For months, the Trump administration has vowed to claw back federal funding to states and cities that it views as hostile to its immigration and anti-diversity priorities.
In New York, that pledge has apparently been carried out with gusto.
State officials recently learned that New York would lose $100 million from the Department of Homeland Security for counterterrorism programs. The cut comes on top of an earlier funding reduction, announced in August, of $87 million.
New York, along with 10 other states and the District of Columbia, sued on Monday to block the Homeland Security cuts. And on Tuesday, a federal judge in Rhode Island granted the states a temporary reprieve, essentially freezing the funds while the case plays out in court.
If the cuts are carried out in New York, they would reduce the federal contribution to the counterterrorism programs to just $30 million — an 86 percent reduction from what the state received under the Biden administration.
“A Republican administration literally defunding the police is the height of hypocrisy — and walking away from the fight against terrorism in the No. 1 terrorist target in America is utterly shocking,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said in a statement on Tuesday.
In a letter sent on Monday to Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, Ms. Hochul demanded that the decision be reversed and accused the secretary of making “all of America more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.”
“Do not play games with this critical security funding,” she warned.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Ms. Noem has not responded to Ms. Hochul’s letter, according to the governor’s office.
The New York City police said in a statement that the loss of funding was a “devastating blow to our capabilities and our efforts to protect all Americans from terrorist attacks,” calling the decision “incredibly dangerous.”
The cuts are part of a nationwide reshaping of counterterrorism support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which distributed roughly $1 billion through its Homeland Security Grant Program to states for such efforts last year.
New York’s share of that was roughly $220 million, which funded a broad array of programs for the New York City police and fire departments, as well as state police, and regional threat response units on Long Island and in Westchester.
The grants helped fund bomb squads, canine teams and chemical weapon detection. They helped train officers to respond to an active shooter situation or a collapsed building, and paid for intelligence analysts and for members of the National Guard standing watch at Grand Central Terminal.
“I don’t understand how you justify this,” said Jackie Bray, New York’s commissioner of homeland security and emergency services, adding, “There will be public safety professionals who lose their jobs over the next two years because of these cuts, unequivocally.”
The cuts come just a week after the Secret Service found a huge network of illicit, sophisticated equipment in the New York region that was capable of interfering with the cellular network, just as foreign leaders prepared to gather nearby for the U.N. General Assembly’s annual session. The network, now dismantled, underscored the city’s unique status as an international target.
Andrew R. Garbarino, a Republican congressman on Long Island who leads the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement that he was concerned that the cuts “will undermine our capabilities, embolden our enemies and ultimately increase the danger facing our communities.”
Additional funding cuts could also hamper public safety and antiterrorism efforts by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the subway, buses and regional railroads.
The Department of Homeland Security is planning not to fund a discretionary grant to New York State that helps pay for police patrols and other security measures on mass transit, according to two people familiar with the decision.
The fund, called the Transit Security Grant Program, last year provided about $20 million to the M.T.A., half of which was used to pay for police officers, bag screenings, canine training and cybersecurity for the subway and buses, according to the transit authority. The money was also used to bolster security on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North, the two busiest commuter rail systems in the country. The plan to withhold the money was first reported by Streetsblog.
Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the M.T.A., would not say on Tuesday afternoon whether the federal government’s plan to deny the transit grant funding was imminent, but said that the idea of doing so was “nuts.”
“We hear a lot from Washington about, ‘Oh, the subways need to be safer,’” he said. “So, to me, it’s unthinkable that Washington could be considering cutting transit security grants.”
The Homeland Security Grant Program was established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks to help states prevent major acts of terrorism. On his first day in office, President Trump announced that he would be withholding funds from those states he deemed at odds with his mass deportation agenda.
New York has joined 10 other states, including Illinois, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey, and the District of Columbia in suing the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to restore the funding. The plaintiffs say the cuts are unlawful, noting that the administration has slashed the budgets of Democrat-led states it considers “sanctuary states” while increasing those of Republican-led states that have cooperated with immigration officials.
Funds stripped from states like New York will be redirected to other cities and states the administration has deemed more deserving, including North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee, according to the lawsuit.
Ms. Bray said that the allocations represented a fundamental change in the way the United States approaches homeland security, a mission that encompasses not only immigration but also disaster preparedness, port security and counterterrorism.
The cuts are emblematic of a greater shift, she said: “It is the systematic shifting of resources out of the protection of Americans and toward the harassing and detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.”
Grace Ashford covers New York government and politics for The Times.
Stefanos Chen is a Times reporter covering New York City’s transit system.
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