OAN Staff Blake Wolf
1:55 PM – Wednesday, June 4, 2025

The Trump administration has indicated that it intends to pull the remaining 4 billion in federal funding from California’s high-speed rail project — citing missed deadlines, budget overruns, and unreliable ridership projections.

On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation released a 315-page compliance review, detailing the plethora of missed deadlines while highlighting the billions in taxpayer dollars spent on the project — without any results to show for.

Federal officials have also argued that the project has “no viable path” to completion.

The Trump administration has the ability to imminently pull $4 billion in federal funding from the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA).

“CHSRA relied on the false hope of an unending spigot of Federal taxpayer dollars,” wrote Federal Railroad Administration’s acting administrator Drew Feeley. “In essence, CHSRA has conned the taxpayer out of its $4 billion investment, with no viable plan to deliver even that partial segment on time.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy highlighted that the report “exposes a cold, hard truth: CHSRA has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget.”

The measure to create a high-speed rail from Sacramento to San Diego by 2020 was originally passed in 2008 — with a budget of $33 billion.

Since then, the costs have risen to at least $100 billion more than the original projected cost, according to the Los Angeles Times, and the overall budget has been scaled down to only include a 171-mile long section between Merced and Bakersfield.

Duffy later issued an X post discussing the Trump administration’s decision to pull the federal funding.

“California’s high-speed rail has all the marks of a boondoggle: 

• $16 billion spent
• 17 years gone
• No high-speed track laid

We have put California on notice: If you can’t deliver, American taxpayers will not fund your train to nowhere,” he wrote. “If they can’t deliver on their end of the deal, it could soon be time for these funds to flow to other projects that can achieve @POTUS’ vision of building great, big, beautiful things again.”

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