The California High-Speed Rail Authority has repeatedly missed its own deadlines to purchase trains, quietly dropped a lawsuit against the federal government after failing to meet a promise it made to a judge, and still cannot say when it will award a trainset contract, a record that handed the Trump administration a straightforward case for pulling $4 billion in federal funding.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy cut the money in July 2025 after federal officials noted California had spent $15 billion over 16 years without laying a single mile of high-speed rail track. The state sued within days. Governor Gavin Newsom called the move a "political stunt to punish California." Attorney General Rob Bonta filed suit to block what he called a "politically motivated attack on high-speed rail." California's two Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, denounced the decision. The political narrative was set: Washington was punishing a blue state.
But a CBS California Investigates report lays out a different story, one in which the authority's own failures gave the federal government the opening it needed, and California's leaders have refused to explain how the project fell so far behind on one of its most basic obligations: buying trains.
Grant documents signed during the Biden administration required the rail authority to execute a trainset contract by December 31, 2024. The authority missed that deadline. It then assured a federal judge, in sworn court filings, that it would execute the contract by December 1, 2025. It missed that deadline, too.
Three weeks later, on December 23, 2025, the authority quietly dismissed its lawsuit against the federal government.
Bonta told CBS California Investigates only that pulling the lawsuit was "appropriate." He declined to elaborate and directed questions to the rail authority. The authority, for its part, declined to answer the 20 questions CBS California Investigates sent about the procurement delays. CEO Ian Choudri turned down repeated interview requests, pointing reporters to public information on the authority's website.
On that website, the trainset contract award date is listed as one word: "TBD."
Newsom has never publicly explained why the deadlines were missed. Neither has Bonta. Neither has Choudri. For a project that has consumed $15 billion in taxpayer money and 16 years of construction time, the silence is striking.
Multiple sources inside the rail authority told CBS California Investigates that the blame falls on Choudri, who took over as CEO in 2024. Shortly after arriving, he moved to change the trainset specifications. The authority had already narrowed its field to two finalists and was deep into an active procurement phase.
Board member Ernest Camacho raised the alarm at a board meeting around November 2024. He warned that changing the train design, from a wide-body configuration to something different, could force the authority to cancel the procurement entirely and start over.
"We have to be able to allow the bidders an opportunity to perhaps rethink that. We may have to cancel that procurement or rewrite a new specification."
That warning went unheeded. The procurement stalled. And the December 31, 2024 federal grant deadline came and went without a signed contract.
The timeline makes the consequences plain. The authority's own original procurement plan called for two prototype trains delivered in 2028 for testing, with four more by the end of 2030 for passenger service. Manufacturing takes roughly four years from the date a contract is signed. A contract executed in 2026, if one materializes at all, would push initial delivery to around 2030, leaving roughly two years for testing and certification before the authority's projected 2032, 2033 opening window.
High-Speed Rail Inspector General Ben Belnap told CBS California Investigates that the delay matters far more than the authority has acknowledged:
"Those train sets are critical to testing that needs to occur on track and systems. It's going to take a while to get those trains manufactured, so you want to start that clock, so you're not hindered on the back end."
Belnap said repeatedly missing the trainset procurement milestone raises accountability concerns, a measured phrase from an inspector general that carries weight precisely because it is understated.
At his January 2026 State of the State address in Sacramento, Newsom boasted that California is "finally laying the tracks of the nation's first high-speed rail system." Weeks later, the authority issued a milestone announcement celebrating a completed facility that "allows California to begin receiving and staging materials needed" to install high-speed rail track.
Belnap contradicted both claims directly.
"There's been a railyard created that has track on it, but it is not high-speed rail track. High-speed rail track, as it's defined, has not been laid yet."
By June 2026, an authority spokesperson told CBS California Investigates the commitment was "to begin laying high-speed rail track by the end of the year." That is a different claim from the one Newsom made six months earlier, and it remains a promise, not a fact.
The Federal Railroad Administration's June 2025 compliance review, addressed to Choudri and sent before the funding was pulled, found "no viable path" to completing the 171-mile Central Valley segment between Merced and Bakersfield by 2033. The review cited a pattern of "unrealistic assumptions," including "the schedule for trainset procurement and safety and performance testing." The missed trainset procurement was one of nine key findings.
A separate U.S. Senate Commerce Committee investigation accused California's leaders of wasting federal funds and gross mismanagement, citing the missed deadlines under the authority's current management.
The authority pushed back on the federal findings. In its statement to CBS California Investigates, it pointed to a 2024 Federal Railroad Administration review, conducted under the Biden administration, that found no fraud, waste, abuse, or compliance issues affecting the project's completion. But that review predated both the missed December 2024 deadline and the CEO's decision to change the trainset specifications. The ground shifted after the Biden-era review was written.
The authority also argued that losing the $4 billion created "a new opportunity" because federal requirements had increased costs and slowed delivery. It said it hoped to work with the federal government "some time in the future" after deciding the current administration "was not a reliable partner."
That framing asks taxpayers to believe that losing $4 billion in federal money was, on balance, a good thing.
Duffy, in pulling the funding, put the matter simply:
"Federal dollars are not a blank check, they come with a promise to deliver results."
California's Democratic leaders framed the decision as partisan overreach. Sen. Padilla said the Trump administration "has always had it out for California" and that the president "chose to cancel funding that supports good-paying jobs and strengthens economic growth." Sen. Schiff acknowledged the need for taxpayer oversight but called the funding cut the wrong approach, saying infrastructure investment "must be done properly, with careful safeguards for taxpayer dollars and without partisan or vindictive influence."
Those arguments might carry more force if the authority had met a single one of its trainset procurement deadlines. It did not. It missed the federal grant deadline. It missed the deadline it promised a judge. It dropped its own lawsuit. Its CEO declined to explain. Its governor made claims about track-laying that its own inspector general debunked. And its latest business plan, issued in June 2026, still projects passenger service by 2033, while leaving the trainset procurement line blank.
The project voters approved in 2008 was supposed to link San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours at speeds up to 220 mph. Today, that train ride takes 10.5 to 12 hours. The current plan covers only the 171-mile Central Valley stretch, flat terrain, no tunnels, and would cut the existing three-hour Merced-to-Bakersfield trip roughly in half.
Eighteen years after voters said yes, the authority cannot say when it will buy its trains.
When you spend $15 billion, miss every deadline you set, refuse to answer questions, and then call the people who cut you off "unreliable partners," you are not describing the other side's problem. You are describing your own.
