New head looks to keep Gateway on track
Good morning and welcome to the weekly Monday edition of the New York & New Jersey Energy newsletter. We'll take a look at the week ahead and look back on what you may have missed last week.
Quick Fix
NEW GATEWAY HEAD LOOKS TO STAY ON TRACK — Thomas Prendergast, the new head of the Gateway Development Commission, is looking to keep one of the nation's largest public works projects on track.
Gateway — the bi-state agency building $16 billion train tunnels between New York and New Jersey — is getting its expenses reimbursed by the federal government and there aren't signs it's in the crosshairs of the Trump administration's cost-cutting moves.
Prendergast is a systems engineer by training and takes over a project that is advancing in separate pieces, with parts of the project advancing on both sides of the Hudson River, all leading to a pair of train tunnels that will boost the connection between the two states and, in turn, the Northeast.
A former head of the New York MTA, Prendergast views transportation as something that traditionally has bipartisan support.
'Transportation, by nature, has been bipartisan my entire career, and whenever I went down to Washington, no matter where I was, we saw that bipartisan support, so I'm confident that it will still be there,' he said. 'It's important for the economy. It's important for the people that live in those regions to be able to not only get to work, but to do what they want to do in terms of living.'
Of course, there are exceptions even for the very project he's working on: Republican Gov. Chris Christie killed a previous version of the project and President Donald Trump turned the tunnels into a bit of a grudge match.
Prendergast said he's monitoring what is happening in Washington.
'Am I aware of the fact that there's a new administration in place and we need to make sure that the justifications that we have used in the past to be able to support the project are on par with what the current administration is?' he said. 'So to be aware of what the current administration is and its feelings about the project, it goes without saying I have to be aware of that.'
The project is meant to provide a second set of tunnels connecting Manhattan to the mainland. An existing set of tunnels is over a century old and showing their age. When the new tunnels are built and the old ones rehabbed, there will be four tracks in and out of Manhattan, allowing more people to come and go more easily. — Ry Rivard
CONGESTION PRICING FIGHT: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul defended her state's congestion pricing program in New York City on Sunday, reaffirming her commitment to legally challenge President Donald Trump's recent move to strike the program's federal approval, POLITICO's Amanda Friedman reports.
Trump met with Hochul for more than an hour on Friday to discuss the Manhattan toll program, POLITICO's Nick Reisman reports. The Democratic governor also spoke with the president about immigration and energy policies during the Oval Office meeting, a spokesperson for the governor confirmed Saturday.
Meanwhile, the program remains alive. Though Trump said congestion pricing is dead, his administration says the toll in Manhattan is still alive for another month. To allow for an 'orderly cessation,' the Federal Highway Administration said late last week that the tolling program must stop collecting tolls by March 21, according to a letter obtained Friday by POLITICO's Ry Rivard.
HAPPY MONDAY MORNING: Let us know if you have tips, story ideas or life advice. We're always here at mfrench@politico.com and rrivard@politico.com. And if you like this letter, please tell a friend and/or loved one to sign up.
What we're watching:
TUESDAY— New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy gives his annual budget address, 3 p.m.
— The New York Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee has NYISO's Kevin Lanahan appear and take questions from lawmakers, 11:30 a.m., Room 124, Capitol Building, Albany.
— The Department of Public Service holds more hearings on regulations to implement the 'RAPID Act,' 1 and 5 p.m. at Stony Brook University and Broome County Public Library.
— The International Longshoremen's Association is expected to vote on the contract proposal that ended a strike last fall.
WEDNESDAY— The Department of Public Service holds more hearings on regulations to implement the 'RAPID Act,' 1 and 6 p.m. Nassau County Legislature.
THURSDAY— The Department of Public Service holds more hearings on regulations to implement the 'RAPID Act,' 1 and 6 p.m., NYS Department of Public Service, New York City, and Town of Poughkeepsie Town Hall.
FRIDAY— The state's Fire Prevention and Building Code Council meets to discuss changes to the rules for new construction to comply with the state's ban on fossil fuel combustion for some new buildings starting next year, 10 a.m., various locations and online.
Around New Jersey
— A Camden metal recycler blames battery for a blaze that spurred scores of evacuations.
— A bill to protect workers from heat is moving.
What you may have missed
FOES BEYOND TOLLS — POLITICO's Ry Rivard and Erica Orden: New York's fight to save a Manhattan toll plan sets up a court battle between the Trump administration and one of the president's major legal foes, Roberta Kaplan.
Perhaps no attorney bedeviled President Donald Trump in his many legal cases more than Kaplan, who was previously best known for winning the Supreme Court case forcing the federal government to recognize same-sex marriage.
Kaplan represents E. Jean Carroll, who won multimillion-dollar civil judgments from a pair of juries after they found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. He continues to assert his innocence and contest the awards.
Kaplan is also counsel for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority in its bid to save congestion pricing from Trump's attempt to kill it. The MTA hired Kaplan long before Trump was reelected and she helped the transit agency beat back a series of legal challenges to the tolls even before they took effect in January.
NJLCV BACKS SHERRILL — POLITICO's Daniel Han: Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat running for governor, said Wednesday that she supports Gov. Phil Murphy's clean energy goal for the state by 2035 — suggesting a continuation of one of Murphy's marquee environmental initiatives.
EPA UNFREEZES SOME CLIMATE MONEY — POLITICO's E&E's Jean Chemnick: EPA has unfrozen nearly all of its climate grants. As of early Thursday afternoon, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was the only exception. Awardees of other EPA grant programs under the 2022 climate law found Tuesday and Wednesday that they could access the federal government's portal to receive funds, several told POLITICO'S E&E News. The same was true for recipients of an infrastructure law grant program that helps school districts buy clean school buses. Grantees were granted anonymity to speak out of fear of reprisals. All those programs had been frozen — with one brief interruption — since Jan. 28. EPA said the pause would allow for a 'review' of the programs.
CORPS PULLS BACK PERMITTING LIST — POLITICO's Annie Snider: The Army Corps of Engineers is revising a list of more than 600 energy projects that could get fast-tracked permitting under President Donald Trump's declaration of an energy emergency. The Corps, which issues Clean Water Act permits for projects that impact wetlands, posted a list of projects to its permitting dashboard last week tagged with the president's executive order as the emergency 'event' that would qualify them for expedited permitting.
OFFSHORE WIND HOPES PERSIST: New York isn't giving up on offshore wind as a potential industrial revival for the Hudson River. The state awarded a small amount to the Orange County Industrial Development Authority to advance the potential for the aging Roseton power plant site to be marketed to companies — with a focus on 'targeting offshore wind supply chain companies.'
The $500,000 award is from Gov. Kathy Hochul's FAST NY fund, which pays for utility upgrades and other improvements to make sites more 'shovel ready' as local officials seek to attract companies. 'The site provides unique assets, including direct access to existing power transmission, rail, heavy infrastructure, and existing maritime infrastructure with direct access to the Hudson River,' Hochul's announcement states.
NYSERDA previously awarded another Orange County group funding to study the potential to reuse the site of the existing Roseton and Danskammer fossil fuel plants in the Newburgh area.
The latest Empire State Development funding will focus on 'unused acreage' at the Roseton facility, ESD spokesperson Matt Gorton told POLITICO. 'There's some thought that, given the location, there may be some synergistic uses for the location's unused portion,' he said. The money will help fund an environmental review, plus engineering and site design.
The Port of Albany, meanwhile, is reconsidering its offshore wind focus for the Beacon Island site that was supposed to host a massive tower manufacturing facility for the industry. Hochul awarded nearly $19 million to the port to continue investing in the unused, 85-acre site where trees and vegetation were cleared to make way for foundations.
Hochul's administration is still sitting on her much-heralded $500 million for the offshore wind supply chain that was appropriated in 2022. Some of that could have gone to a GE blade manufacturing facility in the Albany area — if that deal hadn't collapsed along with three potential offshore wind projects. With NYSERDA delaying its latest round of awards, the state's offshore wind hopes are in dire straits. Federal funds and approvals for wind-related projects are also in peril. — Marie J. French
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
12 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Yemen's al-Qaida branch leader threatens Trump, Musk and others
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The leader of al-Qaida's Yemen branch has threatened both U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in his first video message since taking over the group last year. The half-hour video message by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, which spread online early Saturday via supporters of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also included calls for lone-wolf militants to assassinate leaders in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states over the war, which has decimated Gaza. The video of al-Awlaki's speech showed images of Trump and Musk, as well as U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth. It also included images of logos of Musk's businesses, including the electric carmaker Tesla. 'There are no red lines after what happened and is happening to our people in Gaza," al-Awlaki said. "Reciprocity is legitimate.' Yemen's al-Qaida branch long thought to be most dangerous Though believed to be weakened in recent years due to infighting and suspected U.S. drone strikes killing its leaders, the group known by the acronym AQAP had been considered the most dangerous branch of al-Qaida still operating after the 2011 killing by U.S. Navy SEALs of founder Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2022, a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahri, who also helped plot 9/11. The Sept. 11 attacks then began decades of war by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and fomented the rise of the Islamic State group. Al-Awlaki already has a $6 million U.S. bounty on his head, as Washington says al-Awlaki 'has publicly called for attacks against the United States and its allies.' He replaced AQAP leader Khalid al-Batarfi, whose death was announced by the group in 2024. Israel-Hamas war a focus of the Houthis as well AQAP seizing onto the Israel-Hamas war follows the efforts of Yemen's Houthi rebels to do the same. The Iranian-backed group has launched missile attacks on Israel and targeted commercial vessels moving through the Red Sea corridor, as well as American warships. The U.S. Navy has described their campaign against the Houthis as the most intense combat it has faced since World War II. The Trump administration also launched its own intense campaign of strikes on the Houthis, which only ended before the president's recent trip to the Middle East. The Houthis' international profile rose as the group remains mired in Yemen's long-stalemated war. Al-Awlaki may be betting on the same for his group, which U.N. experts have estimated has between 3,000 and 4,000 active fighters and passive members. The group raises money by robbing banks and money exchange shops, as well as smuggling weapons, counterfeiting currencies and ransom operations, according to the U.N. The Shiite Zaydi Houthis have previously denied working with AQAP, a Sunni extremist group. However, AQAP targeting of the Houthis has dropped in recent years, while the militants keep attacking Saudi-led coalition forces who have battled the Houthis. 'As the Houthis gain popularity as leaders of the 'Arab and Muslim world's resistance' against Israel, al-Awlaki seeks to challenge their dominance by presenting himself as equally concerned about the situation in Gaza,' said Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert of the Basha Report risk advisory firm. 'For a national security and foreign policy community increasingly disengaged from Yemen, this video is a clear reminder: Yemen still matters.'
12 minutes ago
Trump's tariffs could pay for his tax cuts -- but it likely wouldn't be much of a bargain
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — The tax cuts in President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act would likely gouge a hole in the federal budget. The president has a patch handy, though: his sweeping import taxes — tariffs. The Congressional Budget Office, the government's nonpartisan arbiter of tax and spending matters, says the One Big Beautiful Bill, passed by the House last month and now under consideration in the Senate, would increase federal budget deficits by $2.4 trillion over the next decade. That is because its tax cuts would drain the government's coffers faster than its spending cuts would save money. By bringing in revenue for the Treasury, on the other hand, the tariffs that Trump announced through May 13 — including his so-called reciprocal levies of up to 50% on countries with which the United States has a trade deficit — would offset the budget impact of the tax-cut bill and reduce deficits over the next decade by $2.5 trillion. So it's basically a wash. That's the budget math anyway. The real answer is more complicated. Actually using tariffs to finance a big chunk of the federal government would be a painful and perilous undertaking, budget wonks say. 'It's a very dangerous way to try to raise revenue,' said Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury Department. Trump has long advocated tariffs as an economic elixir. He says they can protect American industries, bring factories back to the United States, give him leverage to win concessions over foreign governments — and raise a lot of money. He's even suggested that they could replace the federal income tax, which now brings in about half of federal revenue. 'It's possible we'll do a complete tax cut,'' he told reporters in April. 'I think the tariffs will be enough to cut all of the income tax.'' Economists and budget analysts do not share the president's enthusiasm for using tariffs to finance the government or to replace other taxes. 'It's a really bad trade,'' said Erica York, the Tax Foundation's vice president of federal tax policy. 'It's perhaps the dumbest tax reform you could design.'' For one thing, Trump's tariffs are an unstable source of revenue. He bypassed Congress and imposed his biggest import tax hikes through executive orders. That means a future president could simply reverse them. 'Or political whims in Congress could change, and they could decide, 'Hey, we're going revoke this authority because we don't think it's a good thing that the president can just unilaterally impose a $2 trillion tax hike,' '' York said. Or the courts could kill his tariffs before Congress or future presidents do. A federal court in New York has already struck down the centerpiece of his tariff program — the reciprocal and other levies he announced on what he called 'Liberation Day'' April 2 — saying he'd overstepped his authority. An appeals court has allowed the government to keep collecting the levies while the legal challenge winds its way through the court system. Economists also say that tariffs damage the economy. They are a tax on foreign products, paid by importers in the United States and usually passed along to their customers via higher prices. They raise costs for U.S. manufacturers that rely on imported raw materials, components and equipment, making them less competitive than foreign rivals that don't have to pay Trump's tariffs. Tariffs also invite retaliatory taxes on U.S. exports by foreign countries. Indeed, the European Union this week threatened 'countermeasures'' against Trump's unexpected move to raise his tariff on foreign steel and aluminum to 50%. 'You're not just getting the effect of a tax on the U.S. economy,' York said. 'You're also getting the effect of foreign taxes on U.S. exports.'' She said the tariffs will basically wipe out all economic benefits from the One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts. Smetters at the Penn Wharton Budget Model said that tariffs also isolate the United States and discourage foreigners from investing in its economy. Foreigners see U.S. Treasurys as a super-safe investment and now own about 30% of the federal government's debt. If they cut back, the federal government would have to pay higher interest rates on Treasury debt to attract a smaller number of potential investors domestically. Higher borrowing costs and reduced investment would wallop the economy, making tariffs the most economically destructive tax available, Smetters said — more than twice as costly in reduced economic growth and wages as what he sees as the next-most damaging: the tax on corporate earnings. Tariffs also hit the poor hardest. They end up being a tax on consumers, and the poor spend more of their income than wealthier people do. Even without the tariffs, the One Big Beautiful Bill slams the poorest because it makes deep cuts to federal food programs and to Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income Americans. After the bill's tax and spending cuts, an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model found, the poorest fifth of American households earning less than $17,000 a year would see their incomes drop by $820 next year. The richest 0.1% earning more than $4.3 million a year would come out ahead by $390,070 in 2026. 'If you layer a regressive tax increase like tariffs on top of that, you make a lot of low- and middle-income households substantially worse off,'' said the Tax Foundation's York. Overall, she said, tariffs are 'a very unreliable source of revenue for the legal reasons, the political reasons as well as the economic reasons. They're a very, very inefficient way to raise revenue. If you raise a dollar of a revenue with tariffs, that's going to cause a lot more economic harm than raising revenue any other way.''
Politico
16 minutes ago
- Politico
‘He's gone so nuclear': Vance isn't sure Musk could rejoin the MAGA fold
Vice President JD Vance said he wasn't sure Elon Musk could ever get back into the good graces of President Donald Trump, after the two men's relationship blew up earlier this week. The vice president was forced to respond in real time to Musk's Thursday barrage of social media posts attacking Trump — including the allegations that the president was on 'the Epstein files,' referring to the sex predator Jeffrey Epstein — as he was taping a podcast. In the interview released Saturday, Vance told podcaster Theo Von that it was a 'big mistake' for Musk to attack the president. 'I'm always going to be loyal to the president, and I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold,' Vance said, sitting in front of a painting of the president. 'Maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear.' In the last several days, the relationship between Musk and Trump has imploded after the former Department of Government Efficiency chief unleashed a broadside of attacks against the president, including highlighting his connections with Epstein and implying that he should be impeached. It has long been known that Trump and prominent politicians are referenced in documents released in court cases surrounding Epstein. But Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein. Musk has been vocal in his opposition of the Trump-backed spending bill, which he argues will increase the nation's deficit. But the two exchanged fire earlier this week, with Trump also threatening Musk's government contracts, suggesting the world's richest man has 'lost his mind' and insisting he was moving on from him. Many Republicans have rallied to Trump's defense, suggesting they are taking his side in the fight — including Vance. 'If he and the president are in some blood feud, most importantly it's going to be bad for the country, but I don't think it's going to be good for Elon either,' Vance told Von. Musk has since deleted the original post accusing Trump of being on the 'Epstein list,' but has continued alluding to it in additional posts. 'I just think it's a huge mistake for the world's wealthiest man … to be at this war with the world's most powerful man,' Vance said on the podcast.
