Legal Insurrection readers with really long memories may recall that President Trump audited California’s high-speed rail project back in 2018, during his first term.
At that point, the project had blasted through its budget and now may cost close to $100 billion. The subsequent inspector general report uncovered much that was..problematic.
Still, the state politicians persisted. At this point, active construction is underway on a 119-mile stretch in California’s Central Valley. The Fargo Avenue overcrossing in Kings County was just completed, and initial track work is estimated to begin by Spring 2025.
Needless to say, Trump has many reasons to be troubled with how California is being run, especially after seeing its leadership up-close-and-personal as part of his Los Angeles wildfire disaster tour.
Given the success of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in uncovering the massive scale of waste, fraud, and abuse associated with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Trump is considering further investigation into what is happening with the project.
“One of the things I want to investigate rapidly because I’ve never seen anything to this extent, the train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco,” President Trump said. “It’s the worst managed project I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the worst.President Trump said he read that every person who would ride the train could instead take a limousine back and forth, “and you’d have hundreds of billions of dollars left over.””It is the worst thing, and we’re going to start an investigation of that because it’s not possible. I built for a living and I built on time – on budget,” he said. “It’s impossible that something could cost that much.””They made it much shorter. So now it’s at little places way away from San Francisco and way away from Los Angeles. We’re going to start a big investigation on that because I’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody has ever seen anything like it,” he said.
The DOGE staff will really have their work cut out for them on this task.
The High Speed Rail Authority tells everyone to “ignore the noise“.
“Ignore the noise. We’re busy building,” the post said, highlighting the project’s environmental clearance for construction between Los Angeles and San Francisco, construction in the Central Valley and more than 14,000 jobs the project has provided.An authority spokesperson said that of the roughly $13 billion that has been spent on the project, $10.5 billion has been funded through the state of California — “not hundreds of billions.”“Every dollar of the project is accounted for and has been thoroughly reviewed by the independent Office of the Inspector General,” the spokesperson said. “Expenditures have created over $22 billion in economic impact.”
However, many Californians are hoping that DOGE is unleashed on this monstrosity.
I am looking forward to reporting on their audit findings, once the young heroes have gone through the federal bureaucracy.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY