After a federal court ordered the restoration of funding for the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson, work remains stalled as the White House appealed—prompting laid-off LIUNA Local 472 workers to rally in North Bergen, New Jersey. With 200,000 daily commuters caught in the crossfire, officials say any further delay risks not just traffic but a regional depression; progress, it seems, is stuck in the tunnel.
New York City in brief
Top five stories in the five boroughs today
Funding for New York and New Jersey’s $16 billion Gateway tunnel remains frozen while the Trump administration appeals a court order to release over $200 million owed, leaving five work sites idle and nearly 1,000 workers laid off this week. With jobless hard hats rallying in North Bergen and politicians trading quips, we watch the biggest project since the Freedom Tower wait for political egos to tunnel through their impasse.
New York City’s government, not famed for subtlety, vows to crack down on recalcitrant landlords after naming 250 buildings with nearly 55,000 housing violations and $4.5m in unpaid repair bills. The expanded Alternative Enforcement Program will push property owners, like A&E Real Estate Holdings in Queens, to fix mold, leaks, and vermin or foot the bill—an incentive scheme as old as rent collection, but with more paperwork.
Facing real-feel temperatures dropping to minus 20, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the city's deep freeze: reopening schools and CUNY centers as warming shelters, mobilizing nurses and peer outreach to coax the vulnerable indoors, and adding 65 hotel units for the shelter-shy. It seems even New Yorkers, famed for braving the elements, concede defeat to physics—at least this weekend.
Donald Trump’s second White House stint has seen over 500 immigration policy changes—already topping the 472 of his first term, says the Migration Policy Institute—mostly through executive fiat rather than Congressional debate. Encounters at the southern border have sunk to a 50-year low, but nationwide raids have netted record detentions, often of non-criminals. America, it seems, is discovering just how many levers a determined president can pull.