Newsom’s Bullet Train to Nowhere Hits the Brakes as Trump Pulls Plug

Are America’s taxpayers finally getting off California’s bullet train to nowhere?

The Trump administration announced Wednesday afternoon that it will terminate $4 billion in unspent funds that were going to be spent on the California High-Speed Rail project.

Here’s what President Donald Trump had to say on Truth Social.

Amen. I couldn’t be happier.

The very first column I wrote all the way back in 2010 when I was going to the University of California, Davis was how this project was going to be a never-ending disaster. And it has been.

California’s alleged bullet train project officially began in 2008 with the passage of a $9 billion bond bill, but the California High-Speed Rail Authority was actually created way back in 1996.

Virtually nothing has happened since, other than colossally wasting the people’s money. And not just in California. The project has already soaked up about $3.5 billion of federal funding and was set to gobble up much more. The Trump administration wisely pulled the plug.

“Governor [Gavin] Newsom and California’s high speed rail boondoggle are the definition of government incompetence and possibly corruption,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X. “The price tag has gone from $33B to $135B with no completion date in sight. We could give every single [Los Angeles] & [San Francisco] resident almost 200 free flights for that much.”

Duffy followed up on Wednesday’s announcement with some additional sharp elbows thrown at the project.

Speaking of Newsom, the California governor had a somewhat amusing response to the Trump administration’s decision.

First there was this spastic response X.

I’m not even sure what Newsom means. Is a single airline crash due to a helicopter pilot error supposed to mean that the transportation secretary can’t keep planes in the sky? Are no planes currently flying? A quick look outside my window suggests otherwise. Who knows. Looks like Newsom’s perpetual spin machine spun out here.

Newsom then said in a more official statement that “Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley.” The Democrat governor claimed that “we are miles ahead of others” in building high-speed rail.

The California bullet train isn’t miles ahead of anything. In fact, not a single inch, let alone mile, of track has been laid.

Nearly 17 years after the project began, virtually nothing has happened at all. All California has managed to do is pour astounding amounts of state and federal dollars into the High-Speed Rail Authority and produce environmental impact report after environmental impact report.

California seems to be perpetually on the cusp of a “track laying phase” of the project that never actually happens.

The idea that ending this incredible waste of money somehow benefits China is laughable.

Newsom can say whatever he wants, California’s bullet train—money pit, really—has become one of the most prominent boondoggles in American history. It’s an indictment of California’s governance over the last two decades and a disgrace for the Golden State, which was once the gold standard in transportation infrastructure.

The federal rail authority released a compliance review of California’s High-Speed Rail project in June, and it was damning.

The report noted that the federal government committed funds to the project in 2009 when the California High-Speed Rail Authority said the project “would cost $33 billion and connect Los Angeles/Anaheim with San Francisco.”

But promises soon met reality. And red tape. Real and projected costs mushroomed, its goals shrank, deadlines came and went, and at no point did it seem like the bullet train would get on track to even meet its new goal of starting “early” operations in 2033.

Think about that. If a person was born the day California’s High-Speed Rail project began, they would well surpass the legal drinking age before the bullet train is projected to begin operation. And you’d be a monumental fool at this point to even count on that projection.

Watching this 2015 “groundbreaking” ceremony in Fresno, California is a real hoot.

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif., delivered a speech that appears to have been a sad attempt to channel the Gettysburg Address.

“The words that we speak here today will little be remembered 100 years from now,” he said. “But the results of our actions will have a profound effect on California’s future, as did the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century.”

In a certain sense that’s true.

Those who built the transcontinental railroad laid down nearly 2,000 miles of track and finished in six years. They completed the project mostly during the Civil War in which the country was literally falling apart. It was a marvel that connected the coasts and helped make America the world’s greatest superpower.

California’s high-speed rail, massively funded but not built even in a time of peace and plenty, drained the state and the nation and made California the well-deserved butt of jokes. This will certainly have an effect on California’s future, which now looks just a little bleaker.

How many roads could have been built or improved with the money already wasted? How many dams and reservoirs could have been built and renovated to secure California’s water and energy needs?

Fortunately, the Trump administration understands that bringing about America’s next Golden Age means not following the lead of the once-Golden State and not throwing good money after bad.

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