California is the socialist nightmare Democrats want to turn the rest of America into.
It just became more dysfunctional than some third world countries.
And Gavin Newsom incinerated enough taxpayer money in one disaster to haunt his 2028 campaign forever.
Gavin Newsom Posted a Freight Train Photo While Claiming High Speed Rail Progress
In February 2026, Gavin Newsom posted a photo on X bragging about the "track-laying stage" of California's high-speed rail project.
The train in the background was not the futuristic passenger rocket he promised voters – it was a regular freight train.
Not a high-speed rail car. Not a test locomotive. A freight train – the same kind that's been rolling through the Central Valley since the 1800s.
That's the story of California's bullet train in a single image. Seventeen years. $15 billion spent. Zero miles of high-speed track laid. And a governor so desperate for a win that he tried to fool people with a freight train as proof of progress.
The project was sold to voters in 2008 with a $33 billion price tag and a 2020 completion date. The latest estimate from the state's own high-speed rail board now puts the cost at $126 billion. Board member Anthony Williams told 60 Minutes that figure still leaves "a shortfall of roughly $90 billion."
The entire project – the one Newsom says will eventually connect Los Angeles to San Francisco – is $90 billion short of being funded. That's not a budget problem. That's a fantasy.
Rep. Vince Fong, a California Republican, said: "We're now in 2026: There are no trains; there's no track laid; it was a complete bait and switch."
Why California's Bullet Train Became More Dysfunctional Than a Third World Country
The SNCF – France's national railroad company – came to California in the early 2000s with hopes of building the bullet train system.
They left in 2011.
"There were so many things that went wrong," SNCF Project Manager Dan McNamara told the New York Times. "SNCF was very angry. They told the state they were leaving for North Africa, which was less politically dysfunctional. They went to Morocco and helped them build a rail system."
Morocco finished that bullet train in 2018.
California, meanwhile, spent 17 years in construction disputes, land acquisition fights, and political rewrites of the original route. State lawmakers wanted the train diverted through their districts for economic reasons. The SNCF warned California the detours were too ambitious and would blow the timeline. California ignored them.
So the French railroad left – and still found it easier to build in North Africa than in Gavin Newsom's California.
The state auditor issued a scathing 2018 report with a subtitle that said it all: "Its Flawed Decision Making and Poor Contract Management Have Contributed to Billions in Cost Overruns and Delays in the System's Construction."
Newsom was warned. He did nothing.
Sean Duffy Pulled the Plug on California's Train to Nowhere
In July 2025, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy formally terminated $4 billion in unspent federal grants after a 315-page compliance review.
The review found nine key findings of failure. Among them: the California High-Speed Rail Authority would not complete the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment by 2033 – the project's own stated deadline. The authority's inspector general agreed.
"This is California's fault," Duffy said. "Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check – they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA's mismanagement and incompetence has proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget."
The California High-Speed Rail Authority filed a lawsuit to get the money back. Then dropped it.
In a statement, the authority acknowledged the federal government was no longer "a reliable, constructive, or trustworthy partner" – as if walking away from a $4 billion grant was somehow Washington's failure.
Newsom didn't even show up. He declined 60 Minutes' repeated interview requests for the April 5 broadcast. The governor who wants to run the country in 2028 won't answer questions about the single biggest infrastructure project in his state.
California's own transportation secretary, Toks Omishakin, filled the silence by admitting the critics had a point. "There were mistakes made," he told CBS. "Some of the criticisms on this project, I think, are very fair."
Democrats have spent two decades demanding more government investment in infrastructure. California had its shot – and turned a $33 billion bullet train into a $126 billion monument to bureaucratic incompetence without laying a single mile of track.
Gavin Newsom wants America to trust him with the nuclear codes. He can't build a train.
Sources:
- Stephen M. Lepore, "Appalling 12-FIGURE cost of California Governor Gavin Newsom's high speed rail plan revealed, with not a single piece of track laid," Daily Mail, April 6, 2026.
- Eric Mack, "Newsom's California rail project now expected to cost $126B, official admits, with still no tracks laid," Fox News, April 6, 2026.
- Sean Duffy statement, "Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Pulls the Plug on $4B for California High Speed Rail's Train to Nowhere," U.S. Department of Transportation, July 2025.
- "Foreign Railway Company Decided Not To Build In California Because It's More 'Politically Dysfunctional' Than Morocco," Daily Caller News Foundation, October 10, 2022.
- Thomas C. Toth, "California's High-Speed Rail Was A Fantasy From Its Inception," Hoover Institution, March 8, 2023.
- Rep. Vince Fong statement, 60 Minutes, CBS News, April 5, 2026.