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Sean Duffy, the U.S. transportation secretary, demanded a long list of details about crime in the subway and on buses in New York.
- March 18, 2025Updated 9:17 p.m. ET
The Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to withhold federal funding from New York’s mass transit network if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not respond to a series of demands about efforts to prevent crime on the city’s subway and buses.
Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said in a letter that the M.T.A. must provide a long list of details about crime in New York City’s transit system, including expenditures on programs to combat it, or face the prospect of losing an untold sum of federal funding.
The threat comes amid a continuing battle between the Trump administration and the state-run transit agency over the congestion-pricing toll program that began operating in Manhattan in January. Mr. Trump has moved to kill the program and has given the authority until Friday to abandon it. Gov. Kathy Hochul and M.T.A. leaders have sued to keep it intact.
Mr. Duffy’s letter did not mention congestion pricing, but transit experts and legal observers have said that the federal government might threaten to withdraw funding from other projects to gain leverage in its opposition to the toll.
The M.T.A. relies on billions of dollars a year from the federal government to improve service and is seeking $14 billion from Washington in its next five-year capital budget.
But it was unclear what the federal agency was aiming to accomplish. Crime in the subway has been trending down in New York City, and much of the data related to its prevention is publicly available.
