Judge Stalls DHS Move to Pull $33M MTA Security Grant as Albany Fights On

An eleventh-hour reprieve for New York’s transit security cash exposes uneasy fault lines in federal anti-terror funding and political brinkmanship.

On any given weekday, some 4 million New Yorkers descend into subway tunnels, step onto crowded platforms, and entrust themselves to a system that, despite its age and eccentricities, forms the city’s churning circulatory system. Now, thanks to the latest skirmish in an ongoing legal battle with Washington, those riders—or at least the officials charged with their safety—can, for another week at least, breathe slightly easier. A federal judge last Wednesday granted New York a stay of execution: the $33 million in anti-terrorism funding earmarked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will not, for now, be whisked back into the U.S. Treasury.

The cash, drawn from a post-9/11 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant designed to shield high-risk transit systems, was abruptly slashed to zero for 2025. That reversal, communicated without advance warning, prompted the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, to sue the DHS last month, alleging the cut was both illegal and retributive. Governor Kathy Hochul swiftly joined the fray, framing the episode as a threat to the safety of millions who rely on subways, buses and commuter rails. The judge’s order, handed down by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, forces federal officials to keep the funding in limbo for one more week while the merits of New York’s case are aired.

Had the injunction not been extended, DHS could have clawed back the funding—amounting to nearly $34 million New York had been told to expect this year—removing roughly one-sixth of the MTA’s current counterterrorism budget. For a system that ferries almost 40% of the entire nation’s transit riders, the move is more than a bureaucratic shuffling of appropriations. The spectre of terror attacks, though less dramatic than in past decades, still hangs over Gotham’s rails, as recent global events (and the memories of 2001 and 2017) remind us.

More pressingly, the legal standoff exposes the precarious, often ad hoc foundations upon which America’s urban security is built. The city, federal officials, and politicians from both parties proclaim the singular risk that New York faces—but still the safety of millions can hinge on momentary power plays in faraway offices and on the vagaries of ignored grant ledgers.

The drama has real implications for Gotham’s stressed finances and for the commuters who indirectly foot the bill. Anti-terror dollars from Washington underwrite police patrols, digital-surveillance upgrades, canine units and chemical sensors across the sprawling system. Scrapping $33 million would force the MTA, already facing a $600 million deficit for 2025, either to cut corners on safety or to redirect funds from service improvements. Neither option galvanizes much civic confidence.

Second-order effects ripple beyond ridership experience and may test the city’s already strained relations with Washington. The cuts have become a rallying point for state politicians of every stripe—for once, an issue on which Governor Hochul and House Republicans such as Nicole Malliotakis can set aside tribal differences and denounce Washington’s caprice. The sudden yanking of funds has also made clear that, for all the rhetoric about resilience, New York’s counterterror playbook is beholden to the shifting winds of national politics—a precarious posture, given the high profile of its infrastructure and the city’s perennial status as a symbolic target.

Law enforcement leaders and transit experts say the uncertainty bodes ill. Policymakers, hoping for stability, now contemplate the prospect of annual cliffhangers. For cash-strapped transport agencies from San Francisco to Chicago, the New York case is portentous: if Gotham struggles to protect its security allocations, what hope for smaller brethren in Minneapolis or Dallas? The precedents set in Federal District Court may reverberate in the budgets of most major American transit agencies.

A fragile patchwork: National context, global comparisons

Elsewhere, the politics of homeland security play out with less drama and more predictability. European capitals, long used to chronic threats, fund transit safety as a core national responsibility, less exposed to the puny ebbs and flows of the political cycle. London, which suffered its own transit attacks in 2005, channels money to Transport for London through standing Whitehall appropriations, not by way of annual wrestling matches in Parliament. By contrast, the American penchant for decentralisation means local systems rely on federal benevolence, advocacy, and—when all else fails—well-mustered lawsuits.

The oddity is not merely in the sums at stake. DHS made headlines this month when it reversed separate cuts to New York’s broader anti-terror grants, restoring $187 million after furious lobbying from both Democrats and Republicans. That policy oscillation underscores the degree to which security priorities, like infrastructure investment before it, have become proxies in larger battles about urban power, partisanship, and what constitutes “national” responsibility.

Disputes about terrorism funding, past and present, reveal a distinctly American lens—one in which cities, even those as essential as New York, must continually prove their deservingness for public safety dollars. Already bruised by pandemic shortfalls and divisive politics, urban security now finds itself made contingent on the mood in Washington. Even successful advocacy, it seems, assures at best a fragile respite.

We are sceptical that this is a sustainable arrangement, for New York or any other city. Subways, crucial to both economy and culture, deserve more than unpredictable largesse meted out as political favour. A data-led approach points instead to permanent, risk-based funding frameworks, insulated from annual budgetary tempests and rooted in a realistic accounting of scale and exposure. Until such a regime emerges, city officials and millions of riders alike must rely on the courts—and perhaps luck.

For now, New York’s anti-terrorism purse remains intact, but only just. If a city so central to the nation’s identity can see its security thrown into doubt for want of bureaucratic grace—or political whim—the rest of urban America should not rest easy. The recent reprieve may comfort subway users, but it leaves unaddressed the far larger question of how America underwrites security for its cities. ■