Federal taxpayer dollars touch everything from food assistance to homeland security funds in New York City.
If President Donald Trump rescinds or cancels funds to the city, as he repeatedly threatens to do if Zohran Mamdani win the mayoral race in November, it could upend city operations and services, especially for New York City’s most vulnerable residents, budget experts said.
“Even if they’re small, they’re pretty substantial for those agencies and for the folks they serve,” said Ana Champeny, the vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, an organization that researches city and state budget policy in New York. “The whole budget is on the table, and you have to think holistically about, given this decrease in federal funding, what are my priorities, and what is the way that I allocate these city funds.”
The president has not specified what federal funding to the city he will cut, though he suggested in a post on Truth Social in September that New York will not get “any” of its federal funds if Mamdani wins.
New York City receives federal funds through multiple streams, including money dispersed through the state and federal grants allocated directly to city programs or projects.
The city’s operating budget for fiscal year 2026, which started in July and runs through the end of June 2026, includes more than $7 billion in federal funds across at least 20 different agencies and departments, according to the state comptroller’s office. Independent entities related to city operations, like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York City Health and Hospitals and the City University of New York system, also receive federal funding.
NOTUS reached out to more than 20 of these agencies and independent entities with questions about how much federal funding each receives and how a pause or cancellation to all federal funds would impact their work. None of the entities responded to a request for comment. A spokesperson for New York City Hall also did not respond to a request for comment.
It is also unclear how Trump’s threats could play out when it comes to mandatory federal spending that touches New York, like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The federal government does not have legal authority to withhold those funds based on what states or cities do outside of those programs, but the possibility of losing health care and food assistance dollars concerns budget experts.
Andrew Rein, the CEO of the Citizens Budget Commission, told NOTUS that many city agencies are likely already plotting a path forward in the event of massive changes to federal funding.
“They might backfill some of the cuts, but they cannot backfill all the cuts. And when they backfill any of the cuts, it will affect other programs,” Rein said. “It’s potentially very, very significant. And if the city and state make the smart choices and manage well, it can reduce, but not eliminate, the pain.”
Those inevitable tradeoffs would primarily hurt “those who have real needs, but they’re not as severe,” Rein told NOTUS.
The Office of Management and Budget did not respond to questions from NOTUS about whether the federal government plans to cancel or withhold funding to New York and what those potential cuts will look like.
The impacts of a partial or complete cut to federal money would hit some city agencies harder than others. For instance, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services is set to receive almost 40% of its funding from federal dollars in fiscal 2026, a funding stream that has previously been used mainly for childcare costs.
The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development will rely on federal dollars for half its fiscal 2026 budget. That department is one of three entities in the city that operates a Section 8 program, a federal voucher system that provides rental assistance to low-income Americans, seniors and people with disabilities.
The city could especially see challenges in administering housing programs without federal assistance. Rein told NOTUS that a loss of federal funds would “be an incredible, incredible challenge” at the New York City Housing Authority and other housing agencies because “their operating budget is kind of on the edge as it is.”
Sources told NOTUS that a loss of federal funding in housing and other agencies could prove especially tough if the administration also makes good on its threats to lay off thousands of employees at federal agencies. The Housing and Urban Development department sent reduction in force notices to more than 400 employees earlier this month, according to a court filing, but the agency is under a temporary restraining order from a federal judge that halts layoffs during the government shutdown for employees in offices and units that have union representation.
“A million New Yorkers rely on [Housing and Urban Development] programs to pay their rent,” Rachel Fee, the executive director of the nonprofit New York Housing Conference, told NOTUS. “Whether it’s an ongoing government shutdown or if programs were actually targeted for cuts, these are low income renters that have no market options and would really face eviction without this federal assistance,” Fee said.
A potential loss of federal funding would also hit the city’s uniformed agencies, including the New York City Police Department, to some extent. Democrats and Republicans, including Trump, have criticized Mamdani for his previous calls to defund the police, which he has since walked back. Any federal funding cuts that target the NYPD’s operations would underscore internal tensions in the White House over supporting local law enforcement agencies while disavowing left-leaning candidates.
The NYPD is only set to derive 0.3% of its fiscal year 2026 funding from the federal government. City officials said the actual amount of federal support the department receives usually increases over the course of a year by more than $100 million, as additional grants are recognized and awarded. In previous years, federal funds to the police department went toward the counterterrorism unit, purchasing drones for tactical responses and replacing outdated equipment, among other uses.
The city is already dealing with a test run of sorts in responding to hits to its federal funding in what Trump administration officials have described as a “maximum pain” strategy.
Trump announced last week that the administration “terminated” the Gateway rail tunnel under the Hudson River. That announcement came two weeks after the administration said at the beginning of the shutdown that it would withhold federal assistance for the tunnel and another major New York infrastructure project because of concerns over contractors on the projects using diversity, equity and inclusion principles.
New York also saw multiple clean energy awards totaling hundreds of millions of dollars terminated by the Department of Energy this month.
Existing legal challenges to federal funding pauses and cuts also highlight how city leaders could resist broader funding threats that come after November.
Republicans in Congress successfully lobbied for the restoration of more than $100 million in counterterrorism grants to the city after the Trump administration took a swipe at funding to blue states. A federal judge also ruled in September that the Department of Homeland Security could not block those funds.
But the possibility of legal recourse if Trump’s threats play out isn’t quelling worries on the ground, Rein said.
“There will be a legal path, because some of these cuts has been challenged and some overturned,” he told NOTUS. “Meanwhile, if the money’s not in your pocket, and you have people on the ground, you have to manage it.”
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This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and The City.