JONATHAN TURLEY: Grandstanding Newsom will stop at nothing to ride the rails to glory in 2028

Gavin Newsom stages bizarre photo op using diesel train to show high-speed rail progress, but the potentially $128 billion project has no track after 20 years.

Merced and Bakersfield have a combined population of just 500,000 for the most expensive rail project in the state's history. Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.  

Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 after absurdly low estimates of the projected cost. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a "buy-in" worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring. He is the author of the new book "Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution" (Simon & Schuster, Feb 3, 2026), on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.

Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25% , and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles. It is projected to exceed $128 billion and could ultimately cost a billion dollars per mile. There are still uncompleted environmental assessments and challenging rail lines through the mountains. He is a nationally recognized legal scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from constitutional law to legal history to the Supreme Court. He has written over three dozen academic articles that have appeared in a variety of leading law journals.