Billionaire Elon Musk wants to kill California’s high-speed rail project. Can he do it?

Federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project, long a subject of intense criticism from the right, could soon be jeopardized by the actions of two men who have the ear of President-Elect Donald Trump: Billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

After he won the 2024 election, Trump announced that Musk and Ramaswamy would co-chair a Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE, as they call it), aimed at dramatically cutting federal spending and restructuring the federal bureaucracy (largely by eliminating whole swaths of it).

Musk and Ramaswamy will advise Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress on recommended cuts, with a July 4, 2026, deadline to do so, according to NBC News. The DOGE is not an official government department and it cannot formally make spending decisions; that’s up to Congress and the president.

The two billionaires have already indicated one of their targets: The California High-Speed Rail Authority (HSRA).

California high-speed rail’s troubled history

The project has struggled in recent years with obtaining federal funding, and it has been beset with both delays and cost overruns. It’s initial scope — of a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco — has been reduced to the first step of a planned route from Merced to Bakersfield.

In a post on X, the social media platform Musk purchased and used to promote Trump’s candidacy, the DOGE account listed the California High-Speed Rail Project as an example of wasteful spending.

“Originally projected (in 2008) to cost $33 billion; now projected to cost between $88.5 and $127.9 billion,” the account wrote, citing a report from the HSRA and an article from the Fresno Bee.

“Estimated completion date was 2020; as of 2024, zero passengers have been transported and the majority has not even been fully designed,” the post said.

The post noted that the project has received $6.8 billion in federal funds thus far. According to the HSRA’s 2024 draft business plan, the agency has a goal of ultimately securing $8 billion in additional federal funds over the next five years.

The project has a champion in Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif. In an email statement to The Bee, he said, “We need continued federal partnership in developing the nation’s first true high-speed rail network in California, not threats to derail it.”

Rep. Kevin Kiley leads the charge to defund high-speed rail

Enter Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin.

Kiley, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is no friend of the high-speed rail project. In a post on X, he quoted the DOGE post and wrote, “The Department of Government Efficiency has homed in on the single greatest example of waste and inefficiency in American history: California’s ‘High Speed’ Rail. I look forward to killing this project, once and for all.”

The Bee reached out to Kiley’s office for comment, and was referred to the congressman’s recent remarks on the House floor on the subject, where he called California high-speed rail a “boondoggle.”

“High-speed trains are not impossible to build. Californians, Americans travel abroad and they ride them, and they say, ‘Why can’t we have them here?’ It’s just impossible in California, because of stratospheric levels of political incompetence,” Kiley said.

He added that “the number of (HSRA) CEOs outnumber the number of passengers five to zero,” a reference to the fact that the authority has had five chief executives.

Kiley went on to say that even if high-speed rail were to materialize, it would be using “yesterday’s technology,” compared to high-speed rail in nations like China.

Kiley’s not the only Californian Republican on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to oppose the project; Rep. Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield, also has spoken out against it, telling Fox News (while he was still an Assembly member) that “it’s fundamentally flawed, it’s grossly over-budget, it lacks transparency and accountability.”

Kiley, Fong and their GOP colleagues on the committee could block additional federal funds from going to the project.

Rep. John Garamendi weighs in

That’s exactly what Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, who also sits on the committee, expects them to do.

In an interview with The Bee, Garamendi said that GOP efforts to kill or claw funding back from high-speed rail are nothing new; the GOP under then-Majority Leader and later Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican, tried every year “to rescind and/or stop the funding for the high-speed rail program.”

Now, it’s Musk and Ramaswamy’s turn, and Garamendi said the billionaires are being given an incredible amount of influence over government spending decisions. Musk, through his companies Tesla and SpaceX, has billions of dollars worth of government contracts and subsidies.

“Elon Musk is in a position that would shame a Russian oligarch,” Garamendi said.

California high-speed rail is part of Garamendi’s legacy. As a state senator in 1989, he co-authored the legislation that led to the project getting underway. He said he hasn’t always been happy with project decisions, though.

Garamendi said that while he can “jump up and down, scream and yell” and try different political maneuvers and parliamentary tricks to fight for high-speed rail funding, ultimately the Republicans have the majority of seats in the committee and in the House of Representatives.

Even if the money was approved by the House, it would still need to clear the Senate, where Republicans will control 53 of the 100 seats next year.

So now, he said, it’s on the state to act, by working to contractually obligate the existing funding for the program.

“My suggestion for the governor and the Legislature and the administration, is you have ... 45 days to secure the funding of not only high-speed rail but every other program of federal transportation and other green energy programs,” he said. “All of it is at risk.”

California High-Speed Rail Authority responds

HSRA spokesperson Toni Tinoco told The Bee in an email statement that California is the first in the nation to build a true high-speed rail system, capable of speeds up to 220 mph, and that the project “continues to make significant progress.”

“The Authority remains committed and aggressive in moving this historic project forward while actively pursuing additional funding,” Tinoco wrote.

The spokesperson said that the HSRA is working to keep the California Legislature up to date on its developments, and that “we continue to explore strategies aimed at stabilizing funding, potentially allowing the program to draw private financing and/or government loans.”

Tinoco noted that the project continued to advance under the first Trump administration, and that California sued to block Trump from clawing back $929 million in grant funding. In 2021 — after President Joe Biden took office — the state ultimately came to an agreement with the federal government to return funds to the project.

Tinoco responded to Kiley and the DOGE’s claim that nothing has been accomplished by saying that “in the Central Valley, 171 miles of the corridor is under design and active construction, and to date, more than 14,000 construction jobs have been created and 875 small businesses are working on the project.”

The spokesperson said that all but 31 miles of the LA-to-San Francisco route has been environmentally cleared, making most of the project “shovel-ready for future phases of investment.”

Tinoco also disputed the claim that the initial estimate was $33 billion, saying that the initial estimate was actually $45 billion.

“It did not account for inflation or any unknown scope, a lesson learned as our estimates now account for inflation and project scope, helping explain cost difference,” Tinoco wrote, adding that the original completion date “was contingent on full funding.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2024 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Billionaire Elon Musk wants to kill California’s high-speed rail project. Can he do it?."