California is suing the Trump administration for cutting funding for the state’s controversial high-speed rail project, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced Thursday.
On Wednesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the administration was pulling $4 billion in funding for the project after it ran far over schedule and over budget. Newsom is suing to restore the funding, arguing that the move was politically motivated.
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“Trump’s termination of federal grants for California high-speed rail reeks of politics,” Newsom said in a statement. “It’s yet another political stunt to punish California.”
“In reality, this is just a heartless attack on the Central Valley that will put real jobs and livelihoods on the line,” he added. “We’re suing to stop Trump from derailing America’s only high-speed rail actively under construction.”
Newsom responded to the move quickly on Wednesday with a quip on X, telling Duffy that he “won’t be taking advice from the guy who can’t keep planes in the sky.”
The Trump administration argued that the termination was long overdue, as the venture had wasted too much of taxpayer money.
“To the Law-abiding, Tax-paying, Hardworking Citizens of the United States of America, I am thrilled to announce that I have officially freed you from funding California’s disastrously overpriced, ‘HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE,’” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns.”
TRUMP SEVERS FUNDING FOR ‘DISASTROUSLY OVERPRICED’ CALIFORNIA HIGH-SPEED RAIL PROJECT
He added that the promised railroad would never be completed, and that “not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again.”
A 300-page compliance review, released in June, found the high-speed rail project was plagued by delays, mismanagement, waste, ballooning costs, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership.