60 Minutes Catches Up to Years of Warnings on the High-Speed Rail Boondoggle

While 60 Minutes this week shocked some national viewers by revealing that California’s high-speed rail project could now cost $126 billion to link Los Angeles and San Francisco — more than triple the $33 billion voters approved in 2008 — California Globe readers have been reading the grim truth for years.

We didn’t need a prime-time exposé to know this was a Democrat-crafted disaster. We’ve been calling it exactly what it is: a boondoggle, a slush fund, and one of Sacramento’s most expensive taxpayer swindles in modern history.

We warned repeatedly about the funding black hole.

California Globe Editor Katy Grimes has covered California’s High Speed train-to-nowhere since 2008, when Proposition 1A was originally passed by voters. In 2012, only four years into the boondoggle, Grimes reported:

As California politicians show more desperation to build any part of the California High-Speed Rail system in order to get their hands on $3.5 billion in federal stimulus money, the plan is looking more like a whack-a-mole game. But every hole that is plugged, every detail that is softened or tweaked, and every cost estimate that is changed causes a bigger problem. The cover-up is worse than the original crime.

It is important to remember that high-speed rail is not really about achieving sexy world-class transportation for the purpose of serious people moving. It’s just a pipeline project for grabbing big money. Because of the illegitimacy of the project’s intent, the mole could be permanently whacked, and leave California taxpayers holding the bill.

Once the “high speed” route was changed from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Bakersfield to Madera, we renamed the train system “The Conjugal Express” after the two prisons on either end of the route.

In May 2025, our reporting exposed the need for another $10–14 billion just to complete the Bakersfield-to-Merced segment, on top of earlier gaps flagged by the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Even the rail authority’s own CEO was scrambling for private funding to plug massive shortfalls as state bond money ran dry and federal support evaporated.

In September 2025, the California Globe reported that Democrats’ High-Speed Rail Slush Fund was growing again toward the $130 billion mark, with little more than empty promises and concrete pillars to show for the billions already poured in. 

In January 2026, I detailed how Governor Newsom’s California was drowning in waste and mismanagement, spotlighting the high-speed rail boondoggle ballooning to over $130 billion (with some estimates hitting $135 billion+), producing no viable path forward — literally, not even a single track laid amid endless delays and accusations of corruption. 

President Trump rightly called it the “worst managed project” he’s seen. His administration followed through by slashing federal funding and launching investigations — moves we covered as Democrats cried foul while Californians footed the bill. 

Our coverage has been relentless because the pattern never changes: voters were sold a 21st-century transportation marvel in Proposition 1A. What they got was a slow-motion fiscal train wreck. Former Gov. Jerry Brown continued defending the project even as costs exploded and timelines expanded by decades. Governor Gavin Newsom signed bills and pushed plans while the state faced massive budget shortfalls and crumbling priorities like roads, public safety, and homelessness.

The 60 Minutes report now confirms what California Globe readers have known: the initial Central Valley phase from Kern County to Merced won’t open until at least 2033, the full LA-to-SF line remains a distant, unaffordable fantasy, and the price tag keeps climbing with no end in sight.

This isn’t incompetence alone — it’s Sacramento’s culture of zero accountability, where political vanity projects trump fiscal reality and basic governance. While the state grapples with an ongoing budget crisis, exploding homelessness, and failing infrastructure, billions continue to vanish into this black hole.

It’s long past time to pull the emergency brake on this train to nowhere. Taxpayers have been derailed long enough.