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Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Russia can expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine...

Russia has long warned that any unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine of the 30-day sort that Zelensky has proposed could create an opening for NATO to expand its military influence in that country. Hitherto dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the West, Radio Liberty just let the cat out of the bag. The unnamed officials who they cited in their recent article confirmed that they envisage this “buy[ing] the Europeans time to assemble a ‘reassurance force’ in the Western part of Ukraine” and organize “air patrols” there.

Their reported game plan is “keeping the Americans onboard” the peace process, “sequencing” the conflict by clinching a ceasefire that’ll later lead to a lasting peace, and using the aforesaid interim period to carry out the abovementioned military moves for pressuring Russia into more concessions. 

What’s omitted from Radio Liberty’s article is that Russia has threatened to target Western troops in Ukraine, who Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier said wouldn’t enjoy Article 5 guarantees from the US.

Even if Putin agrees to this concession that’s assessed to be among one of the five significant differences between him and Trump that prompted Trump’s angry post against Putin, Radio Liberty reported that this still wouldn’t lead to de jure European recognition of Russia’s territorial gains. 

The same goes for them lifting sanctions or returning any of its €200 billion of seized assets. More sanctions might even soon be imposed and the windfall profits from those assets will “bankroll Ukraine’s military needs”.

Given what Radio Liberty revealed, Russia can therefore expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine. Any hopes of restoring Ukraine’s antebellum buffer state status would be crushed, and it can’t be ruled out that the EU’s zone of military activity could later expand to the Dnieper or beyond. One of the special operation’s goals was to prevent the West’s eastward military expansion so that would be another major concession.

Putin’s decades-long close friend and influential senior aide Nikolay Patrushev just told TASS earlier this week that “For the second year in a row, NATO is holding the largest exercises in decades near our borders, where it is practicing scenarios of offensive actions over a large area - from Vilnius to Odessa, the seizure of the Kaliningrad region, the blocking of shipping in the Baltic and Black Seas, and preventive strikes on the permanent bases of Russian nuclear deterrent forces.”

Secretary of the Security Council Sergey Shoigu told the same outlet several days prior that “Over the past year, the number of military contingents of NATO countries deployed near the western borders of the Russian Federation has increased almost 2.5 times…NATO is moving to a new combat readiness system, which provides for the possibility of deploying a 100,000-strong group of troops near the borders of Russia within 10 days, 300,000 by the end of 30 days, and 800,000 by the end of 180 days.”

When the EU’s prioritization of the Baltic Defence Line and Poland’s complementary East Shield are added to the equation, coupled with plans for expanding the “military Schengen” to speed up the eastward deployment of troops and equipment, the trappings of Operation Barbarossa 2.0 are apparent. Putin can’t influence what NATO does within the bloc’s borders, but he has the power to stop its de facto expansion into Western Ukraine during a ceasefire, which could partially hinder its speculative plans.

Conceding to them, which he might agree to do for the five reasons mentioned in the second half of this analysis here from early March, would lead to Russia’s mutual defense ally Belarus being surrounded by NATO along its northern, western, and then southern flanks. That could make it a tempting future target, but Western aggression might be deterred by the continued deployment of Russia’s Oreshniks and tactical nuclear weapons, the latter of which Belarus has already been authorized to use at its discretion.

Conceding to Western troops in Ukraine in exchange for the economic and strategic benefits that Russia hopes to reap from the US if their nascent “New Détente” takes off after a peace deal would therefore entail conventional security costs that could be managed through the means that were just described. At the same time, however, hardliners like Patrushev, Shoigu, and honorary chairman of Russia’s influential Council on Foreign and Defense Policy Sergey Karaganov could dissuade him from such a deal.

Putin must therefore decide whether this is an acceptable trade-off or if Russia should risk losing its post-conflict strategic partnership with the US by continuing to oppose NATO’s de facto expansion into Western Ukraine, including via military means if EU forces move into there without Russian approval. His decision will determine not only the future of this conflict, but also Russia’s contingency planning vis-à-vis a possible hot war with NATO, thus making this the defining moment of his quarter-century rule.

Via Middle East Eye

US President Donald Trump asked his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, for American ships to enjoy free passage through the Suez Canal in an April phone call, as the US presses ahead with its bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen.

Trump has made no secret of his belief that US vessels should transit the strategic waterway for free. On Saturday, he publicly demanded as much, saying the canal "would not exist without the United States of America." One Egyptian MP was reported as characterizing the Trump administration's moves as blackmail and rubbished Trump's claim about the canal's existence, saying it was "purely Egyptian".

Via AFP

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Trump raised the issue with Sisi directly this month. The two leaders spoke on April 1.

An Egyptian readout of the call stated that the two leaders "discussed developments in the Middle East and mediation efforts to restore calm to the region, which reflects positively on navigation in the Red Sea."

At the end of 2024, Egypt’s presidential office said the country had lost at least $7bn in Suez Canal revenue.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump told Sisi the US wanted Egyptian support for its campaign against the Houthis, including military assistance, intelligence sharing and funding, because the US bombing campaign would help to restore traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Sisi sidestepped the request and told Trump the best way to address the Houthi threat was a ceasefire in Gaza.

The conversation dovetails with Trump’s public messaging on the Suez Canal. His reasoning also aligns with that of private discussions between US senior officials, as revealed in a leaked Signal group chat earlier this year.

"As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return," one person identified in a group chat started by national security advisor Mike Waltz was revealed as saying in The Atlantic.

The person was identified as SM, which appears to refer to Trump adviser Stephen Miller. "If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost, there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return," the Signal user said. 

Trump’s demand for Egypt to provide military support or economic assistance to the US is a stark reversal in the two countries' post-war relationship, which usually has it the other way around. 

The US brokered the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Since then, the US has provided roughly $1.3bn in military aid to Egypt. But ties between Egypt and the US have been dented by Israel’s war on Gaza. US diplomats in Cairo have tried to dissuade the Trump administration from pressing Egypt to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians, Middle East Eye reported previously. 

Egyptian officials are already simmering with anger at the US for siding with Israel when the latter seized Gaza’s southern city of Rafah in May 2024 and accused Egypt of being negligent in policing the border.

MEE revealed in March that the UAE, a close patron of Egypt, was lobbying the Trump administration against a plan that Cairo introduced to the Arab League for post-war governance of the Gaza Strip.

According to US and Egyptian officials, the US has told Egypt it is considering cutting military aid. The officials say the threat to cut aid stems from frustration within Trump’s inner circle that Egypt has refused to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians.

#US aircraft carriers pass through the Suez Canal... without fees and #Egyptians watch and cannot do much. #Trump said he won't pay. https://t.co/Hyz0mVfMpu

Trump’s call for Sisi to support the US bombing campaign against the Houthis is not the first time Sisi has had to resist appeals to become involved in Yemen. Egypt was one of the first countries to leave a Saudi-led coalition that was bombing the Houthis in 2016.

Egypt has a long history in Yemen, and the Arabian Gulf country is often equated to Egypt’s “Vietnam” by Arab officials - a play on the US’s gruelling war in Asia. During the 1960s, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser intervened in Yemen’s civil war, backing so-called Republicans against Royalists.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Russia wants the world to know that North Korea might play a larger role in the conflict...

Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov’s acknowledgement that North Korean troops helped expel Ukraine from Kursk ended around nine months of speculation about their role in the conflict. Rumors began to circulate after Russia and North Korea updated their strategic partnership last June and reaffirmed its mutual defense clause. Western, Ukrainian, and South Korean media then alleged that North Korea sent troops to help Russia while the Kremlin reacted coyly to these reports.

It was only in late October that a clearer picture began to emerge after Putin lent credence to these claims by saying that “Images are a serious thing. If there are images, then they reflect something” upon being asked about satellite images of North Korean troop movements. He also said during the same press conference that “We know who is present there, from which European Nato countries, and how they carry out this work”, thus hinting at Russia’s motive in requesting North Korea’s assistance in Kursk.

Adversarial media’s reports about North Koreans fighting within Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders remain unconfirmed, including the disputed regions that Russia claims as its own in their entirety, but it’s now an indisputable fact that they were fighting within Russia’s universally recognized borders. Kursk region was invaded by Ukraine last August as part of an ultimately failed ploy to swap whatever it could occupy there for some of the Ukrainian-claimed land under Russian control.

Just like Ukraine reportedly requested Western assistance for fighting Russia inside its pre-2014 borders per Putin, who also accused the West of assisting Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia’s universally recognized borders, so too did Russia request North Korea’s assistance for fighting Ukraine in Kursk. His motive was therefore to reciprocally respond to the West’s direct but still unofficial military involvement in the conflict by having North Korea enter the fray on Russia’s side in a similarly clandestine manner till now.

This segues into the why North Korea would agree to Russia’s request, which was presumably for aid (agricultural, military-technical, and space-related) and experience, the latter with regard to having its troops learn how to fight a modern war in case of future hostilities with the South. Given the mutual defense basis for complying with this request, Russia could return North Korea’s favor in that event, the scenario of which might deter its enemies from provoking a war in the peninsula like Pyongyang fears.

Officially acknowledging North Korea’s role in Kursk might have been more about sending a message to Ukraine, however, since the precedent of Putin claiming that the West assists its attacks inside Russia’s universally recognized borders could lead to North Korea participating in an expanded ground offensive. 

Russia might make a major push in Sumy, Kharkov, and/or even Dniepropetrovsk regions, all universally recognized as Ukrainian, either during the ongoing peace talks or especially if they collapse.

The Damocles’ sword of large-scale North Korean involvement in any offensive might be sufficient for coercing Ukraine into concessions or crushing its forces but it could also backfire if the US doubles down on its military aid to Ukraine in response as part of a policy of “escalating to de-escalate”. In any case, Russia wants the world to know that North Korea might play a larger role in the conflict, thus making its official acknowledgement a powerful but risky diplomatic card to play at this pivotal moment.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced a new policy that reduces the default withholding rate to 50 percent for recovering Social Security benefit overpayments under Title II, the federal program covering retirement and disability insurance.

The change, outlined in an “emergency message” dated April 25, comes less than a month after the agency raised the withholding rate to 100 percent of monthly benefits—up from a prior 10 percent—to recoup overpayments. The initial sharp increase drew criticism from some lawmakers and advocates, who warned that full withholding could harm some lower-income Americans who rely on Social Security to meet basic needs.

Under the updated directive, any overpayment notice issued on or after April 25 will automatically carry a 50 percent withholding rate. Beneficiaries will have 90 days to respond—either by contesting the overpayment, requesting a waiver, or negotiating a lower repayment rate. If no action is taken within that window, the SSA will start withholding half the monthly benefit until the overpayment is fully repaid.

The updated rules do not apply to Title XVI overpayments, such as those involving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients, who still face the 10 percent withholding rate. The revised policy also excludes cases involving fraud or similar fault, which follow different recovery procedures.

The shift marks the third related policy change in just over a year. In March 2024, the agency lowered the default withholding rate from 100 percent to 10 percent, citing the wish to ease financial hardship for affected Americans.

“It’s unconscionable that someone would find themselves facing homelessness or unable to pay bills, because Social Security withheld their entire payment for recovery of an overpayment,” Martin O'Malley, then Commissioner of Social Security, said at the time.

That policy was reversed last month, on March 27, when SSA reinstated full 100 percent withholding, citing fiscal responsibility and an estimated $7 billion in savings over the next decade.

“We have the significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people,” Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security, said in a statement.

Rep. John B. Larson (D-Conn.) criticized the increase as “unconscionable,” arguing that overpayments are not the fault of beneficiaries and overpaid recipients who rely on Social Security to make ends meet would face undue hardship if their entire checks were suddenly seized.

With its latest decision to cut the withholding rate in half, the SSA appears to be seeking a middle ground between fiscal responsibility and potential beneficiary hardship.

The agency disbursed roughly $1.4 trillion in benefits in fiscal year 2023 across its retirement and disability programs, according to the agency’s 2024 financial report. Of that amount, around $3.3 billion—or 0.24 percent—was classified as overpayments.

SSA’s overpayment recovery practices have come under increasing scrutiny from lawmakers and watchdogs in recent years, particularly for the stress they impose on beneficiaries who may have had little or no role in the errors.

In a November 2023 letter, Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) urged the agency to minimize overpayments and protect recipients from abrupt financial disruption, especially when the mistakes stem from agency error.

The Government Accountability Office has echoed those concerns, noting that the majority of disability beneficiaries who return to work eventually face overpayments—often amounting to thousands of dollars due to complex reporting rules and processing delays.

The SSA says it has launched an internal review and is working to expand data-sharing with payroll systems to help reduce payment errors.

It's an old dictum but it remains true that you never want to interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake.  That said, it's oh so tempting to analyze the behavior of the Democratic Party as a perfect representation of blind cultism.  How did they plunge from the heights of the Obama Administration and near complete control of American culture to the depths of the Biden Administration, the Kamala Harris campaign and the degeneracy of woke groomers?

One could follow the root back to the problem of absolutism; leftist never admit when they are wrong and they always double down because they think they are the ultimate arbiters of ethics.  Even with the abject failures of Kamala Harris during the 2024 elections the Democrats continue to claim that the "real reason" they lost, the real reason their public approval numbers are at historic lows, is because they "need to do the same things they've been doing, but do them harder".  

This is why the progressive movement is dead in the water.  They just can't accept that the majority of Americans fundamentally do not like them, their polices or their beliefs.  Most Americans can't connect to the hypocrisy, and they certainly don't want to hear criticisms of the Trump Administration by the same people who lied incessantly and failed the country in every way imaginable.

An army of naysayers, primarily among Democrats, have gone on the attack against Trump's tariffs using obviously scripted terminology, repeating the word "chaos" over an over again in the hopes that it will stick.  In reality, most of the "chaos" has come from the political left trying to disrupt or sabotage Trump's efforts in any way they can. It's almost like the 2024 campaign never ended, but that's how these people operate. 

Kamala Harris, an economic illiterate and possibly one of the most embarrassing candidates the Democrats have ever fielded, has suddenly slithered up from the wreckage of her recent White House bid to regurgitate the same predictable talking points.  She says the tariffs are creating chaos; she also claims that she predicted they would cause a recession and she's here to say "she told us so". 

One could argue that recession factors were already heavily present during the Biden Administration, but Democrats are hoping most people don't actually know what a recession is.

The chaos narrative is a scheme to tap into a subset of the population that innately fears change or reform.  Keep in mind, four years of Biden and Harris brought nothing but total chaos to the US, but economically they did maintain the status quo.  The status quo being the perpetual march into stagflatiory crisis, ever higher prices, ever higher taxes and less economic freedom for the average citizen. 

What the public is desperate for is to try something different, but anytime new fiscal policies are suggested they are immediately and viciously degraded as a trigger for "chaos". 

These arguments come from people (like Harris) that don't have the slightest understanding of America's financial situation.  At this stage, a recession and some moderate deflation would be a welcome development given that the Biden regime helped to inflate prices on necessities beyond what most people in the middle class can afford.  And, if Trump can actually convert tariffs into government revenues to replace the income tax as he has promised, then the economic renaissance that would result would be unmatched.

To be fair, it is in many ways a gamble.  If tariffs are applied for the long term they will require subsequent and speedy manufacturing development on US soil.  This is happening already on a limited scale.  There is also the likelihood that prices on many imported goods will rise.  However, a focus on lowering the costs of domestic necessities like food, energy and housing is what needs to be prioritized (not plastic Chinese trinkets) and sticking with the inflationary trends of globalism is not going to help.     

Harris and Democrats want to tie Trump and conservatives to the economy like an anchor and throw it overboard in the hopes that their ideological opponents will be dragged to the bottom.  They are also overestimating the public's capacity for forgiveness when it comes to the damage the Dems have already done.  At no point have they offered any practical solutions to the dangers facing the US system. Furthermore, they are greatly underestimating the American desire to see the globalist system crash and burn.  People are cheering the death of globalism, not living in fear of it.

Update (9:20pm ET): the first reaction from the US side comes in by way of Marco Rubio who speaks in a Fox News interview, and it is very much as expected: he makes it seem that China reached out first, which to Beijing is a non-started as its specific framework is that the US was reaching out in order for Xi not to lose face:

• RUBIO SAYS CHINA IS REACHING OUT ON ECONOMIC ISSUES
• RUBIO: CHINESE WANT TO MEET AND TALK

And now it is up to China to respond, although since both sides can't seem to even agree on who will cede ground by reached out first, we expect this latest attempt at detente won't go too far.

* * *

Futures spiked, moving back to session highs and forgetting all about the bitter taste from disappointing results from Amazon and Apple, following news from Bloomberg that China was "assessing the possibility of trade talks with the US" the first sign since Donald Trump hiked tariffs last month that negotiations could begin between the two sides.

China’s Commerce Ministry said in a Friday statement that it had noted senior US officials repeatedly expressing their willingness to talk to Beijing about tariffs, and urged officials in Washington to show “sincerity” towards China.

“The US has recently sent messages to China through relevant parties, hoping to start talks with China,” the ministry added. “China is currently evaluating this.”

Of course, the Chinese spin is one in which the Trump admin reached out first, and which the US pro-China media will promptly use to hammer Trump with, resulting in an even quick denial by the president and thus, China, thereby erasing any hope of an overture, one which won't come until both sides are quite desperate.

For now, however, the reaction to the flashing red headline was stark as &P 500 erased early losses in Asia while a gauge of regional equities also turned positive after the statement. The offshore yuan edged stronger, while the Australian dollar, a China proxy, also extended gains.

The statement signals the stalemate between the world’s two largest economies could shift, after Trump hiked US tariffs to the highest level in a century and Beijing retaliated in kind.

Trump has repeatedly said President Xi Jinping needs to contact him in order to begin tariff talks and earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it’s up to Beijing to take the first step to de-escalate the dispute; China has done the same.

A China politics expert warns that the communist regime shows signs of potential collapse, driven by a worsening economy exacerbated by Trump’s aggressive tariff policies.

"At a time when China needs friends because it's not selling goods to the U.S., it is going out of its way to antagonize not just the Philippines, not just Taiwan, but also South Korea and Australia," Gordon Chang, senior fellow with the Gatestone Institute, told the Fox Business Network.

"This shows that... this is end-of-regime conduct, because Xi Jinping, he can't appear to be giving in to the U.S.," he added. "This is really very perplexing behavior, and it shows that something is very, very wrong in Beijing right now."

Trump has shown little sign of backing down from his trade war with China, slapping a 145% tariff on Chinese imports. Beijing retaliated with 125% duties on U.S. goods. Trump insists his administration is actively negotiating with Beijing officials, but China’s Foreign Ministry has flatly denied any talks, accusing the U.S. of spreading “baseless rumors.”

The White House argues these tariffs are necessary to protect American workers and counter China’s unfair trade practices, while critics warn of skyrocketing prices, empty shelves, and a looming recession.

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Chinese authorities have quietly waived some of the 125% retaliatory tariffs on certain U.S. imports, including semiconductors, chipmaking equipment, medical products, and aviation parts. This move signals Beijing's concern about the economic fallout from the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. While China has not publicly confirmed these exemptions.

Gordon Chang sounds alarm over Chinese aggression: 'This is end of regime conduct' https://t.co/uvAXbOsmdc @MorningsMaria @FoxBusiness pic.twitter.com/ibSp6e0K73

As we reported earlier:

On Tuesday morning, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick provided clarity on the highly anticipated auto tariff relief, confirming it will apply to all U.S.-built vehicles.

Lutnick said tariffs will apply to those produced by foreign automakers with plants in the US. He added that the relief would be phased in over three years, giving manufacturers time to shift their supply chains back to the U.S.

The Wall Street Journal offered details regarding how relief would resemble:

The decision will mean that automakers paying Trump's automotive tariffs won't also be charged for other duties, such as those on steel and aluminum, according to people familiar with the policy.

The move would be retroactive, the people said, meaning that automakers could be reimbursed for such tariffs already paid. The 25% tariff on finished foreign-made cars went into effect early this month.

The administration will also modify its tariffs on foreign auto parts—slated to be 25% and effective May 3—allowing automakers to be reimbursed for those tariffs up to an amount equal to 3.75% of the value of a U.S.-made car for one year. The reimbursement would fall to 2.5% of the car's value in a second year, and then be phased out altogether.

Ford CEO Jim Farley lauded the move, providing the following statement to WSJ: “Ford welcomes and appreciates these decisions by President Trump, which will help mitigate the impact of tariffs on automakers, suppliers and consumers. We will continue to work closely with the administration in support of the president's vision for a healthy and growing auto industry in America. Ford sees policies that encourage exports and ensure affordable supply chains to promote more domestic growth as essential.”

Authored by William Anderson via The Mises Institute,

This week, my wife and I have traveled Amtrak’s route to and from Bakersfield, California, with the Amtrak line running down the state’s Central Valley past cities like Fresno and Modesto. As our train sped down the tracks at speeds of up to 83 mph, we could see construction of the much-hyped boondoggle known simply as the California Bullet Train.

Much has been written about the proposed (and proposed really is an understatement) project, which is supposed to run entirely by electricity created from renewable resources. In 2008, California voters approved a bond issue of $9.9 billion to determine the feasibility of the proposed high-speed railroad that would link San Francisco and Los Angeles with a then-$33 billion price tag. I have weighed in myself on this project and its spiraling costs (the present estimated total cost being $135 billion…and rising), writing:

If one tries to make sense of an exercise in spending billions of dollars for a Train to Nowhere, one cannot use conventional financial logic. There is a logical process at work, but it is a logic of a different sort than what appeals to a typical reader of this page. Political logic, especially in a state like California where progressive politics dominates, veers sharply from economic and business logic.

But what does the Central Valley have to do with linking the two California cities, both of which are on the Pacific coast far away from the likes of Bakersfield and Fresno? 

There already exists a rail link between LA and San Francisco, but it is the slow-moving Amtrak that must make its way through the Coastal Range that runs down the western part of the state. 

(An aspiring rail rider would board a CalTrans train from San Francisco to San Jose, then hop aboard Amtrak’s Coast Starlight there as it passes through once a day).

It seems that the promoters of the Bullet Train also are having to bow to the state’s varied geography, which brings us back to construction in the Central Valley. As we looked out the window in the brand-new Amtrak passenger cars recently manufactured for the San Joaquins route, we saw huge concrete viaducts in various stages of completion between Bakersfield and Merced—and that was all the construction we would be able to see, since there is no construction anywhere else on the proposed route.

Understand that no private firm would build a railroad like this because it could never recoup its original costs. 

The current projected outlay of $135 billion almost surely will grow, as the project continues to miss its goals and run into more difficulties. It will be mathematically impossible for the rail line ever to turn a profit, even if it ever is completed—which is highly doubtful.

This leaves us with the line between Bakersfield and Merced, which is not scheduled for completion before 2030 and probably won’t be available until 2033. To understand the absurdity of the whole thing, one should remember that this original Bakersfield-Merced line is being built first because it has the friendliest geography—the Central Valley being flat—which means the trains can run for miles on straight tracks, avoiding the hairpin turns through the mountains that would be a feature elsewhere in the state.

(I have ridden Amtrak many times in California, including going over the Sierra Nevada and in and around the Coastal Range south of San Jose. High-speed rail could not function in these places).

But, even given the flat terrain, much of the Bakersfield-Merced line will have to run on huge concrete viaducts that are extremely costly and will take years to complete. To put it another way, if the lowest-hanging fruit for a rail line has been extremely costly, think what will be the case if they ever try to carve a path around and through the mountains that surround Los Angeles.

To put it another way, as we looked at the ongoing construction of this rail line, we were not looking at success, but rather a huge governmental failure. One would think this would be obvious to nearly everyone, but when California Governor Gavin Newsom and local politicians dedicated this rail line, the rhetoric was so delusional that it was comical. Here are some snippets:

Members of the community and Gov. Gavin Newsom gathered in Kern County where the initial operating segment is taking place. Leticia Perez, chairwoman of the Kern County board of supervisors, said that this project is important for residents of California’s rural Central Valley, providing a 171-mile system from Merced to Bakersfield.

“What is represented today is a game changer, a transformative moment for the Kern County workforce - our access to UC Merced, our access to other parts of the state,” Perez said.

“As a resident of Fresno County, the high-speed rail built right here in the valley has been a dream come true,” said Structures Superintendent Anthony Canales who has been working on the project since 2015. “This is not just a transportation program; it’s a transformation project.”

However, the Central Valley already has passenger rail courtesy of Amtrak and if what we saw on our trip with near-empty cars is an indication of the Amtrak ridership of that area, one seriously doubts that high-speed rail—while a curiosity—will make a difference for people in that valley. The local political rhetoric notwithstanding, even if this monstrosity is completed, it won’t be a “game changer” but rather a conversation piece at best.

The longevity of this failed project is a testament both to political inertia and to the love affair that progressives have with both central government economic planning and especially the high-speed rail. It is a massive malinvestment that is saddling California with huge debts that its taxpayers—most of whom will gain no benefit from the bullet train—will have to shoulder in the future. Those politicians and politically-connected contractors most responsible for this boondoggle will gain the benefits (and get to ride for free), while the victims will have to pay.