White House removes $4 billion in California’s high-speed rail funding
The Trump administration officially revoked federal funding for California’s high-speed rail projects.
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California’s long-standing high-speed rail project has become the latest casualty of an ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The state-backed high-speed rail project aims to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with 200 mph trains, and will ultimately run 800 miles around California. However, federal Transport Secretary Sean Duffy said the project’s price tag has swelled from $33 billion to $135 billion over the years.
In a social media post on July 16th, Trump called the project a “boondoggle,” which he never launched in the first place. The pending federal contribution is $4 billion.
“The railroad we were promised to have yet to exist, and never exists,” Trump said. “The project was severely expensive, overly regulated and never delivered.”
Duffy added his own social media critique of the price: “We were able to offer around 200 free flights to all LA & SF residents. So today we are pulling a plug of federal funds for this train.”
Trump has long been hostile to the project, and in his first presidency he similarly halted its federal funds. California moved forward regardless, and President Joe Biden recovered money when he took office. Biden has long been the champion of better passenger rail services.
California has been planning the project for decades, and in 2008 voters approved initial funding for the service. New U.S. railway projects usually take decades to get the path needed for managers to plot the route first, lay bridge-to-station trucks, and design and build other necessary infrastructure.
Approximately 119 miles of the railway project are currently being constructed primarily through the low-populated Central Valley region. Railroad boosters hope that the California line will eventually link to the under-constructed Brightline West Express train from suburbs of Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
The project has already spent more than $13 billion in planning, design and initial construction, according to a 2025 update, and is considering public-private partnerships to close the funding gap with additional costs or federal budget cuts.
Newsom, a Democrat who is increasingly intertwined with Trump on the issue of immigration and wildfires, said the state will fight a reversal of funding.. In response to Duffy’s post, Newsom mentioned the recent crash crash on commercial air travel.
Officials with the California High Speed Railroad Bureau claim the project follows all federal funding rules, including a 2024 review by the Biden-era Federal Railroad Administration.
“In the last eight months there has been no change in the meaning of justifying the dramatic face of the FRA,” CEO Ian Choudri said in a June 12 letter to federal officials. “Instead, the FRA simply came to another conclusion after seeing essentially the same facts it took into account in the fall of 2024.”
