The Brief

The CEO of California’s high-speed rail authority resigned late Wednesday, saying he needs to focus on “important personal and family priorities,” according to a copy of the emailed resignation obtained by CalMatters.

“This has not been an easy decision, as leading the Authority has been one of the most meaningful and rewarding chapters of my professional life,” wrote Chief Executive Ian Choudri.

The abrupt announcement comes in the midst of a two-day meeting of the board that oversees the project, which continues Thursday. It follows Choudri’s tumultuous two-year tenure, which has been troubled by budget woes, project delays, transparency concerns and various scandals including the misuse of nearly $600,000 in taxpayer money for questionable trips by rail authority consultants.

Under Choudri, the authority also lost $4 billion in federal funding under President Donald Trump’s administration, after the agency repeatedly missed deadlines required by the funding agreement to buy trains. The state initially sued Trump for the funding but abruptly dropped the lawsuit in December 2025, blaming Trump as “not a reliable partner” and turning to private investors instead.

Choudri did not respond to an email or text from CalMatters requesting comment Wednesday night. It is unclear when his last day will be.

State investigators last month found the rail agency’s consultants flew first class, hailed premium rides and traveled to a nightclub, cigar lounge and restaurants on taxpayers’ dime, sometimes at Choudri’s request. Many of the trips involved traveling to Folsom, the Sacramento suburb where Choudri has a home, sometimes after hours.

The board voted earlier this month to limit Choudri’s contracting authority following the probe, requiring the in-house legal counsel to sign off first on contracts under $25 million.

The board has been weighing additional disciplinary action against Choudri for weeks, including possible termination, according to a source with the authority who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

California voters in 2008 approved a $10 billion bond to build a bullet train connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020, with a projected cost of $45 billion. But progress stalled amid rising costs, legal fights and funding uncertainties.

The authority’s latest business plan said the project could now cost between $126 billion and $231 billion, with the current 171-mile leg between Merced and Bakersfield under construction, and a full buildout expected by 2040.

The board was supposed to decide at the meeting this week if Choudri qualified for a potential $25,000 bonus based on his performance this year, agency spokesperson Micah Flores told CalMatters last month.

Choudri’s compensation this year is more than $534,000, according to agency spokesperson Annie Parker.

Cost overruns, project delays, legal challenges

Choudri was hired in August 2024 after spending decades in transportation engineering, with experience building high-speed rail in France and Spain. The board hired him in part due to his “strong understanding of complex transportation projects,” according to then-board chair Tom Richards.

Under Choudri, the agency has continued construction of the Central Valley segment and is on the cusp of getting environmental clearance from the state for all 500 miles of planned railway between San Francisco and Southern California. Newsom, a big supporter of the rail project, has committed $1 billion a year from the state’s climate fund toward the rail project until 2045.

Choudri has also led efforts to cut consultant contract costs, attract private investments and speed up contracting, rail authority chief of staff Mark Tollefson said during a Wednesday presentation touting Choudri’s achievements.

Ian Choudri, CEO of California High Speed Rail, speaks during a press conference on the high-speed rail project at the Wasco Rail Yard facility in Wasco on Feb. 3, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters

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On Wednesday, the board unanimously approved a $772.1 million contract to Germany-based Siemens Mobility, Inc. to design, build and test three seven-car high-speed bullet trains by 2030. The authority will also pay up to $63.7 million in import duties and tariffs, because the trains will be designed and built in Germany.

The vote comes three years after the agency first opened bidding for six trainsets in August 2023 to qualify for more than $3 billion in federal grants, before ultimately losing the funding following missed deadlines.

In his resignation letter, Choudri said he was proud to have transformed the project.

“I took on a project facing significant challenges and serious questions about its prospects for success, and led its turnaround into a successful program,” he wrote.

But the project has continued to face significant cost overruns, schedule delays and lawsuits.

The train agency could run out of cash by December 2027, the office of inspector general warned in July. Meanwhile, the authority failed to make clear in its latest business plan that the Central Valley segment is now expected to be completed by 2034 at a cost likely exceeding $40 billion, the inspector general said.

The authority also based its project schedule on the assumption it would achieve legislative proposals it failed to push through this year.

To save money, the authority proposed shrinking the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment by 9 miles and moving the downtown Merced station to South Merced, in apparent violation of state law. It also requested an exemption from environmental regulations and solicited contractors for the new location, prompting a lawsuit this month from the Central Valley coalition Community Alliance for a Sustainable Economy.

“This challenge follows an unlawful pattern of behavior by the HSRA — proposing to relocate the downtown Merced station, then acting as if that move has been approved when it has not,” the complaint said.

Questionable trips plague the authority

Between 2024 and 2026, employees from four consulting firms working for Choudri's agency billed the state for questionable trips to locations including gyms, a nightclub, an escape room, a tiki bar and a cigar lounge, according to last month’s probe by the inspector general’s office overseeing the rail agency.

Many trips were poorly justified, yet the agency routinely reimbursed them without sufficient vetting, the inspector general said.

One legal consultant traveled between Denver and Sacramento 30 times in a year, charging the state $86,500 in “travel time” payments and an additional $40,800 in reimbursements.

In a testy meeting earlier this month, the board accused them of using the agency as a “piggy bank.”

On Wednesday, authority staff reported that the consulting firms have paid nearly $1.3 million in reimbursements to the agency.

CalMatters filed a public records request last month seeking the questionable travel invoices from the inspector general’s office. The agency provided records only from one firm, Nossaman, arguing that the records for other consultants are related to audits or investigations and therefore are not required to be publicly disclosed under a recent law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The records that were released were heavily redacted by both the inspector general’s office and the rail agency, which argued much of the information is protected by attorney-client privilege.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

On a tour of Orange County’s voting headquarters on Wednesday, Registrar Bob Page demonstrated the careful, multi-step process through which voters’ ballots are validated and counted.

As the federal government raises the specter of unsubstantiated voter fraud, Page’s message was clear: “ I want voters to know that we're doing everything we can to make sure they can vote safely and securely."

More than 380,000 Orange County ballots have been returned as of Oct. 27, Page said. That’s about 80,000 more ballots than was received around the same time in 2022, the last mid-term elections.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page addresses the media and other members of the public in attendance as part of a tour of the voting operations on Wednesday, less than one week before Election Day.

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Kavish Harjai

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LAist.com

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The journey of a ballot in Orange County

Collecting, and counting, all those ballots takes time. Page explained that two-person teams are dispatched to collect dropped-off ballots every day during election season.

The ballot drop-off boxes in Orange County are made of steel, weigh more than 1,000 pounds and are bolted to the concrete, Page said.

The ballot retrieval duos are required to follow a strict process to ensure the chain of custody remains secure, including taking photos showing they’ve picked up the ballots, properly locked the retrieval door and that the internal fire suppression canister is intact.

The locations of the two-person teams are GPS-tracked by separate teams, which also review the photo evidence before giving the ballot retrieval duos the green light to go to their next stops.

An overhead camera shows the process that occurs after the signatures on a ballot have been verified and the ballot is then ready to be counted.

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Kavish Harjai

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LAist.com

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Signature verification

Once a ballot reaches the Registrar of Voters’ office, the next step is ensuring the signature on the envelope matches the voter's signatures in their registration file.

“If we do challenge [a signature], we’re required under state law to send a first-class letter notice to that voter,” Page said, adding that state statute affords voters until the day before Thanksgiving this year to correct errant signatures.

Page said three election workers must agree that enough of a discrepancy exists before the decision to challenge a signature is made.

Around 1.9% of the nearly 718,000 vote-by-mail ballots returned in the June primary election in Orange County were rejected, largely due to signature mismatch or because they weren’t received in time, according to the California Secretary of State.

Verified ballots are then separated from their envelopes and sorted before they’re prepared to be scanned and, finally, counted. The equipment used to tally votes isn’t connected to the internet, and access to the room the equipment is housed in is limited, according to Page.

Threats from the federal government

On Wednesday evening, a federal judge denied an emergency request from the Department of Justice to segregate 20,000 ballots across California that the federal government said were sent to “likely” noncitizens.

More than 1,750 of those people identified were in Orange County, according to a letter Bill Essayli, top federal prosecutor for the Central District of California, delivered to the county registrar’s office Monday.

The Department of Justice said it will appeal the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, who, in his decision, said the federal government’s attempted move could “wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”

California Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta called the ruling an “important victory,” but warned “the fight is not over.”

On Wednesday, before the ruling came down, Bonta released resources about election integrity in the state, including guidance for local election officials if law enforcement attempts to “access election sites where ballots are cast, processed, or counted.”

Page said he’s fielded more questions from the public this year about the potential for law enforcement to interfere in the election. He said he will have open lines of communication with partners with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and  Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center should the threat arise.

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.

The U.S. Justice Department has issued subpoenas to California officials in an escalation of its scrutiny of local election administration.

The Associated Press obtained copies of three subpoenas sent Oct. 21 to employees of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, ordering them to appear in court on Nov. 4, the day after the election. The documents request any records, documents and communications related to letters sent in July and October by federal officials to state election officials outlining allegations of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls. The subpoenas also seek information relating to the office’s “methods for screening for unlawful voting by aliens” and anything about efforts to prevent noncitizen votes from being counted.

The subpoenas were being issued by all four U.S. attorneys in California, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County registrar, said, “threats and intimidated have no place in elections.”

Subpoenas come amid ongoing court battle

The Trump administration has sued to force California to set aside up to 20,000 ballots it suspects went to noncitizens and not count them until citizenship can be verified. A district court judge on Tuesday rejected that request, then on Thursday appointed a special master to evaluate the administration’s claims.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter did not specify the exact scope of special master Daniel B. Garrie’s responsibilities, but said he would be tasked with “developing the factual record” for the court.

In a Tuesday court hearing, Carter said he wanted to vet the federal government’s list of over 20,000 alleged noncitizen voters since there has been extensive debate over its reliability and both sides have agreed that it includes an unspecified number of citizens.

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Carter also said at the hearing that a special master could investigate California’s claims that it cannot logistically separate the ballots in time for the county election certification deadline on Dec. 3. The federal government has contested that assertion.

It is not clear what would happen if a special master did find a substantial number of noncitizen voters on the federal government’s list or whether it would affect the certification of California’s election results. The 20,000 people on the DOJ’s list constitute only a small fraction of California’s 23 million voters.

Trump administration appeals to higher court

Meanwhile, the Trump administration asked a federal appeals court to quickly weigh in.

The Justice Department said in a late Wednesday filing that it’s essential the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issue a ruling as soon as possible due to “irreversible ballot processing occurring on an ongoing basis.”

Carter’s decision was the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump in his efforts to expand federal control over state-run elections in the midterms that will decide control of Congress for the rest of his term. The Justice Department has made similar demands in other states, including Washington. Noncitizen voting has been a central focus of Trump’s political messaging for years, although available data indicates it is exceedingly rare.

Trump blasted Carter’s ruling against the federal government on Thursday morning before heading to a campaign rally in South Carolina.

“California is very corrupt. The elections are extremely corrupt. The judge should not have done that but we’ll appeal that, of course,” he told reporters. Trump added without evidence that there are “hundreds of thousands” and then amended it to “millions, in my opinion” of “bad ballots” in California.

Carter, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, argued that the Justice Department’s demands were a clear violation of the National Voter Registration Act, which prohibits changes to voter rolls or election procedure within 90 days of an election.

A number of US citizens were included in the Justice Department’s list of names

Both sides agree that an unspecified number of citizens were inadvertently included. Carter argued that separating the ballots at this point would risk disenfranchising citizens and “wreak havoc” on the election certification process.

Over 500,000 votes have already been processed in Los Angeles County alone, according to court filings. The system also protects voter privacy: Once a vote is processed, it cannot be traced back to the person who cast it.

Carter is to rule on the government’s renewed request for a preliminary injunction, which would bar the state from counting the ballots until the litigation is resolved. He said he will do so after a Nov. 13 evidentiary hearing with input from the special master.

He said that if the federal government suspected noncitizens were voting, it could continue to prosecute those cases criminally. Federal authorities have charged over two dozen foreign nationals in California as part of a statewide sweep targeting people officials allege have illegally registered or voted in U.S. elections.

Appeals panel judges have said they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots this close to midterms

The appeal will be the second time that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will consider the case.

The first time was just last week when the Justice Department argued before an appeals court panel that a fast ruling on its request was needed to stop any counting of the ballots.

Although the panel ruled it was premature for an appeals court to get involved before a lower-court ruling, two of the three judges wrote separate concurrences making it clear they wouldn’t support setting aside ballots at this late date. They questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of alleged noncitizen voters and argued that to set aside votes risks disenfranchising citizens.

One judge dissented, arguing that federal law bars noncitizens from voting and requires California to vet the potentially illegal ballots before counting them. The failure to do so, he wrote, would cause irreparable harm to the election.