California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project has become the latest victim in the ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom, as White House officials again seek to cancel billions in federal funding.
The state-backed high speed rail project aims to link San Francisco and Los Angeles with a 200 mph train that will eventually run 800 miles around California. But the project’s price tag has ballooned over the years from $33 billion to $135 billion, according to federal Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
In a July 16 social media post, Trump called the project a “boondoggle” that should have never been started in the first place. The pending federal contribution is $4 billion.
“The railroad we were promised still does not exist, and never will,” Trump said. “This project was severely overpriced, overregulated, and never delivered.”
Duffy added his own social media critique of the price: “We could give every single LA & SF resident almost 200 free flights for that much. That’s why today we’re pulling the plug on federal funding for this train to nowhere.”
Trump has long been hostile to the project, and in his first presidency he similarly halted its federal funding. California forged ahead regardless, and President Joe Biden restored the money when he took office. Biden had long been a champion of better passenger rail service.
California has been planning the project for decades, and in 2008 voters approved initial funding for the service. New rail projects in the United States typically take decades to develop as managers first plot a route and acquire the necessary rights-of-way to lay track, then design and build other necessary infrastructure, from bridges to stations.
About 119 miles of the rail project are being built now, primarily through the less-populated Central Valley region. Rail boosters hope to see the California line eventually link up with the under-construction Brightline West high-speed train from Los Angeles suburbs to Las Vegas.
The project has already spent more than $13 billion in planning, design and initial construction, according to its 2025 update, and is considering public-private partnerships to help close any funding gaps due to additional cost increases or federal budget cuts.
Newsom, a Democrat who has increasingly tangled with Trump over issues from immigration to wildfire, said the state would fight the funding reversal. In response to Duffy’s post, Newsom referenced the recent spate of commercial air travel crashes: “Won’t be taking advice from the guy who can’t keep planes in the sky.”
California High-Speed Rail Authority officials argue the project has followed all federal funding rules, including a 2024 review by the Biden-era Federal Railroad Authority.
“There have been no meaningful changes in the past eight months that justify FRA’s dramatic about-face,” said CEO Ian Choudri in a June 12 letter to federal officials. “Instead, the FRA has looked at essentially the same facts it considered in the fall of 2024 and simply reached a different conclusion.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump, Newsom tangle over California’s high-speed train
