President Trump said on Wednesday that his administration had “terminated” a long-delayed commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River, one of the nation’s most critical infrastructure projects, just two weeks after federal funding for it was suspended at the start of the government shutdown.
He abruptly announced the decision during a wide-ranging news conference at the White House, boasting that his administration had taken advantage of the shutdown to kill federally funded initiatives championed by Democratic lawmakers, including the $16 billion tunnel project known as Gateway.
“It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get,” the president said, referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, an ardent supporter of Gateway and its previous iterations. “Tell him it’s terminated.”
It was not immediately clear what Mr. Trump meant and whether Gateway — as well as another major infrastructure project, the extension of the Second Avenue subway line — had been stripped of federal funding. Both projects depend heavily on federal grants and were both explicitly mentioned in the announcement of the funding pause two weeks ago.
Mr. Schumer called Mr. Trump’s decision “vindictive, reckless and foolish.”
“Gateway is the most important infrastructure project in America — period,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “Donald Trump trying to kill it again is pure spite and stupidity. It’s petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters, choke off our economy and kill good-paying jobs.”
Work has been underway at five sites in New York State and New Jersey for the construction of a new tunnel connecting New Jersey and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, the busiest rail corridor in the country. The current tunnels, which carry hundreds of thousands of passengers every day on Amtrak and NJ Transit trains, are about 115 years old and were damaged during Hurricane Sandy.
The White House referred questions to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for the Gateway Development Commission, which oversees the tunnel project, said he had not heard any word from Washington about a permanent funding suspension.
John J. McCarthy, the chief of policy and external relations at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is building the Second Avenue Subway extension, said his office had not been contacted before Mr. Trump’s comments.
The Trump administration paused federal funding for both projects earlier this month at the start of the government shutdown, saying that the Department of Transportation would be reviewing diversity, equity and inclusion requirements in contracts for the projects.
But the department had said that the review had been delayed because workers had been furloughed during the shutdown. Despite the pause, the Gateway project had some money to continue construction, for now, and officials at the M.T.A. had been moving ahead, expecting to start construction next year on the subway extension.
The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president’s remarks.
Stefanos Chen and Patrick McGeehan contributed reporting.
Matthew Haag is a Times reporter covering the New York City economy and the intersection of real estate and politics in the region.
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