President Donald Trump could claw back $4.3 billion in unspent federal funds for California’s high-speed rail project, just as he froze $1 billion for the perpetually delayed and derailed project during his first term as president.
The high-speed rail project was originally approved by California voters in a 2008 referendum, and championed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who took office after 2010, as a way of boosting the economy and fighting climate change.
As Breitbart News reported at the time, Trump stopped nearly $1 billion from going to California for the project after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the original plan for the bullet train to link San Francisco and Los Angeles. Newsom had told the legislature at the time that the project “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.” But he wanted to keep construction going between small towns in the rural Central Valley, despite the lack of demand.
Newsom was furious when Trump held back the $1 billion — and the president also tried to reclaim billions more that had been wasted on the project. Trump reasoned that the federal taxpayer had invested in a high-speed rail link that would connect California’s two biggest cities; if that project was stopped, the federal taxpayer was owed the money. Newsom appeared to believe that California should be able to claim the money regardless of the success of the project.
President Joe Biden restored the funding in 2021 and also added federal funding to a separate, private high-speed rail project that intends to link the Los Angeles area with Las Vegas (with a higher likelihood of commercial success).