In a blow to California progressives, newly-installed Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced today that he is ditching plans for high-speed rail connecting San Francisco and LA. High-speed rail had long been a major transportation objective of California progressives, and a project championed by environmentalists. In addition, it was a project that many flying-averse travelers had hoped would come online in the next few years. Newly-sworn in US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” calls for the eventual elimination of airplanes and a shift to green-powered trains as a method of trans-continental and long-distance travel. Newsom abandoning high speed rail between California’s two major population centers threatens to make that objective significantly harder to achieve, long term.