The $130 billion train that couldn’t
Posted By: sunset, 7/21/2025 6:15:51 PM
In the annals of stupid and poorly run schemes, the California High-Speed Rail project ranks among the worst. Its future, even a dramatically scaled down one, has become ever more precarious since the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation rescinded $4 billion in funds already granted the project. Governor Newsom has already filed a suit to reverse the action, but he can’t legislate away the reality that this project is an abject embarrassment. When voters approved $9 billion in 2008, Rail estimated it would cost $33billion and start running by 2020 – just for the San Joaquin Valley portion. The cost has since ballooned to $130 billion; no stretch is operational.
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The $130 billion train that couldn’t
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In the annals of stupid and poorly run schemes, the California High-Speed Rail project ranks among the worst. Its future, even a dramatically scaled down one, has become ever more precarious since the Trump administration’s Department of Transportation rescinded $4 billion in funds already granted the project. Governor Newsom has already filed a suit to reverse the action, but he can’t legislate away the reality that this project is an abject embarrassment. When voters approved $9 billion in 2008, Rail estimated it would cost $33billion and start running by 2020 – just for the San Joaquin Valley portion. The cost has since ballooned to $130 billion; no stretch is operational.
The Trump administration imposed new restrictions Saturday on flights from Mexico and threatened to end a longstanding partnership between Delta Air Lines and Aeromexico in response to limits the Mexican government placed on passenger and cargo flights into Mexico City several years ago.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Mexico’s actions to force airlines to move out of the main Benito Juarez International Airport to the newer Felipe Angeles International Airport more than 30 miles away violated a trade agreement between the two countries and gave domestic airlines an unfair advantage.
Tech giant Microsoft is facing mounting scrutiny after explosive allegations from Navy whistleblower Tom Schiller surfaced in an interview with journalist Laura Loomer. According to Schiller, Microsoft allowed China-based engineers to provide technical support for US Department of Defense (DoD) cyber systems via its Government Azure cloud platform, potentially giving Chinese personnel access to highly sensitive military information for over a decade. Loomer shared the claims in a post on X, stating that Microsoft had enabled “full access to classified information out of the Pentagon” through its support structure and that this practice had been authorised during the Obama administration.
Microsoft announced a surprising decision: they will no longer use Chinese-based engineers to provide technical support to the United States military. This drastic step was taken after investigative reports from ProPublica sparked national security concerns. In fact, this report prompted US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to order a two-week full audit of the entire Department of Defense's cloud contracts. The ProPublica report reveals that Microsoft is using engineers from China to manage US military cloud computing systems.
This practice immediately raised great concerns, considering Microsoft itself was hacked by hacker groups from China and Russia.
After the Supreme Court in 2022 made it harder to restrict who can arm themselves in public, some states took a different approach.
Five Democrat-led, mostly densely populous states passed laws that prohibit bringing a handgun onto someone else’s property without that person’s express consent.
Now the Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to declare that such rules in Hawaii, California, New York, Maryland and New Jersey violate the Constitution.
Border Patrol Chief for California’s El Centro sector Gregory Bovino delivered a message Thursday on Fox News to illegal migrants, saying there is “no sanctuary anywhere” after agents conducted a raid in Sacramento. Speaking outside of California’s capitol building, the border chief addressed a judge’s decision to halt deportations in Los Angeles. “There is no sanctuary city. Sacramento is not a sanctuary city. The state of California is not a sanctuary state,”. “There is no sanctuary anywhere. We’ll be here. You’ll probably see us in many of the locations as well. We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to effect this mission and secure the homeland.”
A federal court on Tuesday stopped the Bureau of Land Management from capturing thousands of wild horses, saying the agency failed to explain whether the roundup would maintain a “thriving natural ecological balance” on public land in southwest Wyoming. The federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver returned the case to the U.S. District Court in Wyoming, where Judge Kelly Rankin had sided with the BLM. “Since BLM admitted that it did not consider ecological balance, [its] plan failed to consider an important aspect of the [Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act],” Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich wrote for a three-judge appeals panel.
Maryland is using a little-known provision of Obamacare to bankroll the expenses of out-of-state abortion tourists, NPR reported on Thursday. A new law that went into effect July 1 allows the state of Maryland to allocate millions per year from Obamacare-related insurance fees to subsidize abortions for women, including those coming from other states, according to NPR. The move comes amid a surge in abortion demand in Maryland as more women from states that have banned or restricted abortions seek services. Due to the influx of out-of-state patients, local funds, which pay for bus or plane tickets, lodging, and meals for abortions are running low.
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee is introducing a bill Thursday to codify President Donald Trump’s executive order to restore equal opportunity and meritocracy in the workplace.
Lee’s Restoring Equal Opportunity Act seeks to remove “disparate impact” on minorities in civil rights law, putting equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome at its bedrock, according to bill text first obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Republican Texas Rep. Brandon Gill is leading the effort in the House to make into law the executive order addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. “Disparate impact has undermined equal opportunity in hiring for generations,” Lee said in a statemen
President Donald Trump said he was likely to impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals as soon as the end of the month and that levies on semiconductors could come soon as well, suggesting that those import taxes could hit alongside broad “reciprocal” rates set for implementation on Aug. 1. “Probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff". Trump said he (snip) expected pharmaceutical tariffs to grow as high as 200% after giving companies a year to bring manufacturing back...
Canadian officials are open to considering limits on how much softwood lumber can be exported to the US to try to resolve some of the trade friction between the countries, according to the leader of British Columbia.
“We think there's actually an opportunity for lumber to be one of the early agreements and wins that are struck,” Premier David Eby said. “One of the asks for years out of the American coalition has been a quota — that there’s a fixed amount of lumber that gets to come from Canada,”. American lumber producers claim Canadian sawmills are unfairly subsidized because provincial governments set low fees for harvesting timber on public lands.
Canada will restrict tariff-free import of cheap, foreign steel to help domestic manufacturers reeling from levies imposed by the US, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced.
Speaking at a news conference in Ontario, Carney also pledged to diversify its trading partners away from the US and prioritise the use of Canadian steel. The announcement comes in the wake of punitive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump - first a 25% levy on Canadian steel, later doubling it to 50%. Imports currently account for nearly two-thirds of Canada's steel consumption, while over 90% of Canadian steel exports were destined for the US - a level of dependency he described as "unsustainable".
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Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., have introduced a bill that would generally require those conducting in-person business to accept cash as payment from customers. "Any person engaged in the business of selling or offering goods or services at retail to the public who accepts in-person payments at a physical location … shall accept cash as a form of payment for sales made at such physical location in amounts up to and including $500 per transaction," the measure stipulates, in part.
James Comey broke his silence on Sunday evening and went off on President Trump after the Justice Department fired Maurene Comey.
Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey, was fired as a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan US Attorney’s office last Wednesday.
“There was no specific reason given for her firing from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, according to one of the people who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters,” the AP reported.
Maurene Comey didn’t call out Trump by name, but she attacked the president and his administration in a message after being fired.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) issued a demand Monday for the “immediate withdrawal” of all soldiers from Los Angeles, after the Pentagon announced that the U.S. Marines would be pulling out of the city.
In a statement, Newsom said:
The women and men of the California National Guard deserve more than to continue serving as puppets in Trump and Stephen Miller’s performative political theater. There was never a need for the military to deploy against civilians in Los Angeles. The damage is done, however. We, again, call upon them to do the right thing and end the militarization once and for all.
Hunter Biden lashed out at the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, arguing there would be no one to cook, clean and do landscaping if they are all deported.
In a wide-ranging, profanity-laced interview with Andrew Callaghan, the former first son took issue with Democrats who believe American concerns about illegal immigration need to be addressed.
“F*** you,” he said. “How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? How do you think you have food on your f****** table? Who do you think washes your dishes? Who do you think does your f****** garden.
In a post on X, Fateh, who is described as the Minneapolis version of socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, revealed that the DFL had endorsed him. Fateh expressed that he was “honored” and added that the endorsement was “a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual.”
“I am incredibly honored to be the DFL endorsed candidate for Minneapolis Mayor,” Fateh said in his post. “This endorsement is a message that Minneapolis residents are done with broken promises, vetoes, and politics as usual. It’s a mandate to build a city that works for all of us.”
The Deep State Is in Real Trouble Now
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just lit a fuse under the deep state—and it’s about time.
Appearing Sunday on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo, Gabbard dropped a stunning accusation: that Barack Obama personally directed a “treasonous conspiracy” to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency before it even began. And now, according to Gabbard, the floodgates are opening—whistleblowers who were sickened by what they witnessed are starting to come forward.
Now that President Trump's National Intelligence Director, Tulsi Gabbard, is exposing the depths of the Democrat deep state's disinformation operation against President Trump as a Russian agent as he entered office in 2021, it's worth noting that the operation had a lot of casualties on the way -- people who were smeared, often in the press at the explicit direction of the Obama White House -- one of whom was Gabbard herself.
Anyone recall how Hillary Clinton attempted to smear Gabbard herself as a "favorite of the Russians" and a "Russian asset"?
El Salvador President Nayibe Bukele responded to Hunter Biden’s insane rant against Trump’s immigration policies.
Hunter Biden went off on a profanity-laced tirade during an interview with Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan and at one point asserted if he were president, he would invade El Salvador and kidnap prisoners.
The Trump Administration is deporting some of the most dangerous illegal alien killers and rapists and Hunter Biden is angry about it and lashing out.
President Trump deported illegal alien criminals – FROM El Salvador – to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
Two impeachments didn’t do it. A phony Russian hoax didn’t do it. A dubious election loss didn’t do it. Relentlessly negative coverage didn’t do it. Civil and criminal judgments and massive fines didn’t do it. Two assassination attempts didn’t do it.
Maybe Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost will finally bring Donald Trump down. That seems to be the hope, anyway.
Epstein, who hobnobbed with the rich and famous, had been under investigation since 2005 for sex trafficking and pedophilia, and died in prison six years ago, has been responsible for conspiracy theories for years.
As NPR wrote in 2022:
'Recipe for Disaster': Former NPR Head
Makes Shocking Admission About Federal
Funding Cuts 14 replies
Makes Shocking Admission About Federal
Funding Cuts 14 replies
A former NPR CEO made a shocking admission about Congress voting to cut federal funding for the news outlet and other public media organizations.
During an interview on MSNBC, Vivian Schiller suggested that NPR will survive without federal funding and that leaders should work together to adapt to the new development.
“The fact is, this is done, the money is gone, the rescission has happened so my perspective now is let's move on,” she said. “Look in many cases, I have long believed that mixing journalism and federal funding is just a recipe for disaster, so in many ways I think this is an opportunity for a reset.”
On this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell should be given immunity and be compelled to testify before a congressional committee about the Jeffrey Epstein files. Host Shannon Bream said, “You mentioned Ghislaine Maxwell. She’s still got an appeal. I’m tracking at the Supreme Court, but in the meantime, you suggest she should be potentially offered congressional immunity to go and testify. Do you think that would happen? And what kind of information would she have that we haven’t seen?”
Hunter Biden really walked smack into it when he “crashed out” during a YouTube interview with Andrew Callaghan that was released today. Now, when you look at the data, Hunter is of course completely wrong: statistically, whites commit the fewest crimes…by far. And, if you were to remove all the blacks and Hispanics included in those “white” crime statistics, that number no doubt falls drastically.
However, in one sense, Hunter is right on the money: White men are significantly more likely to commit a crime…if you’re a white man like a Biden.
If you’re a “white man” with the last name Biden,
Comments:
The scenario plays that California is like a gambler betting away everything he owns, and then begging, borrowing and stealing from everyone they meet to help them place another losing bet.