrak to “fully outline for Congress the current and potential impact of the shutdown on the Gateway project.”
