Following Governor Newsom’s downbeat assessment of high speed rail in his State of the State address, the Trump Administration is moving to revoke its existing $3.5 billion commitment to the project, which dates back to the Obama stimulus of 2009. The trouble is that most of the dollars ($2.5 billion worth) have already been spent. Furthermore, as the state’s 2018 auditor report noted, California is not technically in violation of the agreement (yet), which required the state to finish building its Central Valley segment by December 2022.

So the Trump administration will have a hard time clawing those dollars back, though its effort to do so will probably involve a time-consuming, politically bruising process. And that’s a fight that the High Speed Rail Authority doesn’t need to wage right now. Authority leaders can thank the new governor for putting the system back in conservatives’ crosshairs with his State of the State remarks.

Meanwhile, the Governor’s comments and revised approach to the project sparked a lot of recent media interest in the project:

• I spoke to Take Two on KPCC radio (8:30 minutes in) about what the Governor’s revised plan means for the system going forward.
• Matt Yglesias on Vox decried the politicization of the rail route selection and cited my 2014 blog post here on the compromises that were made in forging the system, which cost the system in terms of ridership and construction timelines.
• Alissa Walker at Curbed spoke to me and others about the options now on the table to get the system completed.

None of what’s happening right now seems to be good for getting the project finished. Ultimately, that will require a change in presidential administrations and congress to give California the federal dollars it needs to build the project as originally envisioned.