On Wednesday afternoon, President Trump took the long-overdue step to cancel federal funds intended for the California bullet train championed by California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom.
Late last December, one month before President Trump was inaugurated, California Democrats in Congress sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urging him to hurry and approve additional funding for California’s floundering high-speed rail project.
One week before, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the cost of building California’s largely unfinished high-speed rail line — of which Newsom bragged, “We’re making rail real in California” — which was initially estimated at $33 billion, had ballooned to over $100 billion.
In the letter, “Democratic lawmakers Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, and Reps. Pete Aguilar, Jim Costa, and Zoe Lofgren sent a letter to Buttigieg calling on him to approve funding for the first phase of the project,” The Sacramento Bee reported.
The letter asked for $536 million in federal funds, acknowledging, “The FSP-National grant application is part of an ongoing federal-state partnership that has provided approximately $28.8 billion in funding for California High-Speed Rail, including $22 billion from state funds and $6.8 billion from federal funds. … By preparing for future final design and construction of complex tunnels in this corridor, the Project will advance both state and federal goals to improve safety, expand economic strength and global competitiveness, address equity issues, and implement sustainability practices to confront climate change.”
“To the Law abiding, Tax paying, Hardworking Citizens of the United States of America, I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced, ‘HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday “This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns. The Railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will. This project was Severely Overpriced, Overregulated, and NEVER DELIVERED.”
“Thanks to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again. This was an ill-conceived and unnecessary project, and a total waste of Taxpayer money — But no more!” he concluded.
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