Trump Cuts Off Newsom’s Pet Train Project, Cue The Whining

President Donald Trump has no use for California Governor Gavin Newsom, and he’s not afraid to say it out loud.

Trump considers Newsom a failure, though he has been polite to Governor Hair Gel’s face – remember when Trump visited Los Angeles during the wildfires that consumed the area, and Newsom made sure he was right there on the tarmac when Air Force One landed?

However, it’s been made abundantly clear that he finds Newsom to be an annoying useless person, and California badly managed under his watch. But Newsom wants to be president – we know this because he is doing everything BUT running the state of California, unless you count running it straight into the ground.

One of those special pet boondoggles of Newsom’s was his train project. The high speed rail line was originally supposed to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and was approved by voters with a $10 billion bond in 2008. It was supposed to be completed in 2020 for a total cost of $33 billion, and also secured federal funding from the Obama administration (and later, the Biden administration). As the Cato Institute noted just this last May, the years have passed, the money is spent, and there is no rail line.

Three years past that (2020) deadline, however, the project had ballooned in both scope and cost, while not a single piece of track had been laid—even though state, federal, and local taxpayers had already spent at least $13 billion on the project…

Since then, the news has only gotten worse. The cost estimate has now been upped to $135 billion—more than $100 billion higher than the original proposal!—and, as the Associated Press reported in late April, the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) said it might take two more decades to complete “most” of the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles segment.

Even this schedule, however, is almost certainly too optimistic. As the AP notes, the only construction underway now is for a 119-mile stretch in California’s Central Valley, but only 22 miles will be ready for track-laying next year and, per the Reason Foundation’s Bob Poole, another 52 miles haven’t even begun construction because “CHSRA did not meet the deadline for having the final configuration footprint completed by the end of 2024” and “the agency still needs to reach agreements with 12 of the 38 local agencies and utilities on utility relocations.”

Once the line is built, Joffe adds, recent experience with other U.S. rail projects indicates that more delays are likely because of necessary safety testing, new technologies being deployed for the first time in the United States (e.g., 200 mph trains), and infrastructure that will be at least a decade old when things finally get running.

Future funding is another big problem. As the AP notes, the project has thus far been funded by a voter-approved bond, revenues from the state’s cap-and-trade program, and federal subsidies. However, “The state is now out of bond money,” and there are “new fears that the Trump administration could pull $4 billion in federal funding.”

Today, those “fears” became reality, as President Trump pulled the federal funding.

The reality is that the California legislature knew that this project was dead broke and facing a shortfall. Even without Trump stopping the funding, the train was $7 billion in the hole, with no way to find more money. They needed at least $28 billion more to finish the first section of track, which was supposed to be between Merced and Bakersfield, and THAT won’t even be ready until 2030 at the earliest.

Wait, you say. Merced to Bakersfield? This was supposed to be a San Francisco to Los Angeles high speed train, and Merced to Bakersfield doesn’t connect at all and goes far inland!

Instead of a straight shot route from S.F. to L.A., the rail line will detour through several inland cities — a decision that hampered California’s ability to deliver the project in a timely and cost-effective fashion, as The New York Times reported.

In the north, the line is meant to route through San Jose before entering California’s Central Valley and the Mojave Desert, before wrapping around Burbank in L.A. Most of these compromises were a product of local political maneuvers — Silicon Valley lobbyists pushed for San Jose’s inclusion while L.A. officials argued for serving some economically depressed regions.

Earlier this year, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom lightly pushed back on the criticism the project received.

“We can’t go back. We just have to accept the responsibility of where we are, and that’s exactly what we are doing,” he said. When he took office, the California governor expressed his disappointment with the inflated costs and delays.

“Let’s be real. The current project, as planned, would cost too much and respectfully take too long. There’s been too little oversight and not enough transparency,” he said at the time. But as CalMatters reported, he switched to a more optimistic tone during the Biden administration, when there were offers of additional funds on the table.

Gavin Newsom is a big believer in the sunk-cost fallacy, and is basically shrugging his shoulders, claiming they’ve spent too much money to quit now, and wants to keep throwing good money after bad. When Donald Trump became president again, he instructed his Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, to investigate the California high speed rail project. Everyone knew it was a disaster, but Newsom and the Democrats who control California could not stop spending the money, and they’ll keep spending even when they run out.

“The federal government has invested $2.7 billion in this project and California has invested the rest. Joe Biden has promised another $4 billion. The problem is, California is still short $6.5 billion. California doesn’t have the money to complete the project, even with the federal promises that were made by the last administration,” Duffy added.

He went on to criticize Newsom’s lack of leadership on the project, later deferring questions from reporters to the governor.

“What should you do with this project? Why is it costing so much money? What’s going on? Those are questions that should be asked by the media. The public should know there is no timeframe to get a high-speed rail from LA to San Francisco. You should know that. And that’s the decision you all have to make as a state,” Duffy said.

So President Trump, having warned Newsom he was going to do it, pulled the plug – and had the leverage to do so, seeing as the project for the Merced to Bakersfield line was going to miss its targeted completion date.

Trump’s announcement Wednesday came after the U.S. Transportation Department issued a scathing report last month slamming the ambitious development for “missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership.”

The report also found the rail project was unlikely to hit a 2033 completion target for its initial segment, a prerequisite for receiving the federal cash.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy cited the project’s ballooning costs in a post on X announcing the cuts to federal grants, claiming it will cost $135 billion to complete, while Federal Railroad Administration Acting Director Drew Feeley wrote in a Wednesday letter to state officials that the project failed to follow agreements for receiving grant funding.

The project is now estimated to cost up to $128 billion, nearly four times its original $33 billion price tag.

But do you think that Gavin Newsom is going to go down without a fight? Of course not! He wants that money, and he doesn’t care how it gets wasted! His official response came via his official gubernatorial X account.

@CaHSRA is entering the track-laying phase and actively building across 171 miles — with 50 major railway structures and 60 miles of guideway already completed.

We will be exploring all options to fight this illegal action.

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) July 17, 2025

Just a note: “entering the track-laying phase” means that NO TRACKS HAVE BEEN LAID YET. AT ALL. Remember, this was supposed to be finished in about eleven years, once the voters agreed to it in 2008? It’s now 2025, and Newsom is now saying that “we can’t stop, the tracks are ABOUT TO BE LAID” after sixteen years??? So of course, he’s threatening to take the Trump administration to court and demand money that this project hasn’t earned.

That was the official response. Then there was the Gavin “I’m a petty little bitch” Newsom’s personal X account’s response, specifically to Secretary Sean Duffy.

Won’t be taking advice from the guy who can’t keep planes in the sky. https://t.co/OtPHLLQQyh

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) July 17, 2025

Really. That’s what you’re going with, Hair Gel McPodcaster? I’m surprised he didn’t toss in some profanity to make him sound like some hip online edgelord who throws his weight around on social media for clicks and giggles.

If California really wants this high speed rail system that was sold to them back in 2008, then the legislature is going to have to find a way to pay for it without dipping into the (nonexistent) federal piggy bank. Perhaps they should ask the voters again if they are willing to cough up the money to finish the job that hasn’t even really begun yet. HA HA HA. They can’t do that. Gavin Newsom wants to run for president, so he can’t risk having the voters of California embarrass him by refusing to pay another dime for this money pit of a rail line. After all, he’s trying to convince the rest of America that California is just fantastic in every single way, and that if he gets elected, he could make America into California!

Scarier words have never been written.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click

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