[Breitbart] President Donald Trump demanded Wednesday evening that the State of California return $3.5 billion in federal funds after Gov. Gavin Newsom canceled most of the state’s high-speed rail project, saying it was too expensive.
"California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars," the president tweeted. "They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a "green" disaster!"
Newsom devoted the opening portion of his first "State of the State" address Tuesday to attacking Trump and his policies on the border. Yet he then bowed to conservative criticism ‐ and, arguably, to fiscal reality ‐ by canceling the high-speed rail project championed by his predecessors.
The governor added that while the bullet train would no longer connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, as first envisioned, the state would still continue "phase one" of the project between the rural towns of Bakersfield and Merced. "I know that some critics will say this is a ’train to nowhere,'" he said. "But that’s wrong and offensive." |