Going somewhere - on the Bullet Train to nowhere...

 California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is pitching a dramatic end to the state’s troubled high-speed rail project - imagining a future where the multibillion-dollar undertaking is transformed into a monument to government failure. The Republican candidate’s AI-generated campaign ad, titled around his proposal to “cancel High Speed Rail, turn it into the Government Failures National Monument,” offers a stark before-and-after vision of California depending on who occupies the governor’s office.

The spot contrasts a sun-drenched, prosperous California under Hilton with a frozen, dystopian version of the Golden State under Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, blaming the latter’s hypothetical administration for soaring gas prices, struggling businesses and worsening conditions on Skid Row.

California - specifically Gavin Newsome in the past eight years - has pissed away billions of tax-payer dollars on this train project. The estimated total price tag has grown from the original 2008 voter-approved estimate of $33.5 billion to over $126 billion (with some internal estimates reaching higher).

The original plan to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles in under three hours has been scaled back to a 171-mile partial segment in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield. 

In July 2025, the Trump administration and U.S. Department of Transportation (led by Secretary Sean Duffy) terminated approximately $4 billion in unspent federal grants due to missed deadlines, failure to procure trainsets, and a Federal Railroad Administration finding of no viable path forward. California initially sued to block the cut, but later dropped the lawsuit.