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Californias House Republicans have asked the Trump administration to block a pending federal grant that will ultimately support the states high speed rail project until an audit of the projects finances is completed.

The letter, signed by all 14 members of the states GOP delegation, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, was sent to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Itcites cost increases, reductions in the projects scope and its failure to attract private financing.

Dated Jan. 24, the letter asks Chao to stop approval of a $650-million grant that the Transportation Department could make to the Bay Areas Caltrain commuter rail agency as early as next week aspart of an effort to install an electrical system. The bullet train would eventually use the same line from San Jose to San Francisco.

This latesteffort to at least temporarily derail the multibillion-dollar project comes at a particularly tense political moment.

President Trump on Sunday told a Fox News hostthatCalifornia in many ways is out of control and has vowed to cut funds to the state over immigration issues. But he has also said he will massively increase the nations infrastructure spending.

Trumps and Chaos view on the bullet train, the nations largest infrastructure project, is largely unknown. The unified position against further federal funding by the states own Republican representatives will be an early test of the new administrations direction.

California Democrats quickly countered the Republicans letter with one of their own, asking that the grant be approved, and charging that the Republicans letter misstated the fact that the grant was being sought by the rail authority, rather than the Caltrain joint powers board.

A spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) issued a statement Monday, saying the Republicans letter was rife with inaccuracies and innuendo and arguing that blocking the train would cost California thousands of jobs and make commutingbetween San Francisco and Silicon Valley, dirtier, slower and more crowded.

Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), an early and staunch supporter, called the idea that the project is a waste of tax money false, adding: The positive impacts of High Speed Rail construction can be seen in my district and throughout the Central Valley.

The rail authority did not respond to a request for comment.

If the administration cuts off related money for thebullet train and attempts to enforce stricter controls on existing multibillion-dollar grants, it could cause significant stress on a project that is already facing increasing costs and schedule delays.

Ultimately, California may have no other choice than to increase its commitment of state tax money to Gov. Jerry Browns signature project, even as the statefaces a projected budget deficit.

The letter notes that the original cost of the bullet train was estimated about $33 billion for a system that would run from San Diego to Sacramento. Since then the cost has risen to $64 billion, while the scope of the project has been sharply curtailed.

It also cites a risk analysisby the Federal Railroad Administration projected a potential $3.5-billion increase in cost forthe first segment of the project from Merced to Shafter. The analysis was made public last month by The Times.

The GOP congressionalletter, which was obtained by The Times, says providing additional funding at this time to the authority would be an irresponsible use of taxpayers dollars. In light of the new revelations from the confidential FRA report, we request no further monies be granted to the [California High-Speed Rail] Authority or the state of California for high speed rail until a full and complete audit of the project and its finances can be conducted and those finding be presented to the public.

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, has said repeatedly that serious problems in the project were not made public by the Obama Administration and has vowed to stop any future federal funding for a project that he had branded as a fiasco.

The Republican letter did not specify who would conduct the requestedaudit, but House staffers said it could be the Transportation Department inspector general or the Government Accountability Office. Such wide-ranging audits often take many months and once completed could be subject to congressional review or hearings that would take additional time.

The grant in questionis a key part of the $2-billion electrification project, which would convert Caltrains system from diesel locomotives to electric-powered cars. It was put into motion in the Obama Administrations closing days.

It requiresa 30-day notice to key members of Congress before it canbe approved. Thatwindow closes Feb. 17.

If the grant is not funded some time this month, it would have potentially devastating effects on the Caltrains electrification project, said Seamus Murphy, the rail systems chief communications officer.

The rail system, operated by a joint powers agency on the Peninsula, already has signed contracts that pledge to give a formal notice to begin work by March 1. If the agencyfails to provide that notice, it could incur penalties so severe that we might not be able to do the project, Murphy said.

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California Republicans ask Trump administration to block bullet train ... - Los Angeles Times

Fox and Friends, which for years counted Donald Trump as a regular call-in guest, has in recent weeks become a pillar of his defense. On Super Bowl weekend, the show's hosts talked about how Trump's friendship with New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was the sort of story he should tell more often, and how reasonable policies such as the travel and refugee bans were being badly spun. On Sunday, a Fox and Friends co-host asked White House press secretary Sean Spicer if people are being paid to protest the Trump administration.

Protesting has become a profession now, Spicer said. They have every right to do that, dont get me wrong. But I think we need to call it what it is. Its not these organic uprisings that we have seen over the last several decades. The tea party was a very organic movement. This has become a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.

It was the clearest endorsement yet of an idea that has become taken for granted in conservative media that the protests hounding Republican members of Congress are fabricated by big money. The chief culprit is seen to be George Soros, a financier who has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into progressive and pro-transparency causes since the 2004 election. That year, not only because of his money but also a speaking tour, Soros became a bte noire of the right, whose influence is seen wherever shadows loom, from the Syrian refugee crisisto the Holocaust.

"No, George Soros has not paid protesters or to transport protesters," said Soros spokesman Michael Vachon in an e-mail.

The idea that 2017's protests are Soros-backed largely came from a Jan. 10 article from the Media Research Center, headlined Soros Gave Nearly $90 Million to Liberal 'Women's March' Partners. The large list of Soros-aided Women's March co-sponsors, from Human Rights Watch to the Hip-Hop Caucus, was turned against the organizers and conflated with the idea that Soros had funded the march itself. (He did not.)

[How protesters plan to get under Trumps skin wherever he goes]

Similar stories about Soros's money ran on Breitbart and WorldNetDaily, among other sites, up to the march itself. Since then, viewers of Fox News Channel have been informed by both its hosts and by members of Congress that the protests were Soros-funded.

What Americans have to understand is that there is an organized effort to get Donald Trump out of office, Bill O'Reilly told viewers on Jan. 23. This is a largely unreported story. The Women's March over the weekend, a perfect example. That wasn't a spontaneous event. It was organized by far left groups, which received millions of dollars from the liberal activist George Soros. In fact, Soros has ties to 50 of the groups that attended the woman's march this weekend. Fifty. And according to the media research center, sources pumped $90 million into those groups. Some of the top of march organizers were members of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton's campaign, Bernie Sanders campaign.

A week later, on The Five, co-host Greg Gutfield hinted that the protests so well-organized ahead of time, you know, to get on buses, to go places" -- might have a funding source. Other guests were more explicit.Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a favorite of tea party activists in 2009 and 2010, said on Fox Business that the Democrats throwing up roadblocks to President Trump's nominees were doing it to please the megadonor.

They are winning over George Soros and his pocketbook, Blackburn said in a Jan. 30 interview. Because my understanding is he's the one who is funding a good bit of this.

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has repeatedly dashed off references to Soros-funded protests, too. I've got to ask you about George Soros funding protests, demonstrations, lawsuits, Dobbs asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Jan. 30. At what point does he become a subversive? I'm just curious.

I don't know, Jordan said. But what we do know is what we learned back during the campaign, when the Democrat Party was involved in disrupting Trump rallies. So we know what the left is capable of. We know what the Democrat Party was caught doing.

That was a reference to a sting, carried out by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas, that found a Wisconsin Democratic operative named Scott Foval bragging about how he'd helped bring protesters to 2016 Trump rallies and hoped for reckless Trump voters to embarrass themselves by starting fights.

We know what the national left-wing media is capable of, Dobbs said, and that is not covering it!

In reality, the mushrooming protests have been organized similarly to the very first tea party rallies, by novice political activists (some with campaign experience) getting permits or crowdsourcing their tactics. The Washington Post and other outlets have reported on the Working Families Party's Resist Trump Tuesdays, and the Indivisible Guide designed by former Democratic congressional staffers to share effective protest tactics. (According to a Lexis-Nexis search, no Fox News Channel prime time series has covered the Indivisible Guide.)

What has been missing, ironically, has been well-funded institutional support from progressive organizations. Some is in the planning stages, but it is running behind what helped the tea party in 2009. At that time, Americans for Prosperity, founded and then chaired by David Koch, was endorsing tea party events and recruiting activists to its formerly sleepy policy forums. (Americans for Prosperity has remained a grass-roots organizing juggernaut, especially in organizing the one-on-one lobbying of state legislatures.) FreedomWorks, which had tried and failed to spur anti-tax protests before 2009, similarly helped provide speakers for tea party rallies, and connected Republican candidates to a grass-roots base.

In 2009, Democrats responded to this with the same word that Spicer used: Astroturf. This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end we call it Astroturf, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an interview the morning of a wave of tea party rallies on April 15, 2009. Its not really a grass-roots movement. Its Astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class.

In hindsight, despite detailed reporting on the funding that helped grow the tea party, many Democrats view this framing as ineffective. (Only when the Koch network plunged more strategically into campaign funding though dark money did Democrats seem to win votes by attacking them.) The activists who were targeted by the Astroturf line remember it as not just ineffective, but immensely irritating.

I was annoyed then about the attacks from the left, and am still annoyed, said Brendan Steinhauser, who in 2009 and 2010 was director of grass-roots organizing at FreedomWorks. I certainly believe that while I disagree with the left's policies and politics, I think they should organize and protest, and make their case to the voters. They certainly have the right to do that, and that's their best option now given their recent electoral defeats. I'm not going to be inconsistent and call them Astroturf or attack them in the way they attacked us.

Greg Greene, who was a Democratic National Committee spokesman at the height of the Tea Party protests, recalled that the pushback didn't do much for his party.

"No one reacts well to hearing their sincere beliefs dismissed as the product of paid advocacy," said Greene. "If anything, that response entrenches the people who've been moved to protest in their antipathy toward the administration. That said, it's not as if Republicans might listen to any Dem saying, with experience, that this tactic doesn't work. But as Obama said on his way out of the White House, reality has a way of asserting itself."

More:
In echoes of 2009, Republicans see 'Astroturf' in Democratic protests - Washington Post

PRI

Trump, Putin and Republicans Wall Street Journal An American President has enormous leeway on foreign policy, and generally that's better than being micromanaged by Congress. But there are exceptions, and one of them could be President Trump and Russia. Mr. Trump has made eminently clear he ... Republicans concerned, Russians pleased with Trump's moral relativism on state-sanctioned killingPRI On Russia, Trump Is a Code Pink RepublicanBloomberg Republicans seek distance from Trump's comments on Putin, USCNBC Politico -New York Magazine -Los Angeles Times -Fox News Insider all 951 news articles »

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Trump, Putin and Republicans - Wall Street Journal

MSNBC

At public events, Republicans hounded over anti-health care plans MSNBC More than 1,000 people gathered in front of a venue that could seat 200, and many of those who got inside protested McClintock, a conservative who represents one of the state's few safe Republican seats, for favoring the president's executive orders on ... and more »

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At public events, Republicans hounded over anti-health care plans - MSNBC

The sentiment is beginning to simmer within the influential conservative wing of the Republican Party and hints at what could be the opening of an intra-party rift as the GOP's mission to overhaul the country's health care system appears to be losing steam.

In one faction are lawmakers increasingly wary of the pitfalls of a quick and sweeping repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In recent days, top congressional Republicans who are most intimately involved in health care policy have urged moderation: Fearing the consequences of a rapid repeal, they have begun to speak of "repairing" the law and even preserving aspects of it that are working.

That shift in tone has irked other Republicans who are eager to take a swift vote to roll back as much of Obamacare as possible. Their fear: their conservative constituents back home won't settle for anything else.

"For goodness sake, we should be able to put something on President Trump's desk that's at least as good as what we put on President Obama's desk. Not something watered down," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told CNN in an interview. "Let's repeal it. Let's do what the voters sent us here to do."

Asked about the political ramifications of repealing less than what the House has voted for in the past, Jordan responded forcefully. "That'd just be the flat out wrong thing to do. No. Just flat out wrong," he said.

Even Trump now seems to lower expectations. In an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that aired before the Super Bowl Sunday, Trump referred to the process of overhauling the health care system as "very complicated" and wouldn't commit to a firm timeline on when an Obamacare alternative would be rolled out.

For the most conservative members of the House, that timeline might be unacceptable.

Jordan, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, along with the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, released a statement last week calling on House leadership to bring for a vote the Obamacare repeal bill that the House passed during the last Congress. (That measure was vetoed by President Barack Obama.)

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans are currently crafting a similar budget reconciliation bill that would unravel big chunks of the law. But that process has become complicated by pressure to include Obamacare replacement measures in that legislation.

Ryan said at a news conference last week that he now hopes to move Obamacare legislation by the end of March.

Meadows told CNN that the party needs to move much faster.

"I don't know that there's any new revelations that are going to come up by waiting 60 to 90 more days," Meadows said. "We're making the whole idea of repeal and replacement far more complex and laborious than it needs to be and I think it's time that we just make some decisions and move forward with (the repeal bill)."

On considering anything less than what was voted on in 2015, Meadows quipped: "You don't get any credit with any of your constituents if you do that."

It's not clear how widespread the calls to vote on the 2015 Obamacare repeal bill could become.

But when members of the House Freedom Caucus gather for their weekly dinner in Washington early this week, they plan to discuss the topic and try to garner broader support, according to a source.

Meadows and Jordan said they support voting on a replacement bill at the same time as the repeal legislation, and are exploring potential legislation that they could rally around.

Last week, members of the Freedom Caucus met with Sen. Rand Paul to discuss the Kentucky Republican's Obamacare legislation and a potential cross-chamber partnership. Paul has been adamant that an Obamacare alternative must be ready before the GOP votes to repeal the law -- a priority echoed by many fellow Republicans.

Reassuring the public that the GOP won't allow millions to suddenly lose coverage will become an increasingly urgent task, as Republican lawmakers start to receive blowback from constituents for dismantling the Affordable Care Act at town halls across the country.

Doug Heye, who served as top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, scoffed at the complaints coming from some Republicans that the party isn't voting to repeal Obamacare quickly enough.

Heye, a CNN political commentator, witnessed first-hand the party's months-long effort in 2014 to craft an Obamacare replacement bill -- an exercise that didn't go anywhere.

"I can tell you chapter and verse about 2014 and all the meetings that I went to on replacement where we never produced draft legislation," Heye said. "We could do the repeal vote -- that was easy. Then we tried to craft the replacement legislation, which not having the Senate and not having the White House -- it was still very much of a political act. And now it's more than that."

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Republicans begin to grumble: Why haven't we repealed Obamacare yet? - CNN