Free Republic

California “First Partner” Jennifer Siebel Newsom making bank off her husband’s position is outrageous — and fresh proof that American politicians have gotten far too comfortable with the dirty dealing that pervades politics. ...Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit, Representation Project, pays her a hefty $150,000 — while raking in donations from companies that have an interest in winning the favor of her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom. AT&T, which has spent upward of $2 million to lobby the state on landline phone rules so far this year, forked over up to $25,000 for Representation Project’s “Flip the Script” gala. Comcast, AT&T’s competitor,...

The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Thursday announced a plan to accelerate the process of laying the first tracks on the state’s beleaguered infrastructure project. The materials will be used to install the first miles of electrified track along the California High-Speed Rail route, the first high-speed rail track to be laid in the U.S. The Authority states that the process is being accelerated and will result in track being laid in 2026. Aerial view of the Cedar Viaduct crossing in Fresno which was completed in April 2023. (California High-Speed Rail Authority) U.S. manufacturers will be able to bid in...

On August 19, 2025, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform escalated its scrutiny of Gavin Newsom’s vanity project: a high-speed railway that was originally supposed to connect California’s major cities by 2020. Congressional Oversight may mark the final phase in the latest review process that began in October 2024. This is not the first time the project came under federal fire — an earlier FRA review in 2019 led to termination of a key grant, which was later reinstated on smaller scale in 2021 and tied to the Central Valley segment.Specifically, the other important FRA review in 2019...

California’s high-speed rail had a $9.95 billion bond measure back in 2008 that was supposed to link up LA, San Francisco and the Central Coast by 2020. It’s 2025 and the budget has shot up to $128 billion. Sorry, let me correct that, it has shot up to $135 billion. By the time you read this, it’ll probably be up another few billion. The Trump administration is pulling funding from the ‘train to nowhere’ because well, just look at the Gov. Newsom press release. “The Authority has met every obligation, as confirmed by repeated federal reviews, as recently as February...

"This boondoggle, led by the incompetent Governor of California, Gavin Newscum, has cost Taxpayers Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we have received NOTHING in return except Cost Overruns."

California’s high speed rail project is facing a financial reckoning after the Federal Railroad Administration declared it in default on $4 billion in federal grants. The latest report from the Department of Transportation exposes years of mismanagement, missed deadlines, and unrealistic ridership projections, raising serious doubts about whether the project will ever be completed. The numbers tell the story. The rail system was originally planned as an 800-mile network, connecting San Francisco to San Diego. Over time, the scope shrunk to 500 miles, then 171 miles, and now just 119 miles. The federal review describes the project as a Sisyphean...

Gov. Newsom of California is determined to see the high-speed rail system completed or at least started, but the bad news just keeps rolling in like a freight train (pun intended). Newsom is in the process of pushing for next fiscal year's budget and as part of that process he has announced a plan to make sure the bullet train project gets money from the state climate fund.California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to tap at least $2.5 billion from the state’s climate fund to pay for state firefighting crews and the long-troubled high-speed rail project.In his budget proposal unveiled last...

I had the opportunity to be the very first guest on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast last week. I’m under no illusions about why I was invited: Gavin Newsom wants to run for president in three years, and he thinks that talking conservative figures like me increase his recognition, help him present as a centrist, and cast him as a champion of the left in a time when the left has no real leaders. ….Unsurprisingly, Newsom is charming and friendly in-person. You don’t become governor of 40 million people without having some charisma. But there’s clearly a layer beneath the...

The Trump administration is launching an audit of California’s high-speed rail project, which is a decade late and is expected to run $100 billion over budget without connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles, as originally intended. As Breitbart News has reported, President Donald Trump warned that the federal government could claw back over $4 billion in spending on the project, just as he blocked $1 billion for the ailing project during his first administration. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy drew protesters in an appearance in Los Angeles to announce the audit: U.S. Secretary of...

As President Donald Trump’s administration makes cuts to government programs, his head of the Department of Transportation announced that federal assistance intended for a major California transit project could be next on the chopping block. In a news conference at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said that the once “exciting” California’s High-Speed Rail has been “mismanaged.” In 2023, then-President Joe Biden awarded a $3 billion grant to help officials complete the first phase of the project. That grant came after he reinstated a $1 billion grant to the High-Speed Rail Authority that...

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will be launching an investigation into the high cost of California High Speed Rail (CAHSR), fulfilling a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) promise made late last year. Originally estimated to cost $33 billion in 2008 with a San Francisco to Los Angeles line set to open by 2028, the California high speed rail system has since ballooned to costing $128 billion, to $135 billion, with an estimated partial completion being set somewhere in the 2030’s. Last year in March, the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHRSA) confirmed that the system still needed...

As Gov. Gavin Newsom enters the second half of his final term, healthcare stands out as his most ambitious but glaringly incomplete initiative for California residents.The issue will probably define his national profile for better or worse, and the incoming Trump administration brings a new wrinkle.SACRAMENTO — Nearly six years after he took office vowing to be California’s “healthcare governor,” Democrat Gavin Newsom has steered tens of billions in public funding to safety net services for the state’s neediest residents while engineering rules to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all Californians. More than a million California residents living...

California Democrats have written to outgoing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to ask for more than half a billion dollars in funding for an ailing high-speed rail project that President-elect Donald Trump defunded in 2019. As Breitbart News reported, Trump withheld $1 billion in funding from the project after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) canceled the original project. Newsom had explained to the state legislature that the original plan for a Los Angeles-to-San Francisco “bullet” train “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.” Trump then demanded the state refund the money federal taxpayers had given it — applying...

The omnibus spending bill had $8 billion dollars for the Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement. . That is way too much money to rebuild the Key Bridge. Easily four times as much as it should cost. ... This reminds the Oahu rail project. Around $12B, tons of fraud... total failure of a project. Does not meet intent. Also heavy foreign outsourcing for building talent. How much did it cost to build the bridge initially, adjusted for inflation? - The Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in March 2024, initially cost about $61 million to build in 1977. Adjusted for inflation...

Sacramento-area congressman Kevin Kiley took to the floor of the House of Representatives recently to declare the following: “Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to report that the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency has honed in on perhaps the single-greatest example of government waste in United States history,” the Republican from Rocklin intoned. “And that is California’s high-speed-rail boondoggle.”

Public Servant Gavin Newsom’s rise in California politics and acquired power since the 1990s has been through the knavery of family and influential friends. If you ever doubted that politics is made up of the elite class who see themselves as the ruling class, doubt no more: Governor Gavin Newsom and the “First Partner” (his wife) just purchased a $9.1 million home in Marin County. The “mansion” is 5,600 square feet, with Newsoms paying 7 percent above the asking price.

Israel Is Planning an ‘Inland Suez Canal’ Across Its Desert. At What Cost? Israel's planned high-speed train to Eilat: dream or potential environmental train wreck? In theory, it sounds amazing: a high-speed train to Eilat, the country’s southernmost city on the shores of the Red Sea. This was attested to by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his recent Knesset speech enumerating the new government’s goals, in which he described it as a major national project: “The mission is to develop the country’s infrastructures, including developing a high-speed rail that will travel hundreds of kilometers per hour and connect the country...

Israel will build a railway between Ashdod and Eilat, allowing ships that dock at the Red Sea port to transfer goods to the ports of Ashdod and Haifa and from there to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, in an attempt to compete with the Suez Canal, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday. Speaking to investors at the fifth Go4Europe business conference at Tel Aviv's Hilton Hotel, organized by investment bank Cukierman & Co., Netanyahu said that big ships arriving from the Far East are now forced to transfer their goods by land to an Egyptian port on the Mediterranean from...

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher was quoted as saying on Wednesday that press reports over Israel's plans to build a canal linking the Aqaba Bay with the Mediterranean as an alternative to the Suez Canal were a mere "illusion." Maher told the Syrian daily Tishreen "We've heard this many many times and it's a mere illusion." He stressed that the Suez Canal "has and will always be historic and serves the world economy." "If some do not like this ... that's their business, but I affirm that the (Suez) Canal is bigger than being played down by anyone," Maher said....

<p>A station platform has been cordoned off at Hamburg central station in northern Germany amid fears that a train passenger may have arrived carrying a dangerous virus.</p><p>A fire department spokesman told the Bild tabloid that the man and his girlfriend had developed flu-like symptoms on a high-speed train from Frankfurt.</p>