Work on everything other than the Merced to Bakersfield section was indefinitely postponed by Newsom's last State of the State address. The Merced to Bakersfield segment, by itself, is nearly useless.
> Work on everything other than the Merced to Bakersfield section was indefinitely postponed by Newsom's last State of the State address.
Work on everything other than the Merced to Bakersfield initial construction segment, other than the environmental clearance and planning work that was explicitly stated to be continuing in Newsome's State of the State address, was never actually scheduled because funding had not been secured; the state was actively seeking funding before the address, and all the address said was that the State would continue seeking funding and would not do work until it had secured it. The address literally was waving around the status quo as news. It didn't do anything (which it wouldn't even if it had announced a policy change, because actual policy is made by laws, regulations, executive orders, and a number of other vehicles, the State of the State address not being one of them.)
> The Merced to Bakersfield segment, by itself, is nearly useless.
The Merced to Bakersfield segment is the one for which the federal government had specifically designated funding. Cancelling the funding on the basis that the state was, as always explicitly planned, building only the funded part until securing additional funding is beyond ludicrous.
(Of course, Newsome's statement in the State of the State address which was clearly designed to appear to be announcing significant policy while actually announcing the status quo was also beyond ludicrous, and politically played into opponents of the project and opponents of the state as a whole -- and the Trump Administration may or may not be the former, but has pretty openly shown itself to be the latter.)
There is no court ruling here; the “appeal” is an internal administrative appeal, not an appeal to a court, which is why the article explicitly notes it wad the Trump Administration (which is not a court) that had rejected the appeal, and why it said that the state is expected to sue over the action (which would not be an option if a court had already ruled on the issue.)
