President Donald Trump is calling for an investigation into California’s high-speed rail project. Right on cue, the project has announced yet another delay.

The inspector general for the project announced that the goal of finishing the Merced-to-Bakersfield portion of the line by the year 2030 is unrealistic, and that the secondary deadline of 2033 was also not going to be reached. The project also has a new funding gap of $6.5 billion, with this smaller version of the project estimated to cost between $32 billion and $35 billion (for now).

Trump is suggesting that there may be an investigation into the waste of “hundreds of billions of dollars” on the perpetually delayed project. The California High Speed Rail Authority decided to arrogantly dismiss this by saying it was “ignoring the noise” because “We’re busy building.” And that is true: the first tracks for the project were laid earlier this year in January 2025. Of course, the original pitch to voters back in 2008 was that the project would be finished by 2020, but hey, at least the rail authority is finally building something.

Still, though, the project is way past deadline, way over budget, and thus far would be considered a success even if it underdelivers on what was promised. This Merced-to-Bakersfield line is less than half of the promised San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line, and the whole project was pitched as costing $33 billion. That is now about the cost of the shorter line the project is focusing on, which is at least another eight years away from completion.

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That is the unchanging reality of California’s high-speed rail. Every year brings about new delays and new added estimated costs, all for a shorter, unwanted stretch of track that the authority is focused on because it is supposedly the cheapest and easiest stretch to build. The project is the ultimate sunk cost, requesting billions and billions more while kicking the construction can down the road decades past the original due date.

There needs to be a thorough accounting for how every cent of California’s high-speed rail has been spent as well as an investigation into the constantly changing timelines that only push the project back further while the state asks for more money. Not a single federal dollar should go to the project again, and California officials should be made to explain just how their vanity project can be finished sometime this century.