CA: California’s high-speed rail project to be investigated, Trump official says. Here’s why

California’s planned high-speed bullet train is the latest target of President Donald Trump’s cuts to government programs, led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.

Department of Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday he has ordered the Federal Railway Administration to perform a “compliance review” into federal funding for a long-planned high-speed railway that would carry Californians between San Francisco and Los Angeles via the Central Valley. Advocates say an investigation is the first step toward killing the long-planned project.

Duffy was greeted with boos from protesters at Union Station in Los Angeles, where he claimed the railway had been “mismanaged” and beset with funding problems, citing its ballooning costs and delayed timeline since voters first approved a related bond in 2008. Musk, a special adviser to the president, has pushed for similar efforts to cut programs and lay off thousands of government workers.

Trump previously promised to investigate the rail project, falsely claiming that it was “hundreds of billions of dollars over budget,” which Duffy repeated in his Thursday announcement.

“For too long, taxpayers have subsidized the massively over-budget and delayed California High-Speed Rail project,” Duffy said. “That is why I am directing my staff to review and determine whether the California High-Speed Rail Authority has followed through on the commitments it made to receive billions of dollars in federal funding.”

It’s unclear how Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was also in the area meeting with business owners, will respond. The governor championed high-speed rail as recently as last month, but has shied from conflict with Trump, whom he is depending on for federal disaster aid. His office referred a request for comment to the rail agency, whose leader said he stood by the railway system.

“We welcome this investigation and the opportunity to work with our federal partners,” Chief executive Ian Choudri said in a statement. “With multiple independent federal and state audits completed, every dollar is accounted for, and we stand by the progress and impact of this project.”

Republicans have long targeted high-speed rail, despite its popularity with a majority of Californians. U.S. Rep. Kevin Kiley, who appeared with Duffy and introduced legislation in December to defund it, blasted the railway as “the worst public infrastructure failure in U.S. history.”

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat and public transit advocate, excoriated the investigation as the first step toward killing the project.

“Trump is determined to increase traffic delays, make transportation more expensive, make our air dirtier, and fuel climate change,” Wiener said in a statement. “This is also a massive government handout by Trump to his co-president Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who is afraid that modern public transportation will undermine his business interests — including Tesla and his scam ‘Boring Company.’”

Musk, who is leading the effort to severely pare back government programs, previously tried to build his own “Hyperloop” transportation system in California before abandoning it in 2022.

Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, a Republican who has resisted Trump’s more hardline immigration policies, said he shared concerns about costs and delays but ultimately supported the railway.

“The federal government has the absolute right to conduct an audit to ensure every taxpayer dollar contributed to HSR is being spent in an efficient and appropriate manner,” Dyer said. “I continue to support high-speed rail, regardless of who builds it, as long as it connects the Central Valley to the California economy.”

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