Latest news with #Becerra
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Following federal announcement, Gary Job Corps to close after 60 years
SAN MARCOS, Texas (KXAN) – A large no-cost education and career technical training program in San Marcos will close after 60 years. Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra posted to Facebook on May 30 that Gary Job Corps, which opened in 1965, would cease operations by the end of June. The program offered free education and vocational training to hundreds of Central Texans. 'In a major development, the U.S. Department of Labor has announced that it will halt operations at several Job Corps centers nationwide, including the Gary Job Corps campus just outside San Marcos—long known as the largest of its kind in the country,' said Becerra in his post. The decision to suspend the program drew bipartisan pushback, according to our media partners at The Hill. The U.S. Department of Labor announced it would be pausing Job Corps centers after an 'internal review of the program's outcome and structure.' 'Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community,' said DOL Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer in a May 29 press statement. 'However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve. We remain committed to ensuring all participants are supported through this transition and connected with the resources they need to succeed as we evaluate the program's possibilities.' The statement from the department said that the program has faced financial challenges. This decision follows an April analysis of the Job Corps program. A summary of the analysis is a follows: Average Graduation Rate (WIOA Definition): 38.6% Average Cost Per Student Per Year: $80,284.65 Average Total Cost Per Graduate (WIOA Definition): $155,600.74 Post separation, participants earn $16,695 annually on average. The total number of Serious Incident Reports for program year 2023: 14,913 infractions. Inappropriate Sexual Behavior and Sexual Assaults Reported: 372 Acts of Violence Reported: 1,764 Breaches of Safety or Security: 1,167 Reported Drug Use: 2,702 Total Hospital Visits: 1,808 Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Lone Biden official breaks silence on cognitive decline as Cabinet stays mute
Only a single member of former President Joe Biden's Cabinet responded to a massive outreach effort from Fox News Digital asking if the more than two dozen Cabinet-level officials stood by previous remarks that Biden was mentally and physically fit to serve as president. And even that lone statement, from former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, skirted addressing head-on whether he had witnessed instances of Biden's now widely acknowledged cognitive issues. "I met with President Biden when needed to make important decisions and to execute with my team at HHS," Becerra said. "It's clear the President was getting older, but he made the mission clear: run the largest health agency in the world, expand care to millions more Americans than ever before, negotiate down the cost of prescription drugs, and pull us out of a world-wide pandemic. And we delivered." Roughly four months after Biden's Oval Office exit, a handful of political books detailing the 2024 campaign and Biden administration have hit store shelves and are painting a bleak picture of Biden's health. Adding fuel to the fire, audio recordings of Biden's October 2023 interview with former Special Counsel Robert Hur showed the former president tripping over his words, slurring sentences, taking long pauses between answers and struggling to remember key moments in his life, including the year his son Beau died of cancer. Biden's Woes Converge: Last-minute Pardons Under Fire, Calls For Prosecution Mount Following Hur Tape Release Fox News Digital has written extensively dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign about Biden's cognitive decline and his inner circle's role in covering it up. Read On The Fox News App Biden's Cabinet Officials Stand By Statements Of Support As Term Draws To A Close Becerra's statement stood in marked contrast to the silence emanating from the rest of his former colleagues. Fox News Digital reached out to 26 Biden administration officials with Cabinet-level positions — from former Vice President Kamala Harris to former Chief of Staff Jeff Zients — asking whether they still believe that Biden was fit to serve as president, or whether they've had a change of heart amid the cascade of damning evidence and anecdotes portraying a mental decline. If a majority of those Cabinet-level officials believed Biden to be unable to perform his duties, they could have attempted to remove him from office through the 25th Amendment. Instead, those officials repeatedly said at the time that Biden was competent and in command. That talking point hasn't abated among the former officials. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in on Biden's presidential health earlier in May during a town hall with veterans and military families in Iowa. When asked during the event whether Biden experienced cognitive decline, Buttigieg told reporters that "every time I needed something from him from the West Wing, I got it." "The time I worked closest with him in his final year was around the Baltimore bridge collapse," he added. "And what I can tell you is that the same president the world saw addressing that was the president I was in the Oval with, insisting that we do a good job, do right by Baltimore. And that was characteristic of my experience with him." Buttigieg did not elaborate when responding to a separate inquiry from Fox News Digital. Biden's office recently revealed that the former president was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer that had metastasized and was undergoing treatment. The diagnosis sparked an outpouring of well-wishes from political leaders across both aisles, and shock from some doctors who said such cancer should have been caught before it advanced and metastasized. None of Biden's annual physical health reports as president tested for prostate cancer, Fox News Digital previously reported, with a representative confirming Biden's last-known prostate blood test was conducted in 2014. The 2024 presidential debate between Biden and President Donald Trump opened the floodgates of criticism surrounding Biden's mental acuity after the 46th president's poor performance, which included Biden losing his train of thought and stumbling over his words. Criticisms Mount That Biden Is A 'Shadow' Of Himself After Disastrous Debate: 'Not The Same Man' From Vp Era Concerns over Biden's mental acuity had simmered for years among conservatives, but it wasn't until the June 2024 presidential debate that traditional Democrat allies and media outlets began questioning Biden's health and openly called for him to drop out of the race. Despite mounting concerns, members of Biden's Cabinet vowed he was of sound health and mind. Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement in September 2024, for example, that he has "full confidence in President Biden's ability to carry out his job." Biden's Presidency Will Be Remembered As The 'Man That Was Too Old,' Says Byron York "As I've said before, I come fully prepared for my meetings with President Biden, knowing his questions will be detail-oriented, probing, and exacting," he said. "In our exchanges, the President always draws upon our prior conversations and past events in analyzing the issues and reaching his conclusions." Conservatives in 2024 floated calling for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to remove Biden, which would have required Harris and the majority of the Cabinet to declare him unfit to lead. Harris and the Cabinet did not take such steps during the administration, and instead defended his health. Biden's Presidential Health Reports Showed No Sign Of Recently Revealed Aggressive Cancer In July 2024, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called Biden "one of the most accomplished presidents in American history and continues to effectively lead our country with a steady hand." "As someone who is actually in the room when the President meets with the Cabinet and foreign leaders, I can tell you he is an incisive and extraordinary leader," Raimondo said at the time. Since Biden's exit from the White House in January, political journalists have published a handful of books arguing that, behind the scenes of the administration, staffers were concerned about Biden's health. "Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election," according to a new book written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios reporter Alex Thompson, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." "Given Biden's age, (his physician Kevin O'Connor) also privately said that if he had another bad fall, a wheelchair might be necessary for what could be a difficult recovery," the authors wrote. While another newly released book by longtime D.C. reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," investigated Biden's mental decline in the lead-up to the general election, calling him a "shell of himself." "All of them," Parnes told Vanity Fair in April of who in Biden's inner circle was most to blame for covering up his mental decline when he was in office. "It's pretty remarkable how they kept him very closed off," Parnes said. "He was a shell of himself. When he entered the White House, he was so, so different from the man who I covered as vice president, a guy who would hold court in the Naval Observatory with reporters until the wee hours." Hunter Biden Pardon: Media Takes Latest Blow To Credibility With Botched Coverage Of Broken Promise "We'd been watching Biden's decline for a long period of time and, honestly, thought he had lost his fastball some when he was running in 2020," Allen added of Biden's mental decline. "And it was still so shocking to see the leader of the free world so bereft of coherent thought." Earlier in May, hours of Biden's October 2023 interview with Hur's office were released to the public and underscored the president's apparent mental decline from his days as a senator from Delaware. Hur led an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents after Biden's departure as vice president during the Obama administration. The then-special counsel announced in February 2024 he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, saying Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Hur came under fire from Biden, Harris and other Democrats in 2024 for suggesting in the report that Biden could not remember when his son Beau died. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. In February 2024, following the release of the report, Biden shot back at Hur: "There's some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There's even a reference that I don't remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?" Biden Struggles With Words, Key Memories In Leaked Audio From Special Counsel Hur Interview Harris called the report "gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate." The recently released audio recordings show it was Biden who brought up his son and could not remember when Beau died. "So, during this time when you were living at Chain Bridge Road and there were documents relating to the Penn Biden Center, or the Biden Institute, or the Cancer Moonshot or your book, where did you keep papers that related to those things that you were actively working on?" Hur asked Biden in the interview. "Well, um … I, I, I, I, I don't know. This is, what, 2017, 2018, that area?" Biden responded. "Yes, sir," Hur said. "Remember, in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying, and, and so it was and by the way, there were still a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run in this period, except the president," Biden continued. "I'm not — and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she (Hillary Clinton) had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn't, at this point — even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And, and so what was happening, though — what month did Beau die? Oh, God, May 30th." Others present during the interview responded that Beau Biden died in 2015. Trump has called an alleged cover-up of Biden's health a "scandal" and has argued that White House staffers were controlling the administration through the use of an autopen. What Is An Autopen? The Signing Device At The Heart Of Trump's Attacks On Biden Pardons Autopen signatures are automatically produced by a machine, as opposed to an authentic, handwritten signature. The conservative Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project first investigated the Biden administration's use of an autopen earlier in 2025 and found that the same signature was on a bevvy of executive orders and other official documents, while Biden's signature on the document announcing his departure from the 2024 race varied from the apparent machine-produced signature. "Whoever had control of the 'AUTOPEN' is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment," Trump posted to Truth Social in article source: Lone Biden official breaks silence on cognitive decline as Cabinet stays mute
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Judge delays Miami trial of five men accused of plotting assassination of Haiti's president
The Miami trial of five men accused of plotting the assassination of Haiti's president has again been delayed, this time to March 2026 — almost five years after the fatal shooting of Jovenel Moïse at his suburban home outside Port-au-Prince. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra said at a recent hearing that she was not happy about delaying the federal trial, which was originally set for March and then postponed until September of this year. Becerra said she had no choice but to push it back again because of the massive volume of evidence, including more than 2.5 million text messages, emails and other records, that federal prosecutors are still turning over to the defense lawyers — a basic discovery issue that has turned into a sore point for the judge. 'I do not take it lightly in any way that this case has been delayed,' Becerra told the five defendants, who were arrested and taken into federal custody in the months after the July 7, 2021, assassination of Moïse. 'This is not a delay that I am at all happy with.' Compounding the run-up to the Miami trial: Armed gangs have been terrorizing Haiti, a country in free fall without a political leader, making it unsafe for the defense lawyers in Miami to go there and question ex-Colombian soldiers jailed in Port-au-Prince on Haitian charges of assisting in the slaying of the president. As a result, Judge Becerra granted the defense team's request to take video depositions of five of the Colombians, who represent about one-third of the former commandos in jail. 'Although the difficulties of traveling to Haiti to conduct these depositions should not be understated, there appears to be no reason why the depositions could not take place over video conference,' Becerra ruled after the May 19 hearing on the trial date and other issues. Despite the judge's approval of these critical depositions, there is one potential Haitian witness whom the defense lawyers in Miami won't be able to question: Former Haitian Superior Court Judge Windelle Coq Thélot, who died in January. Haitian authorities considered Thélot a key suspect in the investigation of Moïse's killing. But she took to the grave unanswered questions about her alleged role in the assassination plot and whether she indeed promised immunity to the defendants in Miami who are accused of directing it. According to prosecutors in Miami, Thélot gained the support of the suspected plotters in South Florida as a replacement for Moïse in June 2021, when they decided that Christian Sanon, a Haitian priest and physician, 'was not a viable option to take over' the presidency. Thélot's 'apparent signature' appeared on a written request for assistance to arrest Haiti's president that 'purported to provide Haitian immunity' to the conspirators in South Florida, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court. One of the suspects, Haitian-American maintenance worker James Solages, traveled from Haiti to Miami on June 28, 2021, to deliver the document to another suspect, Antonio 'Tony' Intriago,' the owner of a security business. On July 1, Solages traveled back to Haiti and five days later met with several conspirators at a house near Moïse's residence. Solages 'falsely told those gathered that it was a 'CIA Operation, and, in substance, said that the mission was to kill President Moïse,' the FBI affidavit stated. Solages and other suspects drove in a convoy to the president's home on the night of July 7, the assassination date. Once inside the residence, Solages declared they were involved in a 'DEA Operation' to ensure 'compliance from' Moïse's security team, the affidavit stated. Some of the ex-Colombian soldiers recruited for the mission were assigned to find and kill the president. On July 22, federal agents questioned Solages while he was in Haitian custody. After he was read his Miranda rights, Solages admitted that by mid-June 2021, 'he knew that the plan was to ultimately assassinate President Moïse,' according to the FBI affidavit. To date in the U.S. case, five of the 11 defendants have pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Haiti's president, resulting in life sentences that they hope to get reduced with their cooperation. Among those convicted: two ex-Colombian commandos, a former Haitian senator, a Haitian-American man who worked as an informant for the DEA, and a previously convicted Haitian drug trafficker. A sixth defendant, a Tampa businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges involving the smuggling of bulletproof vests that were illegally exported to Haiti for the group of ex-Colombian soldiers who carried out the deadly attack. The remaining five defendants are charged with conspiring in South Florida to kidnap or kill Haiti's leader and related charges, including recruiting the Colombian commandos. The conspiracy charge carries up to life in prison. The defendants facing trial are: Intriago, the head of a Miami-area security firm, CTU; Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, a former FBI informant who joined Intriago at CTU; Walter Veintemilla, a Broward County financier; Solages, the Haitian American; and Sanon, who was initially seen by the group as a successor to Moïse as Haiti's president. All five defendants are being held in a federal lock-up before trial. Of the five remaining defendants, Sanon was the only one who told the judge at the hearing this month that he opposed delaying the trial until March of next year. But Judge Becerra, while showing sympathy for his pre-trial detention over nearly four years in Haiti and Miami, said holding one trial for him and another for the others was not practical for several reasons. 'Given the complexity of the case, the government wants all the defendants tried together,' Becerra told Sanon. 'I am not inclined to try your case in September and all the other defendants in March [2026].' In February 2024, Sanon was charged with the others with conspiring to kill Haiti's leader, after first being accused of trying to carry out a military expedition against a foreign country. It was the fifth superseding indictment filed by prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office and Justice Department. Since then, most of the team has been replaced with new prosecutors. The other four defendants did not oppose the trial delay when questioned by the judge, though Intriago expressed his frustration over the prosecution's sharing of evidence in the high-profile case. 'I don't understand why we don't have everything in our hands,' Intriago told the judge. 'I just wanted to express my frustration that the government give us all the information and not hide anything from us.' Since the president's assassination at his home outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti has plunged into total chaos as armed gangs have terrorized the island nation with no presidential election on the horizon. While the U.S. investigation led by the FBI moved quickly to arrests and charges in Miami, Haiti's probe of the president's slaying only resulted in an indictment in February 2024. A total of 51 people were charged by an investigative judge in collaboration with a prosecutor. Sanon is the only defendant charged in the Haiti prosecution that was also named as a defendant in the Miami case. Among those in Haiti accused of the deadly attack: the slain president's widow, Martine Moïse, who suffered gunshot wounds during the assault on the family's home.
Miami Herald
6 days ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Judge delays Miami trial of five men accused of plotting assassination of Haiti's president
The Miami trial of five men accused of plotting the assassination of Haiti's president has again been delayed, this time to March 2026 — almost five years after the fatal shooting of Jovenel Moïse at his suburban home outside Port-au-Prince. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Becerra said at a recent hearing that she was not happy about delaying the federal trial, which was originally set for March and then postponed until September of this year. Becerra said she had no choice but to push it back again because of the massive volume of evidence, including more than 2.5 million text messages, emails and other records, that federal prosecutors are still turning over to the defense lawyers — a basic discovery issue that has turned into a sore point for the judge. 'I do not take it lightly in any way that this case has been delayed,' Becerra told the five defendants, who were arrested and taken into federal custody in the months after the July 7, 2021, assassination of Moïse. 'This is not a delay that I am at all happy with.' Compounding the run-up to the Miami trial: Armed gangs have been terrorizing Haiti, a country in free fall without a political leader, making it unsafe for the defense lawyers in Miami to go there and question ex-Colombian soldiers jailed in Port-au-Prince on Haitian charges of assisting in the slaying of the president. As a result, Judge Becerra granted the defense team's request to take video depositions of five of the Colombians, who represent about one-third of the former commandos in jail. 'Although the difficulties of traveling to Haiti to conduct these depositions should not be understated, there appears to be no reason why the depositions could not take place over video conference,' Becerra ruled after the May 19 hearing on the trial date and other issues. Despite the judge's approval of these critical depositions, there is one potential Haitian witness whom the defense lawyers in Miami won't be able to question: Former Haitian Superior Court Judge Windelle Coq Thélot, who died in January. Haitian authorities considered Thélot a key suspect in the investigation of Moïse's killing. But she took to the grave unanswered questions about her alleged role in the assassination plot and whether she indeed promised immunity to the defendants in Miami who are accused of directing it. According to prosecutors in Miami, Thélot gained the support of the suspected plotters in South Florida as a replacement for Moïse in June 2021, when they decided that Christian Sanon, a Haitian priest and physician, 'was not a viable option to take over' the presidency. Thélot's 'apparent signature' appeared on a written request for assistance to arrest Haiti's president that 'purported to provide Haitian immunity' to the conspirators in South Florida, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court. One of the suspects, Haitian-American maintenance worker James Solages, traveled from Haiti to Miami on June 28, 2021, to deliver the document to another suspect, Antonio 'Tony' Intriago,' the owner of a security business. On July 1, Solages traveled back to Haiti and five days later met with several conspirators at a house near Moïse's residence. Solages 'falsely told those gathered that it was a 'CIA Operation, and, in substance, said that the mission was to kill President Moïse,' the FBI affidavit stated. Solages and other suspects drove in a convoy to the president's home on the night of July 7, the assassination date. Once inside the residence, Solages declared they were involved in a 'DEA Operation' to ensure 'compliance from' Moïse's security team, the FBI stated. Some of the ex-Colombian soldiers recruited for the mission were assigned to find and kill the president. Suspect knew about assassination plan: FBI On July 22, federal agents questioned Solages while he was in Haitian custody. After he was read his Miranda rights, Solages admitted that by mid-June 2021, 'he knew that the plan was to ultimately assassinate President Moïse,' according to the FBI affidavit. To date in the U.S. case, five of the 11 defendants have pleaded guilty to conspiring to kill Haiti's president, resulting in life sentences that they hope to get reduced with their cooperation. Among those convicted: two ex-Colombian commandos, a former Haitian senator, a Haitian-American man who worked as an informant for the DEA, and a previously convicted Haitian drug trafficker. A sixth defendant, a Tampa businessman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges involving the smuggling of bulletproof vests that were illegally exported to Haiti for the group of ex-Colombian soldiers who carried out the deadly attack. The remaining five defendants are charged with conspiring in South Florida to kidnap or kill Haiti's leader and related charges, including recruiting the Colombian commandos. The conspiracy charge carries up to life in prison. The defendants facing trial are: Intriago, the head of a Miami-area security firm, CTU; Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, a former FBI informant who joined Intriago at CTU; Walter Veintemilla, a Broward County financier; Solages, the Haitian American; and Sanon, who was initially seen by the group as a successor to Moïse as Haiti's president. All five defendants are being held in a federal lock-up before trial. Of the five remaining defendants, Sanon was the only one who told the judge at the hearing this month that he opposed delaying the trial until March of next year. But Judge Becerra, while showing sympathy for his pre-trial detention over nearly four years in Haiti and Miami, said holding one trial for him and another for the others was not practical for several reasons. 'Given the complexity of the case, the government wants all the defendants tried together,' Becerra told Sanon. 'I am not inclined to try your case in September and all the other defendants in March [2026].' In February 2024, Sanon was charged with the others with conspiring to kill Haiti's leader, after first being accused of trying to carry out a military expedition against a foreign country. It was the fifth superseding indictment filed by prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office and Justice Department. Since then, most of the team has been replaced with new prosecutors. The other four defendants did not oppose the trial delay when questioned by the judge, though Intriago expressed his frustration over the prosecution's sharing of evidence in the high-profile case. 'I don't understand why we don't have everything in our hands,' Intriago told the judge. 'I just wanted to express my frustration that the government give us all the information and not hide anything from us.' Haiti devolves into chaos Since the president's assassination at his home outside Port-au-Prince, Haiti has plunged into total chaos as armed gangs have terrorized the island nation with no presidential election on the horizon. While the U.S. investigation led by the FBI moved quickly to arrests and charges in Miami, Haiti's probe of the president's slaying only resulted in an indictment in February 2024. A total of 51 people were charged by an investigative judge in collaboration with a prosecutor. Sanon is the only defendant charged in the Haiti prosecution that was also named as a defendant in the Miami case. Among those in Haiti accused of the deadly attack: the slain president's widow, Martine Moïse, who suffered gunshot wounds during the assault on the family's home.
Miami Herald
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
California High-Speed Rail: Where Candidates for Governor Stand
California's 2026 gubernatorial election is approaching, and with Gavin Newsom term-limited, many other candidates have already entered the race. However, the winning politician will inherit the largest high-speed rail project in the country and will be faced with serious decisions about how to manage it under their administration. Newsweek has compiled the positions of the top candidates on the California high-speed rail project. The rail project has been overseen by three successive governors. Originally approved by voters in a 2008 ballot initiative under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the track aims to connect California's two biggest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, via the Central Valley, linking with several other smaller areas that have historically not benefited from transport infrastructure. Governors Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom have also overseen the project. Toni Atkins Toni Atkins was the speaker of the California State Assembly from 2014 to 2016 and the majority leader before that. Atkins told Newsweek that she supported the project and would continue with it if elected, saying: "I've stood firm behind high-speed rail year after year because it means good jobs for hardworking families, growth for small businesses, and connection for regions too often left out of the conversation about California's future. "As Governor, I'll keep this project moving—so we build and spread opportunity and progress to every part of our state." In 2021, when some state lawmakers questioned Newsom's $4.2 billion injection for the project, Atkins said she wanted more money for local transit projects in her region and that most Senate Democrats supported moving ahead with funding high-speed rail. Xavier Becerra As California attorney general, Becerra took the Trump administration to court over the president's attempts to remove $1 billion of funding for the project in 2019. Earlier this year, Becerra told Sacramento news station KCRA that health care and rail were costing taxpayers far more than leaders expected, and that changes might have to be made to the project. "We're not going backwards on health care," Becerra said. "And that includes people who work very hard, pay taxes, are living the right way, and are your good neighbors." "But, here's the scrub: we have an obligation to balance our budget. In the state of California. If we can't balance the budget with the resources and revenues we've got, then we've got to make cuts. Where do we make the cuts? That's where the question comes about how we treat that particular program. But I'm not looking to have anyone lose access to health care." Eleni Kounalakis As California's lieutenant governor, Kounalakis works closely with Gavin Newsom and nominally supports his administration's approach to the high-speed rail project. In response to Newsom's revision to the state budget this week, Kounalakis said in a statement: "As we make tough choices, we must stay focused on protecting the progress Californians count on." Newsweek reached out to Kounalakis' campaign via email for more information on her stance. Katie Porter Porter, who represented California in the House of Representatives from 2019 to 2025, is one of the only major Democrats to explicitly oppose the high-speed rail project. She said in an interview on KTLA's Inside California Politics earlier this month that the project exceeded both deadlines and budget. "Increasingly, the evidence is showing that this project is not going to be able to be completed remotely on budget or remotely on time. I think we're already past those benchmarks," Porter said. "That's why I don't think we should BS California voters. They have noticed that we don't have a high-speed rail. And they have noticed we've spent money on it." "If this high-speed rail project can get done, then let's get it done. If it can't get done, then stop." Antonio Villaraigosa The former California State Assembly speaker and Los Angeles mayor told Newsweek that he would assess the project and stop lawmakers from "playing politics" with the issue. Vellaraigosa had previously been made an infrastructure advisor for the state in 2022. "I don't think candidates should play politics with high-speed rail. We need to safeguard local jobs, protect taxpayers, and avoid haphazard decisions that could trigger requirements forcing the state to repay billions in federal funding that we can't afford," Vellaraigosa said. "As governor, I'll make sure this project is transparent, meets deadlines, and sticks to a budget." Chad Bianco As the first major Republican to enter the gubernatorial race, Bianco is one of the rail project's most vocal opposers. The Riverside County sheriff has frequently voiced his issues with the project, posting on social media in March: "Once again, our leaders are failing us. The train to nowhere is a total waste of taxpayer funds. Let's end this madness once and for all." He has also said that "Californians deserve so much better" and that the project's budget management is "unbelievable." Related Articles More Than 50,000 Californians Told To Stay Inside Over Dangerous ConditionsGavin Newsom Defies Senate Vote: 'Illegal''Serial Cat Killer' Sparks Warning for California Pet OwnersCalifornia Seniors Issued Memorial Day Weekend Health Warning 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
