After a federal judge orders it, the administration releases the rest of the Gateway tunnel money.

Hon. Wednesday. The federal government, after losing in district court, unfroze the rest of the funding it had been holding back from the New York-to-New Jersey Gateway rail tunnel project. One hundred and twenty-seven million dollars, according to the New York Governor’s office. The amount the administration had previously been required by law to send and was not sending.

You may not know about Gateway. Most people don’t. It is a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River. The current tunnel, which is what you ride on Amtrak between New York and Philadelphia, was built in 1910. It got flooded in Hurricane Sandy. It is currently operating with salt water damage and one hundred and sixteen years of wear. If it fails, the Northeast Corridor of passenger rail in this country stops. Stops, hon. The most heavily-trafficked passenger rail corridor in the United States runs through one tunnel and the tunnel is broken.

The Gateway project is the new one. The replacement. Sixteen billion dollars. Federal money is required to be sent under a multi-year agreement signed by the previous administration and rolled forward into this one.

The President of the United States, on the record, has called the project a future boondoggle. He does not, on the record, like trains. This is fine as a personal preference. This is not fine as a basis for withholding federal funds Congress already appropriated for a project the law obliges the Department of Transportation to fund.

The federal judge, Jeannette Vargas in Manhattan, said the freeze was arbitrary and ran afoul of legal procedures. She ordered the money released. In tranches. Over almost two weeks. On Wednesday, the last tranche went out. Ninety-eight million. Plus thirty million in reimbursements for work that had been completed in January but not paid for because the freeze was on.

So we have spent about a month, in 2026, in a country whose Northeast Corridor runs through a busted tunnel, arguing in federal court about whether the administration must do the thing it is legally obligated to do. And the answer, hon, is yes, and the cost of the argument, according to the New Jersey Governor, was that the delay itself cost the project more money in time and contractor inflation.

The contractor gets paid more. The taxpayer pays more. The administration loses in court. The tunnel is still broken.

You ever notice how the people who say they hate waste are the ones whose executive orders generate the most billable hours?

Funny how that works.