Amtrak CEO landed on the way when Trump and Musk threatened to privatize the company
The latest victim of the Trump administration’s obsession with the appearance of efficiency is the one who made the train run on time. Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner, who held the position since 2022, suddenly announced that he will step down as Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Wednesday and place the train company on the crosshairs in search of potential privatization.
“I resigned as CEO to ensure Amtrak continues to enjoy the full confidence and confidence of this administration,” Gardner said in a statement. Prior to his best position at the company, he served as Chief Operating and Business Officer at Amtrak since 2009 and as president of the organization since 2020. Although he has been in the C-Suite for a while, Gardner has some pretty reliable certificates as a train enthusiast. He previously served as the conductor and operations manager for the Central Railroad in Maine and founded a punk band called Chessie, which comes from Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.
Despite this (or therefore), Gardner found himself in the rocks and hard places of the new administration. Trump's anger at Amtrak is nothing new – the new attempt to cut the company's federal funding in half of his first administration – but this time it turned sharply. Earlier this year, Trump's federal funding frozen billions of dollars in support of railroads, and Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been urging Amtrak to force Amtrak to end the diversity, equity and inclusion program and to require employees' authorization to return orders or lose federal support.
Even if Gardner tries to meet as much as the Trump administration’s demands as possible, it seems inevitable that he and the company will continue to face significant scrutiny. Earlier this month, Elon Musk suggested privatizing Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. He called Amtrak “a bit awkward” and said at a meeting: “If you're from another country, don't use our national railroads. This can make you feel very bad about the United States.”
Amtrak will start from a year with record passenger volumes, which is convenient for the ever-expanding expansion of available routes, as part of a plan to provide rail services to another 40 million people in the coming years.
Now, perhaps taking the company private will expand this expansion. Let's examine how Musk's boring company has made efforts to provide high-speed, mass transport solutions… It seems that the company has built 2.4 miles of a proposed 68-mile network in Las Vegas, all of which are done with minimal oversight or intervention from regulators. This is the best performance in the company! This doesn't even involve many projects that boring companies promise to just delay or give up directly, as they proved to be too expensive to continue. Say what you mean to Amtrak, but by comparison, it looks pretty good.
