Trump threatens California again
by digby
Trump is threatening California again because Californians aren’t licking his boots energetically enough:
A day after California filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s emergency declaration on the border, the Transportation Department said it was exploring legal options to claw back $2.5 billion in federal funds it had already spent on the state’s high-speed rail network.
The Trump administration also said it was terminating a $929 million federal grant to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, according to a letter the Transportation Department sent Tuesday.
The $77 billion Los Angeles-to-San Francisco bullet train, which has been a goal of California transportation planners for decades, has long faced opposition from Mr. Trump and other Republicans. But on Tuesday morning, the president explicitly tied the rail line to efforts to stymie construction of the Mexican border wall.
“The failed Fast Train project in California, where the cost overruns are becoming world record setting, is hundreds of times more expensive than the desperately needed Wall!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who announced last week that he was scaling back the project, said the Transportation Department’s move was retaliation for the border wall lawsuit, filed on Monday with 15 other states.
“It’s no coincidence that the administration’s threat comes 24 hours after California led 16 states in challenging the president’s farcical ‘national emergency,’” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “This is clear political retribution by President Trump, and we won’t sit idly by. This is California’s money, and we are going to fight for it.”
The battle over money is just the latest clash between California and the Trump administration, which have fought over immigration, environmental and criminal justice issues. Xavier Becerra, the California attorney general, has been a vociferous critic of the administration and has filed 46 lawsuits against it so far.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump disparaged the way California had spent the rail money and the state’s role in the national emergency lawsuit. California, which “has wasted billions of dollars on their out of control Fast Train, with no hope of completion, seems in charge!” the president tweeted.
A White House spokesman declined to comment, referring questions to the Transportation Department. A spokesman for the agency said the reason for canceling the grant was clearly laid out in a letter from Ronald L. Batory, the administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.
Mr. Batory wrote that the federal funds were being pulled because the California High-Speed Rail Authority had “failed to make reasonable progress on the project.”
The Transportation Department said in a separate statement on Tuesday that it was “actively exploring every legal option” to seek the return of the $2.5 billion. That threat, however, was not mentioned in Mr. Batory’s letter.
Late Tuesday, a Trump administration official pointed to Mr. Newsom’s remarks last week as an indication that the project was too costly and would “never be constructed as planned.”
Given that acknowledgment, the official said, the administration had a responsibility to taxpayers to “cancel the financial support for this boondoggle.”
It’s not the first time he’s threatened to punish California for failing to be properly submissive to the Dear Leader, of course. He does it all the time. But this is the first time he’s targeted specific money as retribution for a specific political conflict.
He did this earlier to his home state as a sheer act of dominance:
President Trump is pressing congressional Republicans to oppose funding for a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, using the power of his office to block a key priority for the region and his Democratic rivals, according to several people with knowledge of his actions.
Mr. Trump urged Speaker Paul D. Ryan this week not to support funding for the $30 billion project, two people familiar with the conversation said.
The president’s decision to weigh in forcefully against the so-called Gateway infrastructure project, which has been one of the United States’ top transportation priorities for years, adds a significant obstacle to getting the project underway in the near future.
Mr. Trump’s opposition to the project is in part the result of his belief that it is important to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, according to one person with knowledge of the president’s thinking on the issue.
They didn’t end up doing that. But using federal funds to punish what he perceives as political enemies is obviously something Trump feels is perfectly fine.
If he does this to California, I would suspect that the remnants of the high-speed rail project which are currently planned for Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy’s districts will have to be shelved.
What a shame.
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