Trump News: ‘Mercurial King’ Claim in Congestion Toll Fight
The latest trump news from New York is a court filing that reads like a dare. In a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers for the federal government argue that the Federal Highway Administration can change its mind at any time about the agreement that lets New York City charge drivers to enter Manhattan below 60th Street. The argument, reported on Wednesday by Streetsblog New York City, is the Trump administration’s newest attempt to kill congestion pricing, a toll that has survived every legal challenge thrown at it for nearly two years. It does not argue, as the government first did, that the president can tear up a contract. Instead, it says an agency can walk away from its own approval whenever its priorities change.
The dispute is about far more than a nine-dollar toll. Congestion pricing is the first program of its kind in the United States, underwriting 15 billion dollars in financing for subway, bus, and commuter rail repairs and upgrades. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority sued in February 2025 after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy moved to revoke the federal approval that allows the program to operate. A federal judge sided with the MTA in March, and the government appealed in June. The case has since become a fixture of white house news coverage.
DOJ News: The ‘Change Its Mind’ Argument
The federal government’s appeal brief contains two main arguments. The first is familiar: the government says Judge Lewis Liman never had the authority to hear the MTA’s lawsuit, because the dispute is really about a financial contract belonging in the smaller, specialized Court of Federal Claims. Liman rejected that argument below, and the government is asking the appeals court to revive it. The second argument is the new one. Rather than insisting that the president is a de facto sovereign who enjoys unlimited powers, Department of Justice attorneys argued that the Federal Highway Administration can simply change its mind at any time. The brief put it this way: “Even if the Agreement were considered in [Administrative Procedure Act] terms — not as a contract but as a ‘regulatory grant of approval to build toll infrastructure on a federal aid highway,’ or perhaps as a similar agency action granting a benefit or establishing a federal program — the agency would have the inherent power to reconsider and revoke it.” The lawyers added, “The government must be empowered to adjust to changing circumstances or to changed priorities.”
The argument fits the Trump administration’s position from the start: that the president has inherent king-like powers to do whatever he likes. After Duffy sent his first letter demanding that New York end the toll in February 2025, Trump declared himself the King of New York in a social media post, writing, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” But the agreement authorizing congestion pricing — reached under the Value Pricing Pilot Program, a 34-year-old federal tolling program — lacks a kill switch, and the law contains no clause allowing the government to revoke its approval whenever it wants. The cases the government cited included California Sea Urchin Commission v. Bean, about a sea otter relocation program whose agreement contained a termination clause — an arrangement found nowhere in the Value Pricing Pilot Program.
A Legal Expert Calls the Argument ‘a Stretch’
New York University constitutional law professor Roderick Hills Jr. was blunt about the government’s new theory. “It’s a stretch to say they have any inherent authority just to change their mind,” he said. “I don’t know of any case that said an agency can just always change its mind, regardless of the statute under which the initial decision was made, regardless of the correctness of the original decision.” Hills said precedent does allow an agency to reverse itself if it can prove the initial decision was an error — but the government identifies no error in the original approval. “Almost all the cases they cite involve an initial agency decision that was a mistake, or that the agency claimed was a mistake,” he said. “How can you correct an error that doesn’t exist?”
The argument is also out of place because the federal government did not raise it when the MTA sued the Federal Highway Administration in district court. Appeals courts only consider whether the lower court’s ruling committed a legal error. A requirement known as appellate preservation requires a party to raise the specific issue below if it wants to be able to raise it on appeal. Since the government never suggested in the lower court that it ordered an end to congestion pricing because a federal agency can just change its mind, the judges hearing the case could decide to ignore the argument entirely. “The simplest thing to do would be not to rule on the merits at all, but say on second argument, you didn’t raise it below. It’s waived,” said Hills.
Hills also noted that the courtroom favors the side defending the status quo. “Sean Duffy is the one who’s trying to change the status quo,” he said. “For almost two years, the MTA has been chugging along, and Sean Duffy’s been on the sideline saying, ‘Judge, stop that guy.'” Judges, he said, rarely want to disturb the status quo without good reason — and the legal arguments here are weak, the policy seems fine, and the Second Circuit may not need to say very much after two lengthy opinions below.
How the Fight Over the $9 Toll Began
In 2019, New York State enacted the Traffic Mobility Act, which required the MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority to establish the Central Business District Tolling Program, better known as congestion pricing. The program charges drivers a toll to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street, with most drivers paying nine dollars during peak periods. Its purposes are reducing traffic and raising money for transit capital projects, with proceeds earmarked to support 15 billion dollars in debt financing. The program went into effect on January 5, 2025. Federal approval came in November 2024, under former President Joe Biden, when the Federal Highway Administration signed the agreement with New York.
The Trump administration moved against it almost immediately. In February 2025, Duffy sent a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul demanding that New York end the toll, and Trump followed with his “LONG LIVE THE KING” post. Duffy argued that cordon pricing is illegal under the Value Pricing Pilot Program, and that because the tolls fund transit projects, congestion reduction is not the program’s main goal — so the agency lacked authority to approve it. Michael Gerrard of Columbia Law School was skeptical: the agency had approved the toll and allowed it to start, and “it’s not at all clear that they can legally revoke the approval now.”
The MTA sued at once. The agency argued in federal court that the agreement “does not include any provision authorizing FHWA to terminate the agreement.” MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber said the agency had gone to court to keep the program going, saying it had already dramatically reduced congestion and increased speeds for buses and emergency vehicles. Governor Hochul responded: “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king. The MTA has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this critical program. We’ll see you in court.”
What the Courts Have Already Decided
The administration lost at every turn. In January 2026, at a hearing before Judge Liman, Department of Justice lawyer Eric Hamilton argued that the president and his agents possessed an absolute power to cancel contracts or agreements the federal government signs with other parties. Liman described that argument as “breathtaking” and “wrong.” On March 3, 2026, the judge ruled in favor of the MTA, finding that Duffy’s move to rescind federal approval for the program was arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not in accordance with the law. The judge declined to issue an order blocking possible future attempts to hamper the program. By then, the program had raised 518 million dollars in net tolling revenue from January through November 2025. Liman, a Trump appointee, rejected the claim. In June, the government filed its appeal, and the brief now under discussion is part of it.
Other challenges have fared no better. Rockland and Orange counties, which sued in 2024 before the program even launched, argued that the toll is an unauthorized tax that unconstitutionally restricts the right to travel. A district judge dismissed both complaints in July 2025. On July 13, 2026, the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal in a 19-page opinion. The panel sidestepped whether the toll is a tax, invoking the Tax Injunction Act instead. Meanwhile, in a separate Town of Hempstead suit pending since May 2024, MTA attorney Roberta Kaplan accused Justice Department lawyers in October of failing to tell the judge about recent rulings favoring the toll. Notably, the government is not appealing the portion of Liman’s decision in which he ruled that the Value Pricing Pilot Program authorized congestion pricing.
New York Asks a Judge to Block the Latest Threat
The legal fight is not confined to the appeal. On Monday, New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked a federal judge to block the Trump administration from eliminating the city’s congestion pricing program, according to Fox News. They asked the judge to block Duffy’s plans to kill the program and his threat to withhold federal approvals and potentially billions in funding for other projects. New York State also asked for a preliminary injunction to block the federal government from ending the program.
It followed Duffy’s warning last month that the Department of Transportation may withhold approvals or funding if the state does not end the toll by late May. The city says congestion has fallen dramatically since the toll began. For now, the trump news today is that the tolls keep being collected while the courts sort out the latest round. Drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street still pay the charge, the MTA still collects the revenue, after more than a year and a half of federal efforts to end it.
What Happens Next
The Second Circuit must now hear the appeal. The court must rule, though after two lengthy opinions below, it may not need to say very much. The judges could decide the case on the narrowest available ground: that the government never raised its change-of-mind argument in the district court, and therefore cannot raise it now. Or they could reach the jurisdictional question, deciding whether a dispute over the tolling agreement belongs in the Court of Federal Claims or in the regular federal courts. The government did not appeal Liman’s finding that the program was authorized, so that part of his ruling stands unchallenged.
The broader stakes reach beyond New York. If the Second Circuit accepted that an agency can revoke a signed approval at any time, no agreement with the federal government would be secure from one administration to the next. For readers following donald trump latest news, the fight has become one of the clearest tests of how far the courts will let the administration go. For now, the toll is still in place, the courts have sided with New York at every stage, and the government’s newest argument rests on an inherent power to change its mind. Whether the Second Circuit treats that as a serious legal theory or as an argument raised too late will decide the next chapter.
*Source: Streetsblog New York City*