The governor described President Donald Trump as “temporary” and also took shots at the state of Texas, which he said has been incapable of making any progress on its own high-speed rail plans.
Newsom’s comments came during a speech at the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s railhead facility, a 150-acre yard in Kern County that will receive, store and send out materials for track construction on 119 miles between the Shafter area and the Fresno-Madera area.
The governor joined rail authority CEO Ian Choudri to announce the completion of the facility and suggested the project, historically plagued by delays and cost increases, has reached better days. The rail authority says the facility will be filled with workers and materials this year, as it is scheduled to begin laying the project’s first tracks in the Central Valley before the end of 2026.
“We’re there, we’re on the other side of the hardest part of this project,” he said.
The rail authority has a big to-do list this year as it tries to advance the project without help from the federal government, which has been hostile toward the California project with Trump in office. Besides beginning to lay tracks in the Central Valley, the agency is attempting to leverage its renewed financial backing from the state — $20 billion through 2045 — to secure private partners who can pay for construction up front and build faster.
The project has grown controversial since California voters in 2008 approved $9.95 billion in bonds for a train that would connect the state’s major metro areas at a total cost of about $45 billion. Today, after years of delays and cost increases, the focus is first on completing a 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment that the rail authority estimates could cost at least $36.75 billion and would be operational by 2033.
But Newsom said the project has now obtained environmental clearance on 463 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that track construction on the first 119 miles in the Central Valley is fully-funded.
“This is the phase everybody’s been waiting for,” he said. “Can’t believe what you can’t see? Well, you’re about to see a lot.”
Newsom says Trump policies hurt Central Valley, Texas failing on high-speed rail
The governor blasted the Trump administration’s decision to pull $4 billion for California high-speed rail last year, but said only 17% of the money the project has ever spent has come from the federal government.
The rail authority has pivoted toward more reliance on the state, which last year committed long-term financial support for high-speed rail through its Cap-and-Invest program. The program generates public dollars from companies that buy credits at state auctions to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.
But Newsom said the Trump administration’s decision to pull money dedicated to the project by past presidents was a move that “pulled the rug out from under” residents of the Central Valley, who he said would have been “the biggest beneficiaries” of that money through new jobs. He also slammed the cuts to healthcare pushed through by the Trump administration, which experts have warned could have serious impacts in the San Joaquin Valley and other high-poverty regions in the coming years.
“He’s temporary,” Newsom said about the president. “A couple years go by in a flash. By the time he’s out, we’ll have substantially completed this rail line.”
He added that California could try to seek new federal dollars for high-speed rail when there is a new administration in the White House.
Newsom also took jabs at a Texas high-speed rail project, which he described as “abandoned” by that state. That plan, a Houston-to-Dallas train, was proposed as a private venture shortly after California’s project began. But the Texas plan has also sought federal dollars.
“They couldn’t get anything done there,” Newsom said. “Big, red state of Texas, supposed to show us how to do it. They couldn’t get a damn thing done.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks at the California High-Speed Rail’s railhead facility in Kern County on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. GOVERNOR’S PRESS OFFICE
This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 7:54 PM.
Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.
The horrific torture and killing of 8-year-old Genesis Mata is the latest tragedy to ignite a firestorm of protests and demands to reform Kern County’s Child Protective Services. Just when will demands, audits and promised improvements yield real reforms and better protect Kern’s helpless children?
The Kern County Board of Supervisors this week agreed to solicit bids to hire an independent consultant to investigate CPS’s practices and procedures. What might have been done to prevent Genesis’ Aug. 2 death? In the 1990s, the state Legislature intervened and ordered an audit of the Kern department after several children died from abuse. Auditors proposed improvements and laws were changed.
Kern County Department of Human Services Director Lito Morillo recently noted that in 2006, the Child Welfare Services League of America reviewed Kern’s Child Welfare Services and developed a strategic improvement plan.
The long-lasting effects of these studies, audits, recommendations and “strategic plans” have not materialized.
This spring, the Kern County grand jury reported CPS lacks the funding and staff to adequately protect Kern’s children, as abuse cases continue to increase.
Will this latest investigation lead only to more hand-wringing and empty promises? Once Genesis’ Aug. 2 death slips out of the headlines, will child protection once again become a low priority?
“Too many cases have emerged from Kern County, California, where reported situations of abuse were allowed to persist unchecked, ultimately leading to deaths of children who were failed by the very institutions meant to protect them,” Josefina Villarreal wrote on a Change.org petition that demanded an investigation.
Genesis’ body was found abandoned in a Bakersfield motel bathtub on Aug. 2. Police report scalding hot water was poured over Genesis’ body, her fingers were broken by being slammed in a door, and she had been whipped with a cord or cable. Bakersfield Police Chief Greg Terry called Genesis’ death the worst case of child abuse seen in his department’s history.
Her father, Ray Mata Jr., 31, and his wife, Graciela Bustamonte, 24, Genesis’ stepmother, have been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated mayhem and inflicting injury upon a child. Also among the charges are two counts of torture and two counts of child cruelty. Mata Jr. and Bustamonte have pleaded not guilty and an October hearing is scheduled.
A district attorney spokesperson said the counts reflect two cases. The identity of the second victim was not disclosed, but at the time of Mata Jr.’s arrest, police and court records indicate he was being investigated by CPS after a school reported that a frequently absent child had visible bodily injuries. Seven children now have been removed from Mata Jr.’s and Bustamonte’s home, and placed in protective custody.
Mata Jr. has a lengthy criminal history, which includes arrests and convictions on drugs, weapons and vehicle charges. Genesis’ biological mother, Destiny Delacruz, 26, also has a criminal record that includes drug, theft and child abuse charges. She admits to having a lengthy use of methamphetamine.
Delacruz told a reporter she was 14 years old and had a son when she met then 18-year-old Mata Jr. Two years later, when she was 16, she gave birth to Genesis. In 2018, she turned over the children to Mata Jr.’s mother in the belief she would provide better care. Delacruz said that was the last time she saw the children. It is uncertain how the children ended up in Mata Jr.’s care.
Delacruz’s extended family members told reporters Kern CPS repeatedly ignored their many reports of allegations that Mata Jr. was abusing the children. Similar complaints about the department’s handling of child abuse cases were aired during this week’s Kern County Board of Supervisors meeting.
“I have seen firsthand how broken Kern County’s child protection services is,” Brooke Malley-Ault, a Mira Monte High School guidance counselor and Bakersfield City School District board member, told supervisors. As a mandated reporter, she and other school staff regularly report evidence of abuse, only to see little action taken. “We feel hopeless because we know what we’ve seen, yet we’re told to stand back.”
As the public outrage grows over Genesis Mata’s death, CPS officials are encouraging people to report cases to the child abuse hotline 661-631-6011 or 800-540-4000.
But the nagging question remains: If people call, will CPS come?
When Nora Bruhn bought admission to the Lightning in a Bottle arts and music festival on the shores of Kern County’s Buena Vista Lake earlier this spring, her ticket never mentioned she might end up with a fungus growing in her lungs.
After weeks of night sweats, “heaviness and a heat” in her left lung, a cough that wouldn’t quit and a painful rash on her legs, her physician brother said she might have valley fever, a potentially deadly disease caused by a dust-loving fungus that lives in the soils of the San Joaquin Valley.
Bruhn said she hadn’t been warned beforehand that Kern County and Buena Vista Lake are endemic for coccidioides — the fungus that causes the disease.
“If there had been a warning that there’s a potentially lethal fungal entity in the soil, there’s no way I would have gone,” said the San Francisco-based artist. “Honestly, I would have just been paranoid to breathe the whole entire time I was there.”
The incidence and range of valley fever has grown dramatically over the last two decades, and some experts warn that the fungus is growing increasingly resistant to drugs — a phenomenon they say is due to the spraying of antifungal agents on area crops.
As annual cases continue to rise, local health officers have sought to increase awareness of the disease and its symptoms, which are often misdiagnosed. This messaging however focuses only on Kern County and other Central Valley locations and rarely reaches those who live outside Kern County, or other high-risk areas.
In the case of the Lightning in a Bottle festival, Bruhn said she wasn’t provided with any information about the risk on her ticket, or in materials provided to her by the event organizers. As far as she can recall, there were no signs or warnings at the site where she ate, slept, danced and inhaled dust for six straight days.
And she wasn’t the only one infected. According to state health officials, 19 others were diagnosed with coccidioidomycosis in the weeks and months following the event. Five were hospitalized.
According to a statement provided by the California Department of Public Health, officials have been in communication with organizers and “encouraged” them to notify “attendees about valley fever and providing attendees with recommendations to follow up with healthcare providers if they develop illness.”
Do LaB, the company that stages the festival, said through a spokesperson that it adheres to the health and safety guidance provided by federal, state and local authorities. “Health and safety is always the primary concern,” they said.
The company’s website warns festivalgoers about the prevalence of dust — but doesn’t mention the fungus or the disease.
“Some campgrounds and stage areas will be on dusty terrain,” the website says. “We strongly recommend that everyone bring a scarf, bandana, or dust mask in case the wind kicks up! We also recommend goggles and sunglasses.”
Bruhn said that’s not enough.
“I think it’s really irresponsible to have a festival in a place where breathing is possibly a life-threatening act,” she said.
Kern County’s health department is also in discussions with the production company.
Kern County’s Buena Vista Lake was the site of the Lightning in a Bottle festival this spring.
(Nora Bruhn)
In California, the number of valley fever cases has risen more than 600% since 2000. In 2001, fewer than 1,500 Californians were diagnosed. Last year, that number was more than 9,000.
Most people who are infected will not experience symptoms, and their bodies will fight off the infection naturally. Those who do suffer symptoms however are often hard-pressed to recognize them, as they resemble the onset of COVID or the flu. This further complicates efforts to address the disease.
Take for example the case of Brynn Carrigan, Kern County’s director of public health.
In April, Carrigan began getting a lot of headaches. Not really a “headache person,” she chalked them up to stress: Managing a high-profile public health job while also parenting two teenagers. But as the days and weeks went by, the headaches became more frequent, longer in duration and increasingly painful. She also developed an agonizing sensitivity to light.
“I’ve never experienced sensitivity to light like that … all the curtains in my house had to be closed. I was wearing sunglasses inside — because even the clock on my microwave and my oven, and the cable box … oh, my God, it caused excruciating pain,” she said. In order to leave the house, she had to put a blanket over her head because the pain caused by sunlight was unbearable.
She also developed nausea and began vomiting, which led to significant weight loss. Soon she became so exhausted she couldn’t shower without needing to lie down and sleep afterward.
Her doctors ordered blood work and a CT scan. They told her to get a massage, suggesting her symptoms were the result of tension. Another surmised her symptoms were the result of dehydration.
Eventually, it got so bad she was hospitalized.
When test results came in, her doctors told Carrigan she had a case of disseminated valley fever, a rare but very serious form of the disease that affects the brain and spine rather than the lungs. In retrospect, she said she probably had the disease for months.
Valley fever, a fungal infection, spreads through dust.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
And yet, here she was, arguably the most high-profile public health official in a county recognized as a hot spot for the fungus and the disease, misdiagnosed by herself and other health professionals repeatedly before someone finally decided to test her for the fungus.
Now she’ll have to take expensive antifungal medications for the rest of her life — medication that has resulted in her losing her hair, including her eyelashes, as well as making her skin and mouth constantly dry.
As a result of Carrigan’s experience, her agency is running public service announcements on TV, radio and in movie theaters. She does news conferences, talks to reporters and runs presentations for outdoor workforces — solar farms, agriculture and construction — to educate those “individuals that have no choice but to be outside and really disturbing the soil.” She’s also hoping to get in schools.
But she realizes her influence is geographically constrained. She can really only speak to the people who live there.
For people who come to Kern County for a visit — like Bruhn and the 20,000 other concertgoers who attended Lightning in a Bottle this year — once they leave, they’re on their own.
A truck raises dust on a dirt road in Bakersfield in March 2022.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Outside of California, valley fever is also prevalent in Arizona and some areas of Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Texas, as well as parts of Mexico and Central and South America
Experts worry that as the range of valley fever spreads — whether by a changing climate, shifting demographics, or increased construction in areas once left to coyotes, desert rodents and cacti — more and more severe cases will appear.
They’re also concerned that the fungus is building resistance to the medicines used to fight it.
Antje Lauer, a professor of microbiology at Cal State Bakersfield and a “cocci” fungus expert, said she and her students have found growing pharmaceutical resistance in the fungus, the result of the use of agricultural fungicides on crops.
She said the drug fluconazole — the fungicide doctors prescribe off-label to treat the disease — is nearly identical in molecular structure to the antifungal agents “being sprayed against plant pathogens. … So when a pathogen gets exposed via those pesticides, the valley fever fungus is also in those soils. It gets exposed and is building an immunity.”
It’s the kind of thing that really concerns G.R. Thompson, a professor of medicine at UC Davis and an expert in the treatment of valley fever and other fungal diseases.
“If you ask me, what keeps you up at night about valley fever or fungal infections?, it’s what we do to the environment” he said. “We learned that giving chickens and livestock antibiotics was bad, because even though they grew faster, it led to antibiotic resistance. Right now, we’re kind of having our own reckoning with fungal infections in the environment. We’re putting down antifungals on our crops, and now our fungi are become resistant before our patients have ever even been treated.”
He said he and other health and environment professionals are working with various local, state and federal agencies “to make sure that everybody’s talking to each other. You know that what we’re putting down on our crops is not going to cause problems in our hospitals.”
Because at the same time, he said, there’s a growing concern that the fungus has become more severe in terms of clinical outcomes.
“We’re seeing more patients in the hospital this year than ever before, which has us wondering … has the fungus changed?” he said, quickly adding that health experts are actively investigating this question and don’t have an answer.
John Galgiani, who runs the Valley Fever Center for Excellence out of the University of Arizona in Tucson, is hopeful that a vaccine may be forthcoming.
He said a Long Beach-based medical startup called Anivive got a contract to take a vaccine that’s being developed for dogs — outdoor-loving creatures with noses to the ground and a penchant for digging, and therefore susceptible to the disease — and reformulate it to make it suitable for human clinical trials.
He said prison populations, construction workers, farmworkers, firefighters, archaeologists — anyone who digs in the soil, breaths it in or spends time outdoors in these areas — would be suitable populations for such inoculations.
But he, like everyone else The Times spoke with, believes education and outreach are the most important tools in the fight against the disease.
As there is with any other risky activity, he said, if people are aware, such knowledge empowers them with choice — and in this case, the tools they need to help themselves should they fall ill.
California health officials are urging people who attended the Kern County music festival Lightning in a Bottle to seek medical care if they are experiencing respiratory symptoms or a fever.
Authorities have identified five patients with valley fever who attended the six-day event, which was held May 22-27 at Buena Vista Lake, near Bakersfield. Three people have been hospitalized.
More than 20,000 people attended the festival.
One attendee, on a Reddit r/LightningInaBottle thread, said a festival companion had been hospitalized for two weeks with “severe” valley fever.
“If you get unexplainable symptoms such as fever, chills, and headaches/neck pain,” the user wrote, “let the doctors know it could be valley fever, even though it’s been several months.”
Valley fever is an infectious disease caused by the coccidioides fungus, which grows in the soil and dirt in some areas of California. It is most commonly found in the San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast of California.
Health officials say that most people exposed to this fungus don’t end up developing the disease, but it can infect the lungs and cause respiratory symptoms in some people, including cough, difficulty breathing, fever and fatigue.
In rare cases, the fungus can spread to other parts of the body and cause severe disease.
Valley fever is not contagious. Past outbreaks have been linked to dust and dirt exposure at outdoor events and job sites where dirt is disturbed — in areas of the state where the fungus is common.
Valley fever is on the rise in California, with particularly high numbers of cases reported in 2023 and 2024. The fungus appears to flourish in wet years.
A 2022 study in the medical journal the Lancet concluded that multiyear cycles of dry conditions followed by wet winters increased transmission, especially in areas that were historically wetter. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and duration of drought throughout the Southwestern United States, potentially increasing the prevalence of valley fever spores and fungus.
Kern County has the highest incidence rate in the state, and it accounts — on average — for about a third of the cases.
State health officials say that people who have visited Kern County in recent months and are experiencing respiratory symptoms that have not improved or are lasting longer than a week should see a healthcare provider and ask about possible valley fever.
They also urge people to mention attendance at the music festival or travel to Kern County.
Attendees can visit the California Department of Public Health’s valley fever survey website for more information and to share details about any illness.
Another Reddit user said they came down with the disease two weeks after returning from the festival to their home in Colorado.
The music fan described a “terrible” cough, headache, body aches, fever and chills. The Reddit user is not sure they’d go again next year.
“Don’t want to miss … but I also don’t want a fungal lung infection again. Yikes.”
The 38,000-acre Borel fire in Kern County has leveled the tiny, historic mining town of Havilah. The fire ignited Wednesday in the Kern River canyon and spread rapidly as it met with strong winds, officials said. It ran through Havilah on Friday night and razed almost the entire town, appearing to spare only a few buildings.
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Breckenridge Mountain is obscured by smoke from the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members of the Iron Mountain Hand Crew move to the front as dozens of firefighters manage the southeastern flank of the Borel fire near the community of Twin Oaks.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, killing livestock and leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Borel fire devastated the town of Havilah, leaving many residents homeless.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A horrifying video circulating on social media Friday appeared to show a man carrying a severed body part of someone killed by a train in Wasco.
The sheriff’s office said a man was arrested following the alleged incident.
The video was recorded following a deadly train collision and shared with 17 News.
The Kern County Fire Department said emergency crews responded to a report of a train colliding with a person near G and 7th streets in Wasco at around 8:05 a.m. A person was pronounced dead from the collision.
A witness told 17 News it appeared the man was carrying a severed leg.
The sheriff’s office said Friday afternoon Resendo Tellez, 27, removed evidence from the scene. Deputies located and arrested Tellez a short time later at 7th and F streets, according to inmate records.
Tellez was booked into jail for taking evidence from a scene and outstanding warrants, officials said in a release. BNSF is investigating the collision.
According to inmate records, Tellez is booked on a charge of removing or mutilating human remains.
Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff’s office at 661-861-3110.
Friday’s incident marks possibly the second time this year someone removed a body part from a crash scene.
Carlos Baldovinos, executive director of The Mission at Kern County, said he wasn’t present for the incident, but was told someone brought a hand to the shelter three weeks ago, just days after a train hit a pedestrian in east Bakersfield.
He said law enforcement was called.
“I have never seen or heard of anything like that before,” Baldovinos said.
Where did the hand come from? That’s unclear.
The mystery deepens even further: police say Union Pacific investigators accounted for all body parts in the east Bakersfield crash.
BPD Sgt. Eric Celedon said he could not locate a call for service at the mission on the day the hand was reportedly brought there.
