(AFP) – California will sue President Donald Trump’s administration over its decision to cancel billions of dollars in federal funding for the construction of a long-delayed high-speed rail line, the state’s governor said Thursday.
“Trump’s termination of federal grants for California high-speed rail reeks of politics. It’s yet another political stunt to punish California,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We’re suing to stop Trump from derailing America’s only high-speed rail actively under construction,” Newsom said, adding that cancelling the funds would put “real jobs and livelihoods on the line.”
A Democratic stronghold, California has been the target of Trump’s ire since his return to office and is already waging multiple legal challenges against the federal government. The dream of a train linking Los Angeles with San Francisco some 380 miles (610 kilometers) away in just two hours and 40 minutes has been over 15 years in the making. But the project, launched in 2008 to connect the two main cities of the country’s most populous state, has seen numerous hold-ups and overshot budgets. According to the governor, it is expected to create 15,000 jobs.
On Wednesday, Trump announced he was cutting federal funding earmarked for the project. “Not a SINGLE penny in Federal Dollars will go towards this Newscum SCAM ever again,” he posted on social media, using a pejorative name for the Democrat governor, a bitter political rival of the president.
During his first term, the Republican leader had already canceled funding for the rail line, but the move was suspended after California challenged it in court. When Democrat Joe Biden assumed the presidency in 2021, he restored the funds. Trump’s administration threatened to cancel $4 billion earmarked for the project in June after a report by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) concluded that the initial section of the line would not be completed by a 2033 deadline.
Even if California’s challenge succeeds again, the axed funding is a serious blow to the project, with new delays almost inevitable. Unlike in Europe or Asia, passenger rail travel is one of the least developed forms of transportation in the United States, with high-speed rail virtually non-existent. The country’s first fully high-speed rail line, planned to run about 220 miles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, is expected to be completed by 2028, in time for the Olympic Games.
© 2024 AFP
