Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration has officially withdrawn approximately $4 billion in unspent federal funding allocated to California’s long-delayed high-speed rail project. Citing major cost overruns, repeated delays, and management issues, President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the decision Wednesday, calling the rail effort a “boondoggle.”
“This project was severely overpriced, overregulated, and never delivered,” Trump said in a statement on Truth Social. “Thanks to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, not a single penny in federal dollars will go toward what I call the ‘High-Speed Train to Nowhere.’”
Originally approved by California voters in 2008 as an 800-mile high-speed rail line connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles — with extensions to Sacramento and San Diego — the project was initially budgeted at $33 billion and expected to be completed by 2020. However, costs have steadily escalated, reaching a projected $135 billion. As of 2019, the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) had scaled back the scope to a 171-mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the CHSRA has spent nearly $7 billion over the past 15 years without completing a single operational segment of track. In a letter to CHSRA CEO Ian Choudri, FRA Acting Administrator Drew Feeley cited multiple breaches of the agency’s 2010 funding agreement with California, including failure to meet revised deadlines and significant underperformance.
“California’s inability to complete the project by the 2033 deadline, combined with persistent budget and schedule failures, renders the project inconsistent with the original terms of federal funding,” Feeley wrote.
Secretary Duffy, whose department oversees FRA, emphasized that federal funds are conditional and require results. “After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build this train on time or on budget,” Duffy said. He also confirmed that the Department of Transportation will work with the Department of Justice to potentially recover previously spent federal funds.
The project has long been a political flashpoint. While California Governor Gavin Newsom has defended the rail initiative as a vital investment in clean transportation and infrastructure, critics have called it a waste of public money. President Trump, using his nickname for Newsom, described the governor and his administration as “incompetent” and blamed them for the project’s collapse.
“The American people deserve infrastructure that delivers results, not empty promises and endless delays,” Trump added. “This is the end of the line for this failed project.”
The cancellation marks one of the largest federal funding reversals for a state-level infrastructure project in U.S. history.
