Trump Taps Top D.C. Litigator in Bid to Quash Manhattan Congestion Tolls, Cameras Still Rolling

New York’s fraught experiment with congestion pricing faces a fresh assault from the White House, with national implications for climate, urban governance, and city finances.

On a wintry Thursday afternoon, after the usual chorus of honking horns and expletives on Lexington Avenue, another skirmish in New York’s perpetual traffic drama quietly moved to a new, more rarified venue: the federal courts. The legal battle over Manhattan’s congestion pricing—a $9 base toll for vehicles journeying below 60th Street—has gained an unexpected champion in the Trump administration. President Donald Trump, perhaps never more attuned to battles on his native turf, dispatched his formidable Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General, Eric Hamilton, to spearhead federal efforts to kill the toll once and for all.

The move marks an escalation in what had, of late, become a simmering dispute. After campaign-trail promises to “TERMINATE” congestion pricing and pronouncements that “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” Mr Trump’s administration has found itself frustrated. Despite a direct order for the Department of Transportation to revoke federal approval, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s tolling cameras hum on; revenue from drivers—$562 million last year—continues to finance long-overdue subway upgrades and other public transport projects. Governor Kathy Hochul, for her part, maintains that “the cameras are staying on,” a stance not merely rhetorical.

The appointment of Mr Hamilton, known for defending some of the most contentious planks of Mr Trump’s national platform, underscores just how seriously the White House takes this New York quarrel. Observers reckon it is rare for the Justice Department’s heavyweights to descend into what might appear a parochial dispute. As Arthur Schwartz, a veteran transportation attorney, wryly noted, this is a sign that Trump “really, really wants to win and doesn’t trust the line people.” Few should confuse this for a mere climate policy tiff.

The broader implications for New York City are nothing if not consequential. Congestion pricing has offered a lifeline to the city’s battered public transit, providing roughly a third of the MTA’s anticipated capital funding for projects such as signal modernization, accessibility improvements, and new rolling stock. If the program is torpedoed, the agency faces a gaping hole in its budget, with no clear alternative for plugging it short of service cuts, deferred maintenance, or a politically fraught hike in fares. City officials privately admit that halting the toll would upend years of planning.

Nor is this strictly a financial calculus. Congestion pricing was sold—rightly or otherwise—as a policy with auxiliary benefits: reduced gridlock, faster bus commutes, cleaner air in the boroughs choking on exhaust. Initial data point to real, if modest, improvements in midtown speeds and bus reliability during tolling hours. Still, the measure is unpopular with suburban commuters, livery drivers, and business interests who view it as little more than a government cash grab with little chance of lasting impact.

The controversy has metastasized beyond city and state boundaries. New Jersey politicians, scenting electoral opportunity, have railed against what they frame as a “tax on the working class” and launched lawsuits of their own. The arrival of a top Justice Department figure signals that Washington, too, now regards New York’s toll plan as a national wedge issue, one with resonance for cities from Los Angeles to London that are eyeing congestion-charging mechanisms of their own.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s legal offensive has not been without its own comic mishaps. In a moment worthy of Franz Kafka (if less artful), government attorneys last spring accidentally published candid internal emails bemoaning weaknesses in their legal briefings—a flub that did little to foster confidence in the administration’s case and prompted speculation, even within the White House, about bureaucratic sabotage.

For New Yorkers, the contretemps is equal parts farce and high-stakes governance. On one side sit policymakers scrambling for cash to modernize 20th-century train lines; on the other, a president eager to prove he can deliver for suburban commuters and stick a rhetorical finger in the eye of his city’s establishment. The courts, ever the reluctant traffic cops, now get to decide whether a programme intended to model urban sustainability across America will instead dissolve amid political crossfire.

The stakes extend far beyond the city’s gridlocked boulevards. New York’s experiment, while imperfect, had made it the first American metropolis to emulate the likes of Stockholm and London. Amid federal foot-dragging and legal hair-splitting, American cities have thus far largely failed to curb car use by pricing the scarce good of road space. Should the courts strike down New York’s plan, the precedent would bode ill for any city hoping to embark on similar climate-minded adventures.

An existential dilemma for urban America

Globally minded city planners and public finance aficionados now watch New York’s legal wrangling for clues about metropolitan authority and federal intervention. Unlike European metropolises, American cities remain at the mercy of state and national governments, dependent on their largesse or, as shown here, vulnerable to their caprice. If Manhattan’s tolls fall not to local voter pressure, but to White House diktat, other cities will think twice before innovating in the face of federal scepticism.

The political theatre also raises old questions about urban representation and who gets to make decisions that shape a city’s daily life. Congestion pricing, with its uneven distribution of costs and benefits, exposes the perennial tensions between city-dwellers reliant on buses or subways, and outer-borough or suburban drivers whose journeys end in midtown offices or loading docks.

For the Trump administration, this is an opportunity to demonstrate responsiveness to vehicle owners—an increasingly vocal demographic with influence reaching well beyond Manhattan. The White House’s muscular interventions, however, risk casting a pall over pragmatic efforts to tackle climate and infrastructure needs in America’s largest cities.

All this portends a period of uncertainty for New Yorkers. While city and state officials insist the tolls will remain unless and until the courts rule otherwise, each new filing and legal volley heightens the risk that critical investments in public transit will be postponed or aborted. The MTA—hardly a model of fiscal discipline—can ill afford further instability.

As the congestion-pricing fight grinds on in courtrooms and press briefings, the lesson seems obvious: metropolitan America’s ability to govern itself is being litigated as much as its traffic flows. In an era when cities must do more with less, and climate deadlines grow ever more pressing, the stakes of this spat are far from parochial. What happens on Manhattan’s crowded avenues may soon affect urban governance from coast to coast.

A federal overreach that scuttles New York’s congestion pricing would be a paltry victory for anyone hoping for cleaner air, improved commutes, or competent public finance. If the city is forced to retreat, we reckon it would set a punishing precedent—one that might soon leave other American cities stuck in their own versions of gridlock, legal and literal. ■