central valley

A bipartisan congressional committee is investigating whether California’s High-Speed Rail Authority knowingly misrepresented ridership projections and financial outlooks, as alleged by the Trump administration, to secure federal funding.

In a letter sent to Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chair James Comer (R-KY) requested a staff briefing and all communications and records about federal funding for the high-speed rail project and any analysis over the train’s viability.

“The Authority’s apparent repeated use of misleading ridership projections, despite longstanding warnings from experts, raises serious questions about whether funds were allocated under false pretenses,” Comer wrote.

Comer’s letter copied Congressman Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee who has also voiced skepticism about the project. Garcia, whose districts represent communities in Southern California, was not immediately available for comment.

An authority spokesperson called the House committee’s investigation “another baseless attempt to manufacture controversy around America’s largest and most complex infrastructure project,” and added that the project’s chief executive Ian Choudri previously addressed the claims and called them “cherrypicked and out-of-date, and therefore misleading.”

Last month, the Trump administration pulled $4 billion in federal funding from the project meant for construction in the Central Valley. After a months-long review, prompted by calls from Republican lawmakers, the administration found “no viable path” forward for the fast train, which is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The administration also questioned whether the authority’s projected ridership counts were intentionally misrepresented.

California leaders called the move “illegal” and sued the Trump administration for declaratory and injunctive relief. Gov. Gavin Newsom said it was “a political stunt” and a “heartless attack on the Central Valley.”

The bullet train was proposed decades ago as a way to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in less than three hours by 2020. While the entire line has cleared environmental reviews, no stretch of the route has been completed. Construction has been limited to the Central Valley, where authority leaders have said a segment between Merced and Bakersfield will open by 2033. The project is also about $100 billion over its original budget of $33 billion.

Even before the White House pulled federal funding, authority leaders and advisers repeatedly raised concerns over the project’s long-term financial sustainability.

Roughly $13 billion has been spent so far — the bulk of which was supplied by the state, which has proposed $1 billion per year towards the project. But Choudri, who started at the authority last year, has said the project needs to find new sources of funding and has turned focus toward establishing public-private partnerships to supplement costs.

By midmorning in the Central Valley, the light turns hard and white, bleaching the sky and flattening every shadow. The rows of melons stretch to the horizon, vines twisted low in cracked soil. Pickers move in the rhythm the crop demands — bend, twist, lift, drop — their long sleeves damp with sweat, caps pulled low, bandanas hiding heat-burned cheeks. Spanish drifts along the rows, a joke here, a warning there, carried in the heavy air.

These are the cruelest days of harvest, when the sun turns fields into slow ovens and the heat climbs before breakfast, holding on until the stars are out. By nightfall, the damage is done: another collapse in the dirt, another family handed a death certificate instead of a paycheck.

It’s an all-too-familiar old problem in California. Nearly 20 years ago, in the shadow of four farmworker funerals — Arvin, Fresno County, Kern, Imperial Valley — California enacted the nation’s first heat rules for basic worker safety: water, shade, rest. Mercies you’d think needed no law. My fellow lawmakers and I who wrote those rules, along with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who signed them into law, believed they were enough. But two decades on, the grim reaper still walks the rows: 110 degrees, no tree, no tarp, a single water jug growing warm, its handle slick from dust and hands. Breaks denied, not from cruelty alone, but from the unrelenting clock of the harvest.

This is not a failure of the law itself, but of enforcement. Some treated the bill’s signing as the finish line instead of the starting gun. Inspectors are too few. Penalties too light. Investigations too slow. The state auditor’s latest report read like an obituary for Cal/OSHA’s credibility: outdated rules, missed chances, offices too empty to answer the phone.

Meanwhile the climate has turned meaner. Nights that once cooled now hold the day’s heat like a grudge. And the danger in the fields isn’t just the sun. Immigration raids now sweep through the Valley like dust storms — sudden, unannounced, merciless. For more than half of California’s 350,000 farmworkers, the greater threat isn’t heat stroke but a knock on the door before dawn or a traffic stop that ends with a vehicle full of workers detained and trucked to some distant site. The food that feeds the nation is pulled from the earth by people who work under triple-digit skies yet live in the shadows, where one complaint can cost them their job, their home, their freedom.

Twenty harvest seasons later, I’m calling for action — not another bill signing on the Capitol steps, but dollars, real and committed, and the regulations to match. With that will and funding, four simple fixes can turn promise into protection.

First, bring 21st century tools to the fields. In 2005, the “high-tech” solution was a plastic water jug in the shade and a flapping pop-up canopy. Today, for $50 — the price of two boxes of gloves — employers can deploy a wearable sensor clipped to a worker’s arm to track core temperature and heart rate, sending a warning before the body crosses the edge into heatstroke. That’s not Silicon Valley moonshot money. It’s pocket change for agribusiness, and for workers it could mean the difference between walking out of the rows or being carried out.

Second, enforce in real time. If a worker drops to one knee in the heat, the state shouldn’t hear about it days later in a report. Imagine a network linking growers, regulators and emergency crews to the same pulse of information — turning a slow, reactive system that documents tragedies into one that can act quickly and prevent many of them.

Third, train before the first row is picked. Ten minutes — no more — for workers to stand upright and learn, in their own language, the signs: dizziness, nausea, the creeping fog in the mind that means it’s time to stop. Not a photocopied handout in English tucked into an envelope behind a paycheck, not a rushed talk in Spanish at the field’s edge, but a verified safety course — certified by labor contractors and farmers alike. Knowledge here is as life-saving as water and shade.

Lastly, match the urgency we see in other arenas. While Cal/OSHA limps along, starved of staff and mired in red tape, Immigration and Customs Enforcement charges in the opposite direction — spurred by $170 billion in new funding, an immigration-enforcement and border-security blitz hiring thousands, dangling $50,000 signing bonuses, paying off student loans, waiving age limits, even pulling retirees back for double-dip salaries. That’s what happens when a government decides the wrong mission matters most. We pour urgency into chasing farmworkers from the fields, yet can’t muster the will to protect them in the heat. Until Cal/OSHA gets that same drive — inspectors recruited in every corner of the state, incentives to bring in a new generation, hurdles stripped away — the laws we wrote will remain a promise without a witness.

Some will say it’s too much, that the industry can’t bear the cost. But I’ve walked behind the hearses through Valley dust, stood in the gravel lots of farm town funeral homes, watched wives clutch work shirts as if they still held his warmth, seen children in Sunday clothes staring at the dirt. No budget line can measure that loss.

The Valley will keep feeding the nation. The question is whether we will keep feeding the graveyards too.

Once, by enacting heat safety rules, California declared that a life was worth more than a box of produce. If we let that promise wither in the heat, all we wrote back then was a press release. Government systems can fast-track billion-dollar projects, but until this much more affordable priority gets that kind of attention, the rules are just ink on paper, and the roll call of the dead just grows longer.

Dean Florez is a former California Senate majority leader, representing portions of the Central Valley.

WASHINGTON — Debate over President Trump’s sweeping budget-and-policy package is over on Capitol Hill. Now the argument goes national.

From the Central Valley of California to Midwestern battlegrounds and suburban districts of the northeast, the new law already is shaping the 2026 midterm battle for control of the House of Representatives. The outcome will set the tone for Trump’s final two years in the Oval Office.

Democrats need a net gain of three House seats to break the GOP’s chokehold on Washington and reestablish a power center to counter Trump. There’s added pressure to flip the House because midterm Senate contests are concentrated in Republican-leaning states, making it harder for Democrats to reclaim that chamber.

As Republicans see it, they’ve now delivered broad tax cuts, an unprecedented investment in immigration enforcement and new restraints on social safety net programs. Democrats see a law that rolls back health insurance access and raises costs for middle-class Americans while cutting taxes mostly for the rich, curtailing green energy initiatives and restricting some workers’ organizing rights.

“It represents the broken promise they made to the American people,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who chairs the party’s House campaign arm. “We’re going to continue to hold Republicans accountable for this vote.”

Parties gear up for a fight

Whether voters see it that way will be determined on a district-by-district level, but the battle will be more intense in some places than others. Among the 435 House districts, only 69 contests were decided by less than 10 percentage points in the 2024 general election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 26 Democratic-held seats it must defend vigorously, along with 35 GOP-held seats it believes could be ripe to flip. Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has listed 18 GOP incumbents as priorities, plus two districts opened by retirements.

There are a historically low number of so-called crossover districts: Only 13 Democrats represent districts that Trump carried in 2024, while just three Republicans serve districts that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried.

Both committees are busy recruiting challengers and open-seat candidates, and more retirements could come, so the competitive map will evolve. Still, there are clusters of districts guaranteed to influence the national result.

California, despite its clear lean to Democrats statewide, has at least nine House districts expected to be up for grabs: three in the Central Valley and six in Southern California. Six are held by Democrats, three by the GOP.

Pennsylvania features four districts that have been among the closest U.S. House races for several consecutive cycles. They include a suburban Philadelphia seat represented by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, one of just two House Republicans to vote against Trump’s bill and one of the three GOP lawmakers from a district Harris won. Fitzpatrick cited the Medicaid cuts.

Vice President JD Vance plans on Wednesday to be in Republican Rep. Robert Bresnahan’s northwest Pennsylvania district to tout the GOP package. Bresnahan’s seat is a top Democratic target.

Iowa and Wisconsin, meanwhile, feature four contiguous GOP-held districts in farm-heavy regions where voters could be swayed by fallout from Trump’s tariffs.

Democrats fight to define the GOP

Beyond bumper-sticker labels — Trump’s preferred “Big Beautiful Bill” versus Democrats’ “Big Ugly Bill” retort — the 900-page law is, in fact, an array of policies with varying effects.

Democrats hammer Medicaid and food assistance cuts, some timed to take full effect only after the 2026 midterms, along with Republicans’ refusal to extend tax credits to some people who obtained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law; 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

“Folks will die here in Louisiana and in other parts of the country,” House Minority Leader Jeffries warned last week during a town hall in Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana.

Jeffries singled out vulnerable Republicans such as California Rep. David Valadao of Hanford, who represents a heavily agricultural Central Valley district where more than half of the population is eligible for the joint state-federal insurance program. California allows immigrants with legal status and those who are undocumented to qualify for Medicaid, so not all Medicaid recipients are voters. But the program helps finance the overall healthcare system, including nursing homes and hospitals.

Republicans highlight the law’s tightened work requirements for Medicaid enrollees. They argue that it’s a popular provision that will strengthen the program.

“I voted for this bill because it does preserve the Medicaid program for its intended recipients — children, pregnant women, the disabled, and elderly,” Valadao said. “I know how important the program is for my constituents.”

Republicans hope voters see lower taxes

The law includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. It makes permanent existing rates and brackets approved during Trump’s first term. Republicans and their allies have hammered vulnerable Democrats for “raising costs” on American households by opposing the bill.

GOP campaign aides point to the popularity of individual provisions: boosting the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200 (some families at lower income levels would not get the full credit), new deductions on tip and overtime income and auto loans; and a new deduction for older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

“Everyone will have more take-home pay. They’ll have more jobs and opportunity,” Johnson said in a Fox News Sunday interview. “The economy will be doing better and we’ll be able to point to that as the obvious result of what we did.”

Democrats note that the biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax code are wealthy Americans and corporations. Pairing that with safety net cuts, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz concluded, “The cruelty is the point.”

Immigration, meanwhile, was Trump’s strongest issue in 2024. NRCC aides say that will continue with the new law’s investments in immigration enforcement. Democrats believe that the Trump administration has overplayed its hand with its push for mass deportation.

Playing the Trump card

The president is a titanic variable.

Democrats point to 2018, when they notched a 40-seat net gain in House seats to take control away from the GOP. This year, Democrats have enjoyed a double-digit swing in special elections around the country when compared with 2024 presidential results. Similar trends emerged in 2017 after Trump’s 2016 victory. Democrats say that reflects voter discontent with Trump once he’s actually in charge.

Republicans answer that Trump’s job approval remains higher at this point than in 2017. But the GOP’s effort is further complicated by ongoing realignments: Since Trump’s emergence, Democrats have gained affluent white voters — like those in suburban swing districts — while Trump has drawn more working-class voters across racial and ethnic groups. But Republicans face a stiffer challenge of replicating Trump’s coalition in a midterm election without him on the ballot.

Democrats, meanwhile, must corral voters who are not a threat to vote for Republicans but could stay home.

Jeffries said he’s determined not to let that happen: “We’re going to do everything we can until we end this national nightmare.”

Barrow, Cooper and Brook write for the Associated Press. Cooper reported from Phoenix and Brook reported from New Orleans. AP reporters Michael Blood in Los Angeles and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.