In the dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell wrote, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” The true meaning of that line was never more clear than watching the truly bizarre photo op of California governor Gavin Newsom heralding the success of the greatest boondoggle in history: his high-speed train to nowhere. Without laying a single yard of track after burning $12 billion, Newsom showed a diesel freight train on a conventional track to create the appearance of a working railroad.
I have been writing about this boondoggle for years. Newsom promised years ago that the project would be transformative. It was, but not as he promised.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 after absurdly low estimates of the projected cost. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring.
Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25% , and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles. It is projected to exceed $128 billion and could ultimately cost a billion dollars per mile. There are still uncompleted environmental assessments and challenging rail lines through the mountains.
There is still no train and not a yard of track almost 20 years later.
The inspector general, Benjamin Belnap, issued a scathing report on the first phase of the still uncompleted project. That is only the stretch from Merced to Bakersfield which was supposed to be completed by 2033. Belnap wrote:
“With a smaller remaining schedule envelope and the potential for significant uncertainty and risk during subsequent phases of the project, staying within the 2033 schedule envelope is unlikely. In fact, uncertainty about some parts of the project has increased as the authority has recently made decisions that deviated from the procurement and funding strategies that were part of its plans for staying on schedule.”
Rather than deliver on the promise of high-speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the Merced-Bakersfield line would now cost $35.3 billion, exceeding the 2008 projection for a complete system.
Merced and Bakersfield have a combined population of roughly 500,000. That works out to roughly $22,000 per person, based on state ridership estimates.
However, Newsom still wants to be president even as citizens are fleeing his state in record numbers. The “train to nowhere” is a problem. Even the New York Times is writing editorials on whether Newsom will be the next mistake of the Democratic Party.
Newsom’s response is to arrange for gushing columns like Maya Singer’s embarrassing piece in Vogue:
Let’s get this out of the way: He is embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address…
Newsom’s lanky frame was folded onto a sofa a bit too low-slung for him. This made him lean back—away from me. Or it could be that his body language had nothing to do with ergonomics and is a function of Newsom’s quality of being at once gregarious and aloof.”
It is the type of teenybopper heartthrob coverage that Newsom is counting on from the media. It is not the billions burned on a non-existent railway but his glorious hair and “eminence.”
However, others beyond Vogue readers may be interested in his actual record. Hence, the need to release this absurd photo op that would make a propagandist blush:
“All of the hard work behind us. Now we’re going to see the fruits of that. We’re going to start seeing precisely what you see here. Real tracks, real progress.”
It is like paying for a meal at a restaurant and the Chef charging you ten times what was on the menu, not producing the meal for hours, and then showing you a picture of a different dish as a sign of his progress.
The difference is that Newsom has taken almost two decades to deliver and cut the original dish to a fraction of its original size while increasing the price exponentially.
Californians are now captives on a train to nowhere. The state must continue to burn billions because too much is invested economically and politically. They must ride the train with Gavin Newsom to the very end.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Dear Mr. Turley, appreciate guyventner, he is spot on. Growing up here in the heart of the Mid-West, all we heard on the kitchen radio were songs about how great California was. I am so thankful that my parents gave me roots here. I have been to California. Our son lived there for 8 years working in defense. He moved out from there and I was glad. It was too crazy with all of the traffic, and everything locked down in the stores.
Does he and or his PR team think we cannot tell the difference between a fright train and a passenger train?
Meanwhile, we have a 5 year old as president…Thank you MAGA – Excuse me, MAGMA – Make America Get Measles Again.
“President Donald Trump is drawing vehement criticism after forwarding, on his Truth Social platform, a racist AI-generated video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. And the Trump White House is responding to the controversy by attacking Democrats.”
Meanwhile – Farmers across this great country have lost market share to their international customers as trumps threats of tariffs have caused many buyers of agricultural products to go elsewhere.
“Donald Trump’s policies, as well as the “inaction” of Congress, are being blamed for what agriculture experts warn could be an imminent “widespread collapse” of the U.S. farming sector, according to The Hill.”
How are those Soybean farmers doing after China reduced their purchase of U.S. Soybeans to ZERO? Oh, no problem for the soybean farmers, trump will just use your tax dollars to buy the beans and dump them in the ground. Yep, Stable Genius if there ever was one.
Pss’t the article is about the train to nowhere and the grift of CA. politics. Try to follow along, because reading is fundamental.
If you want an article critical of the President, try Mother Jones, or some other “news” organization.
Psst – JT ignores anything serious about trump. he focuses on every little hiccup of a demo and ignores the actual damage trump is doing. I wonder why?
“[I]t is clear that the current administration’s actions, along with congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” the letter read.
Remember all that angst over Hunter Biden and maybe $10 or $20 million of bribes?
How many articles has JT written about the $billion plus trump and his family have taken in since Dec 1, 2025 from Foreign “investors”?
Very interesting Anonymous. Now if you could just provide a source to confirm the monkey business we all might be more informed. Alas, as usual you never back up your maniacal rantings. Anonymous says look see look see under this rock there’s a racist MAGA right here. They’re under all these rocks right here!!! She always finds some way not to talk about the embarrassment things in blue states like the train to nowhere and the state funding of the children learing center in Minneapolis.
Shush don’t tell her. She’s the reason that Democrats lost to the big bad orange man. Thank you Anonymous.
All part of the continued Dem GRIFT off the gummint. DOGE found $4.9trillion without any accounting tags during Biden’s term. The Dem Party is a gigantic criminal grifting Op, and the Republicans aren’t much better. Trump is using GENIUS to create a CBDC. Dems grift off gummint, Republicans use the private sector. A pox on both parties.
Americans should take note of how Democrats reject logic, accountability and US Founding Fathers. They should also take note how Democrats deny our God given rights. Recently Senator Tim Kaine (Dem – Virginia, allegedly Catholic) stated this.
Let’s be reminded of the “Big Dig” in Boston with its substantial overruns, and the federal government picking up the tab. Hence, not just the California citizens but U. S. citizens as well will be torched for this ill-conceived boondoggle. If / when Democrats get control of D.C., you can bet they will find a way to bail out this project.
And they insist that there is no fraud going on… where is the money going? They’ve been a small number of overpasses for it, and that is about it. Nothing high-tech or anything fancy, just a few normal concrete overpasses. And it still hasn’t fully passed through the environmentalist grift. For those who don’t know, one of the biggest difficulties in building things in California is that there is a train of massive environmental groups that operate like the mob. If you don’t pay them off, they’ll engage in endless lawsuits against your project because of the way the environmental laws are written, they can always find something to complain about. An example of this is that it refers to “species”, but speciation is incredibly fast in an environment like California. Some lizards can be virtual identical, but just different enough to be genetically incompatible even when the populations are just a few miles apart. We also saw this when they attempted to replace the 100 year old wooden power lines with new ones that can resist the Santa Anna winds: There was some random shrub in the area that was declared “endangered”, so the whole project had to be stopped, fire hazard and expense be damned.
I think it is clear that the whole thing is just a way to transfer money from taxpayers and into the hands of the Democrats favored groups.
At what point do they stop and ask themselves if the over budget, delays are worth it? Or are they going to continue to throw even more money at this project hoping it will someday be a success? Would not be surprised if they lowered the bar to define what a success looks like in this case.
Newsom and his pals seem to functioning on the premise “In for a dollar, in for a pound” when they should be working on “don’t send good money after bad.” But hey, it’s not Newsom’s money, so what does he care?
You should look into who made $$$$$ on the sale of land? Some interesting names pop up. Newscume is a fool.
Some free advice for Governor Newsom: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging” (English proverb). It seems that we are watching a race to the bottom. On one side is Governor Walz and the Somalis; on the other side is Governor Newsom and the train to nowhere. Which State can rack up the most fraud before someone stops this runaway train?
Newsom fiddles while Bass strums a DEIst cacophony and California burns.
I hope all this is being recorded so two years from now Presidential candidate Newsome can see his blatant lie exposed to voters before they make the biggest mistake of their lives by voting for this miscreant.
$1 billion per mile might yet prove to be a bargain, if it could be arranged to have Gavin Newsom tied down across the track ahead of the first actually train to roll on that line…
“actual train” sheesh, fingers working only sporadically this morning…
This is such a boondoggle that it appears surreal. I can’t believe the politicians of California keep trying to resurrect this project. This is like an apparition from one of the Dresden Files that seems to get crushed beyond any chance of redemption only to be given life again and again by various political wizards in the White Council or the denizens of the White, Black and Red Courts or other unsavory characters. Enough already. Time to move on to another billion dollar project to raise the the quality of life of Californians before they leave for other destinations.
I wonder how much is budgeted for publicity?
You have to admire the Californicator voter! They will keep voting for the same FRAUD WASTE AND ABUSE crowd that will ultimately milk every dollar out of those cows and tell them how lucky they are to live in that DUMP of State! But you can’t blame the politicians for smoking people who are begging to be abused everyday! A sadist always finds a submissive in the meat market of politics. Haha.
what I don’t understand why anyone things Democrats want success
they don’t! They fail to GET more tax money…local, state and federal
Time to Outlaw Public Unions the political army of the Democrats funded by Taxpayers…they push Failure and centralized POWER for Democrat overlords!
Time to END Federal Aid to cities, states, non-profits and colleges!
Break Democrats!
We think we are living in a Gold Age…The average family of 4 owes $500,000 of Federal Debt. We are bankrupt!