The Trump administration announced Wednesthat it will terminate $4 billion in unspent funds that were going to be spent on the California High-Speed Rail project.

Here’s what President Donald Trump had to say on Truth Social.

Trump cancels California’s fraudulent high speed rail project: “Not a single penny in federal dollars will go towards this Newsom SCAM ever again.”

Amen. I couldn’t be happier.

The very first column I wrote all the way back in 2010 when I was going to the University of California, Davis was how this project was going to be a never-ending disaster. And it has been.

California’s alleged bullet train project officially began in 2008 with the passage of a $9 billion bond bill, but the California High-Speed Rail Authority was actually created way back in 1996.

Virtually nothing has happened since, other than colossally wasting the people’s money. And not just in California. The project has already soaked up about $3.5 billion of federal funding and was set to gobble up much more. The Trump administration wisely pulled the plug.

“Gov. [Gavin] Newsom and California’s high speed rail boondoggle are the definition of government incompetence and possibly corruption,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on X. “The price tag has gone from $33B to $135B with no completion date in sight. We could give every single [Los Angeles] & [San Francisco] resident almost 200 free flights for that much.”

Duffy followed up on Wednesday’s announcement with some additional sharp elbows thrown at the project.

Speaking of Newsom, the California governor had a somewhat amusing response to the Trump administration’s

decision.

First there was this spastic response X.

Won’t be taking advice from the guy who can’t keep planes in the sky.

I’m not even sure what Newsom means. Is a single airline crash due to a helicopter pilot error supposed to mean that the transportation secretary can’t keep planes in the sky? Are no planes currently flying? A quick look outside my window suggests otherwise. Who knows. Looks like Newsom’s perpetual spin machine spun out here.

Newsom then said in a more official statement that “Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley.” The Democrat governor claimed that “we are miles ahead of others” in building highspeed rail.

The California bullet train isn’t miles ahead of anything. In fact, not a single inch, let alone mile, of track has been laid.

Nearly 17 years after the project began, virtually nothing has happened at all. All California has managed to do is pour astounding amounts of state and federal dollars into the High-Speed Rail Authority and produce environmental impact report after environmental impact report.

California seems to be perpetually on the cusp of a “track laying phase” of the project that never actually happens.

The idea that ending this incredible waste of money somehow benefits China is laughable.

Newsom can say whatever he wants, California’s bullet train (money pit), really—has become one of the most prominent boondoggles in American history. It’s an indictment of California’s governance over the last two decades and a disgrace for the Golden State, which was once the gold standard in transportation infrastructure.

The federal rail authority released a compliance review of California’s High-Speed Rail project in June, and it was damning.

The report noted that the federal government committed funds to the project in 2009 when the California High-Speed Rail Authority said the project “would cost $33 billion and connect Los Angeles/Anaheim with San Francisco.”

But promises soon met reality. And red tape. Real and projected costs mushroomed, its goals shrank, deadlines came and went, and at no point did it seem like the bullet train would get on track to even meet its new goal of starting “early” operations in 2033.