NYC congestion pricing generates nearly $50M in 1st month as Trump admin moves to kill plan
Deb Cohn-Orbach/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York City’s congestion pricing toll generated nearly $50 million in revenue in its first month, officials said Monday, as the Trump administration moves to kill the first-in-the-nation program.
From Jan. 5, the first day of the program, to Jan. 31, tolls from the congestion pricing program generated $48.66 million, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which manages the city’s subways as well as bridges and commuter rails.
The net revenue for that period was $37.5 million when taking into account expenses to run the program, the MTA said.
The program is on track to generate $500 million in net revenue by the end of this year, as initially projected, the MTA said.
“With an initial performance in line with projections, we can confidently move forward with projects that rely on funds from the Congestion Relief Zone,” MTA Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing similar results in the coming months.”
The update comes after the U.S. Department of Transportation last week said it pulled federal approval of the plan following a review requested by President Donald Trump.
The review found that the “scope of this pilot project as approved exceeds the authority authorized by Congress” under the Federal Highway Administration’s Value Pricing Pilot Program, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a letter to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.
Trump celebrated the DOT’s move, saying on his social media platform Truth Social, “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The MTA said it immediately challenged the Trump administration’s reversal in federal court. The MTA is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court that the DOT’s move is “not proper” and is not turning off the tolls under the program until there’s a court order, Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday.
Duffy, who called the plan “unfair,” told CBS News on Wednesday that he’d be open to some form of congestion pricing while questioning the price of the NYC toll.
The congestion pricing plan charges passenger vehicles $9 to access Manhattan below 60th Street during peak hours as part of an effort to ease congestion and raise funds for the city’s public transit system. During peak hours, small trucks and charter buses are charged $14.40 and large trucks and tour buses pay $21.60.
According to the MTA’s findings, 68% of the $48.66 million in revenue generated in January came from passenger vehicles, 22% from taxis and for-hire vehicles, 9% from trucks and 1% from buses and motorcycles.
New York officials have touted the success of the program in easing traffic, with Hochul saying last week that congestion has “dropped dramatically” since the program went into effect last month.
(MEMPHIS, TN) — The gatekeepers of Elvis Presley’s estate are trying to recover a potential trove of records and memorabilia left behind by the King of Rock and Roll, according to a lawsuit filed in California.
The lawsuit, filed just before 6 p.m. on Dec. 24, is a fitting coda to a year that saw Presley’s iconic Memphis home nearly auctioned off as part of what federal authorities now call an attempt to defraud both Presley’s family and Elvis Presley Enterprises.
Now, the operators of Graceland allege “irreplaceable” items they bought more than three decades ago from Presley’s longtime manager, Col. Tom Parker, have fallen into the hands of people who have no right to them and are now trying to sell them in an online auction.
“It is now clear that some of the material that the parties to the Parker Acquisition intended to be transferred to [Elvis Presley Enterprises], never was,” the lawsuit claims. Despite “clear and repeated demands” that the defendants stop hawking what was not theirs to sell, those demands were “ignored,” according to the filing.
At issue is a collection that allegedly includes everything from contracts and agreements signed by Presley, to a telegram from associates congratulating Elvis and his then-wife Priscilla on the birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie. Elvis Presley Enterprises contends the cache of memorabilia is valued at upwards of $2 million, though the “unique” artifacts are “priceless.”
The items were listed on the website of GWS Auctions, a California company that boasts sales of “celebrity” items from the likes of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and Johnny Cash. The Presley items listed in the lawsuit appeared as available online in mid-November under the heading “The Lost Collection of Elvis, Col. Tom Parker & More.” Elvis Presley Enterprises alleges the auctioneeing company advertised while knowing the sellers had no legal right to the items, which the company denies.
The origin of the dispute dates back to 1990, when Col. Parker, “known as a meticulous record keeper and a real pack rat who held onto everything,” directly sold EPE “perhaps the greatest collection of Elvis-related documents and memorabilia ever held by anyone other than Elvis himself,” the suit alleged, adding it is the “entire collection” as it pertained to “Elvis and Elvis related memorabilia, irrespective of where such material was located.”
EPE acquired the collection as part of its ongoing effort to catalogue, preserve and showcase artifacts connected to the life and career of one of rock and roll’s first global superstars. One of the company’s executives, Jack Soden, “had dealt with and known Col. Parker for many years” and said he “was acting with the authority of Elvis’s widow Priscilla Presley, was intent on acquiring from Parker every scrap of Elvis-related material Parker owned.”
The lawsuit alleges company leaders believed all the items covered in the agreement “had been collected,” only now to find otherwise. Some of those items “ended up in the possession” of one of Parker’s former longtime employees after Parker’s death in 1997, according to the filing.
Then in December 2021, the lawsuit says, the co-founder of GWS Auctions, Brigitte Kruse, reached out to both Priscilla Presley and Graceland’s chief archivist to tell them she knew that the employee had items that should be in EPE’s custody. Kruse allegedly even shared videos of her discussions with him acknowledging who owned what.
Kruse allegedly told Graceland’s archivist Angela Marchese “that she knew these materials were involved in ‘theft’ and rightfully belonged to EPE,” according to a signed declaration by Marchese obtained by ABC News.
When a Presley executive confronted the employee directly, he backtracked, saying it had all been “a misunderstanding,” and he only had “photocopies,” not originals, the suit says.
“Some of the very documents and memorabilia Kruse claimed [the employee] possessed have now been listed for sale,” the suit alleges, adding “it is apparent” how those items “made their way” to the auction house.
“Kruse listed the Property for sale despite knowing, as she made clear in her email to Marchese and contemporaneous conversations with Marchese, that Kruse knew these items to be stolen Property rightfully belonging to [EPE],” the suit said.
EPE sent a cease-and-desist letter to Kruse earlier this month.
In response, a lawyer for GWS said the company “denies any wrongdoing whatsoever,” and denies that the “characterizations of the communications between” Kruse and Marchese “are accurate or complete.” GWS also denied EPE’s property interest and said that they would “proceed with the auction,” according to the suit and appended exhibits.
In a statement to ABC News, Kruse pushed back on the allegations against her and her company, saying that the assertions are “unfounded and without merit.”
“EPE and Graceland’s assertions are unfounded and without merit. This is merely another attempt to discredit our founder and the company. Under no circumstances would we engage in the sale of “stolen” items, and this collection was sought after by auction houses globally,” Kruse said.
“The items in question successfully passed our auction house’s due diligence process and were subsequently offered for public sale. Furthermore, no police report has ever been filed by EPE/Graceland, and the owner has possessed this collection for several decades,” Kruse added.
As of Monday night, the auction site is still up, though bidding is closed.
The keepers of the Presley legacy say the decades-long story of Elvis is one of people trying to profit off of the King – and often at the expense of him and his family.
In May, Elvis’ idyllic Graceland retreat was mysteriously announced for auction by an unknown company calling itself “Naussany Investments,” which claimed that Lisa Marie used Graceland as collateral to take out a $3.8 million loan and had not repaid it.
The ensuing investigation stretched all the way from Memphis to Florida, where the notary whose fake seal was used for the alleged fraud spoke up — and Presley’s granddaughter countersued, stopping a possible sale. In August, the alleged perpetrator behind that alleged fraud was arrested in the Ozarks: Lisa Findley was apprehended on Aug. 16, the 47th anniversary of Elvis’ death. Federal prosecutors charged the Missouri woman with mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. The case is still pending, and Findley is last listed in custody in Tennessee.
“People have been trying to take from Elvis since Elvis was Elvis,” Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, told ABC News this fall. “Elvis was a human being. He was a really good human being,” he said. “Pick on somebody else. Have a heart, have a conscience. And even if you don’t have a heart or have a conscience — know that you won’t get away with it.”
(WASHINGTON) — Special Counsel Jack Smith issued his first response Tuesday to an effort by Donald Trump’s co-defendants to have the judge who tossed his classified documents case issue an emergency order blocking Smith’s final report on the investigation.
Lawyers for Trump’s former co-defendants, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, asked Judge Aileen Cannon — who dismissed the case in July after deeming Smith’s appointment unconstitutional — to issue an order barring Attorney General Merrick Garland from publicly releasing the report by Jan. 10.
In a brief filing, assistant special counsel James Pearce confirmed the office is “working to finalize” a report and Attorney General Garland — who has the final say over what material from the report is made public — has still not determined what to release from the volume that relates to Smith’s classified documents investigation.
The office assured Judge Cannon in their filing that Smith would not release that specific volume of the report anytime before 10 a.m. Friday and that they would submit a fuller response to Nauta and DeOliveira’s emergency motion no later than 7 p.m. Tuesday evening.
The legal maneuver by Trump’s now-former co-defendants came the same day Trump’s personal lawyers sent a letter to Garland demanding he remove Smith from his post and defer the decision about the report’s release to Trump’s incoming attorney general, Pam Bondi.
“No report should be prepared or released, and Smith should be removed, including for even suggesting that course of action given his obvious political motivations and desire to lawlessly undermine the transition,” wrote Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, Trump’s defense attorneys and his picks for top posts within the Department of Justice.
Smith has been winding down his cases against the president-elect, moving to dismiss Trump’s election interference case and dropping their appeal of his classified documents case against Trump, and is expected to submit a final report about his investigations to Garland before stepping down.
Kīlauea volcano erupts in in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on Jan. 22, 2025. Image via USGS.
(KILAEUA, Hawaii,) — The world’s most active volcano, located in Kilauea, Hawaii, resumed its latest eruption on Wednesday.
Volcanic activity was noted just before 3 p.m. local time in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The activity marked the fifth episode from the Kilauea volcano since it started to erupt on Dec. 23, 2024.
“Weak, intermittent spatter” was observed earlier in the day, but it was not until 2:57 p.m. that “small spatter fountains” of lava could be seen, marking the beginning of a new phase of the eruption, according to the United States Geological Survey, which assesses the risk of volcanic hazards in the U.S.
Such activity can be monitored through the agency’s volcano livestream on YouTube.
“Small lava dome fountains in the north vent are feeding short lava flows in the southwest part of the caldera,” the USGS wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Volcanic gas emissions are elevated compared to during the eruptive pause.”
The USGS noted that observable lava flow began at 2:59 p.m. and “seismic tremor” increased at 3:00 p.m.
In an advisory notice posted Wednesday, the agency wrote that “significant hazards” of the eruption include “wall instability, ground cracking, and rockfalls.” It noted that these hazards could be enhanced by earthquakes, which would endanger members of the public that ventured too close to the volcano within the national park.
“This underscores the extremely hazardous nature of Kilauea’s caldera rim surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu crater, an area that has been closed to the public since late 2007,” the USGS wrote.
It also said that it “continues to closely monitor Kilauea and will issue an eruption update tomorrow morning unless there are significant changes before then.”
The fourth and most recent eruption episode began on Jan. 15, but it had paused over the weekend on Jan. 18.
“Each episode of lava fountaining since December 23, 2024, has continued for 14 hours to 8 days and episodes have been separated by pauses in eruptive activity lasting less than 24 hours to 12 days,” the USGS advisory said.
There are about 170 potentially active volcanoes in the U.S., according to the USGS.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
