California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.
Benjamin Belnap’s report revealed the project is again running out of money. It found missing details in the project’s 2026 business plan, and concluded that the project will again be out of money by next year.
The state has already spent $18 billion, but it will need at least another $18 billion to finish the first segment. It could take roughly $200 billion more actually to complete the original San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line.
Even with billions more, the current segment will not be completed until 2034.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 under Newsom’s predecessor after absurdly low cost estimates. Newsom has been a champion of the project. 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.
One would think that the California voters would be marching to the capital with pitchforks and torches over such breathtaking incompetence and waste. However, they appear to have been conditioned to accept the lowest level of performance from their public officials.
The response of Democratic leaders is crushingly predictable: they are pledging to seek a federal bailout to cover their own incompetence. The Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, is promising to fight to get back federal funds that were cut off by the Trump Administration. While promising to seriously review any problems in the project (as if they are not obvious), no one has been held accountable for this financial train wreck. Instead, all Democrats can do is demand that citizens around the country help bail out their boondoogle.
Yet, the Inspector General is describing a failure of leadership where no one is making any real decisions:
“Exploration of specific financing mechanisms is a positive step, but because the Authority might run out of funding as soon as December 2027, and the financing strategy the Authority uses has the potential to significantly affect the amount of interest it will need to repay, the Authority and state lawmakers have little time for delay in deciding upon a strategy and implementing it.”
Belknap indicated that those in control are simply shrugging off the problem, noting that “[b]ecause the Authority has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to establish and reinforce a process that ensures accuracy and transparency in project reporting, we have directed our report recommendations to the Board.”
In the meantime, the state will continue to creep along with a project that is sucking billions into a project that has become a national disgrace. Beccera’s pledge to seek bailouts shows that the problem remains the political culture in California. There is little accountability left in a one-party state where companies and individuals have made fortunes off this debacle. The only people being taken for a ride are Californian citizens and it is not the ride that they bargained for.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
It’s already $200 billion over budget. All they have is a bridge to nowhere. A bridge that doesn’t even have rails!
Trump’s Demands Could Ruin Navy
Just as the Lincoln concerns reached fever pitch, Trump released an order directing new Ford-class aircraft carriers to go back to using steam propulsion systems to launch and recover aircraft, an older technology that has been replaced by electromagnetic systems.
The modifications demanded by Trump “is highly unusual and disruptive for the Navy — especially since these are changes the Navy did not request,” said Todd Harrison, an Air Force veteran and longtime defense budget analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
General Atomics, the company that makes electronic catapults, said in a statement that work on the catapults was halfway complete and that changing course now “would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks.”
And the price tag for Turmp’s requests keeps expanding.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the first battleship in Trump’s “Golden Fleet” would cost more than $23 billion, which is $1 billion more than the next nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
It’s also not clear where the Navy will build these battleships, if they aren’t canceled by a subsequent administration.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/14/trump-navy-lincoln-concerns-01038360
While calling them “Trump Class” is just Trump marketting. The actual need is real and the planning predates Trump.
These are NOT traditional battleships, they are just scaling up of the current state of the art non-carrier warships.
This results is significantly increased capacity.
One of the huge problems today is that in any engagement the warships exhaust their supply of missles and must return to port to reload.
These new “battle ships” are just superscaled versions of existing warships with small crews and very large numbers of weapons.
To the extent there is much significant beyond scaling it is that like modern Aircraft carriers they include 2 nuclear reactors making them ready for energy particle weapons and rail guns.
Rail guns are a huge deal as they have a very low cost per projectile and are near infinitely reloadable without returning to port.
But railguns still have engineering problems – though the Japanse solved many of these when the US mothballed the program a decade+ ago.
No the demand will not ruin the navy – we have modern carriers with steam catapults.
That said I am not sure of the rationale here. The eletromagnetic catapults though having some teething problems are still as I understand it superior. There have a faster sortie rate and are more adjustable to the aircraft being launched and stress the airframes being launched substantially less leading to longer airframe life.
They’re not really battleships as they lack the big-guns of battleships. They’re, basically, very large guided missile platforms similar to the Russian KIROV CLASS BATTLECRUISER (only actually mission capable instead of crappy). Something that we need as the Ticonderoga-class cruisers are ending their service life.
This wasn’t really a Trump thing, either. The Navy has been working on replacing those cruisers for a while. They explored the DDG(X) program in 2021, but came to the conclusion that guided missile destroyers weren’t capable of meeting the navy’s needs. As for the cost of the new tech, despite your uninformed hand-wringing, the War Department said the BBG(X) program will incorporate technology from the DDG(X) program and replace it.
As a person who once in the military and worked in defense contract, I know enough about how the development process works. This is just one study group proposal, there will be OTHER COMPETING PROPOSALS for alternate PLATFORMS before one is finally chosen.
Also, FWIW, Hegseth fired the guy who came up with the plan. Just because Trump liked it, doesn’t mean the military wants it or will the US will build it. After all, t the ships have not been funded and come November, Trump is a lame-duck with no more real political clout in the electoral process
“The average daily volume of HSR passenger trips would equal about one-fifth of one percent (0.20%) of California’s population.”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HSR rider demographic:
1. Low income 30%
2. Middle/higher income 70%
– ChatGPT
“Goofy Gavin” could have built a water (i.e. the one thing CA needs) pipeline from the Columbia River or Canada for less money.
100% of the CA population needs water, including the illegal aliens past and present.
Drain Lake Tahoe