California's ambitious high-speed rail project connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco faces another hurdle as a potential withdrawal of federal funding looms under a Trump administration resurgence.
The future of California's decades-long dream to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco via high-speed rail is again under threat as a Trump administration redux looms. Trump's selected Cabinet officials and a California congressman have vowed to pull federal funds from the ongoing rail project, which is budgeted at roughly $100 billion more than the $33-billion budget the authority estimated in 2008.
The potential loss of federal support would pose one more setback for the project, which has struggled to identify tens of billions of needed funds and has no clear timeline for completion. Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, said that a combination of cap-and-trade and private developer investments is key to sustaining the life of the project. “If we can't come up with a formula like that, that adds up and gets us close to a full substantial budget for the project … we will die under our own weight and never have an opportunity to blame the federal government for much of anything,” he said. Cortese said that private sector investment will be studied further amid discussions over how long to keep California's cap-and-trade program, which is set to run out in 2030 and has helped fund the project. The project was recently targeted on X by Trump's proposed Department of Government Efficiency, as its leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy look for areas to cut spending. The post highlighted the $6.8 billion the project has received in federal funding, and the authority's request for an additional $8 billion. Musk said earlier this year that billions of dollars have been spent on high-speed rail 'for practically nothing.' And U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced plans to introduce legislation that would cut federal dollars on the projec
CALIFORNIA HIGH-SPEED RAIL TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FEDERAL FUNDING POLITICS INFRASTRUCTURE
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