Newsletter 7/18/25: California Goes Toe-To-Toe With Trump Administration

California Goes Toe-To-Toe With Trump Administration Over High-Speed Rail

California is vowing to fight the Trump administration’s decision to cancel $4 billion in funding for its high-speed line from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

“Trump wants to hand China the future and abandon the Central Valley. We won’t let him,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. He also promised to pursue “all options” to restore the funding.

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A recently completed highway bridge above a new high speed rail right of way.

Fixing the Future With Great Trains

Trains are the “one big powerful tool” that can move us toward a better future, according to railway engineer and author Gareth Dennis. He recently joined the Alliance for a webinar focused on his recent book, How the Railways will Fix the Future.

Dennis argues that solving our major challenges—a rapidly aging population, rising demands on the healthcare system, an epidemic of loneliness, climate change, and populist uprisings across the globe—will require a revolution in mobility.

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A New History of High-Speed Rail Takes on a Familiar Question

A New History of High-Speed Rail Takes on a Familiar Question

Why not here? In 1962, two years before Japan began running its Shinkansen high-speed trains and launched the modern era of high-speed rail, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicted that railways were in their “final chapter.” The runaway success of...