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| Federalist: California's Dying Bullet Train Is A Preview Of A Newsom Presidency |
| 2026-03-05 |
| [Federalist] California’s high-speed rail project, approved in 2008 and under construction since 2015, is running out of money and time, while failing. After decades of effort and $15 billion in spending, California’s plan to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco with a high-speed rail line is falling apart. A pair of documents from the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority reveal an urgent effort to keep the project alive by making it much more modest in scope and effect, violating state law and undermining every promise made at its conception. And most of what passes for the news is badly misrepresenting the latest developments, celebrating retreat as rebirth. There are two lessons from California’s stillborn bullet train. First, Gavin Newsom can never become president, which would inject the appalling failure of blue state political culture into the national bloodstream. Second, the decision of the Trump administration to withdraw $4 billion in federal funds from the project is proof of competence, and a policy win for Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Newsom’s bullet train has failed the way Hemingway’s protagonist went bankrupt: gradually, and then all at once. There have been hints about the growing disaster, but they became very public on Monday at a long legislative hearing in Sacramento. To borrow a bit of phrasing from the legacy media, critics of the project pounced and seized on the open discussion of the emerging failure. Did you notice those dates? California is hoping to pay for initial construction that ends in 2033 by borrowing against money that they hope to get through 2045, and analysts warn that the money may not actually turn out to exist. The whole hearing went about that well. (See also Marc Joffe’s longer discussion here, by the way.) |
| Posted by:NoMoreBS |
| #3 |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2026-03-05 14:30 |
| #2 |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2026-03-05 05:50 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2026-03-05 05:49 |