When Newsom and the Sacramento Democrats took over your choice of cars to drives, a dozen other States passed similar laws. As if government had the right to spend your money or force you to walk/bike to work.
“The Senate measure, which only needs a simple majority to pass, would nix a waiver granted late in the Biden administration for California to set nation-leading emissions standards that would have forced automakers in a number of states to electrify their fleets quickly or face steep fines. It would also be a blow to California’s longstanding ability to set its own emission regulations that the auto industry has criticized for decades.
The EV mandate is based on the climate change canard. It costs Californians $10-30,000 more per car. Worse, other States, using the California law, are doing the same to their residents. The good news is that Congress is going to end this corruption and cause of inflation. Want an EV? Buy it. Want a hybrid or gas powered car? Buy it. Your choice, not that of Gavin Newsom.
Senate to vote on voiding California EV rule this week in break with norms
Grant Schwab, The Detroit News, 5/20/25 https://archive.ph/2025.05.20-232613/https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2025/05/20/senate-to-break-norms-vote-on-voiding-california-ev-rule-this-week/83745308007/#selection-266.0-1849.170
Washington — The U.S. Senate will vote within days on overturning California’s stringent and influential regulations mandating 100% electric vehicle sales by 2035, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday.
The move has massive implications for the U.S. auto industry and represents a dramatic break from past procedure by Senate Republicans.
“While the Biden EPA EV mandate was bad,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said in a floor speech, “California is much worse. And (if) we don’t act, the consequences to our economy, the consumers and to our electricity supply could be devastating.”
The Senate measure, which only needs a simple majority to pass, would nix a waiver granted late in the Biden administration for California to set nation-leading emissions standards that would have forced automakers in a number of states to electrify their fleets quickly or face steep fines. It would also be a blow to California’s longstanding ability to set its own emission regulations that the auto industry has criticized for decades.
Detroit-based General Motors Co. cheered the development: “GM believes in customer choice, and we continue to focus on offering the best and broadest portfolio of vehicles on the market,” spokesperson Bill Grotz said in a Tuesday statement. “GM has long supported one national standard and consistency in emissions regulations that are aligned with market realities; the CRA measure would help ensure this.”
Even though Michigan is not among the states that have pledged to follow California’s standards, the fate of the regulations is a question with billions of dollars at stake for the Detroit Three automakers over the next decade.
Ford Motor Co. declined to comment. Stellantis similarly declined, instead deferring to past statements from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the top automotive lobbying group in Washington. The group has adamantly pushed against the regulations.
The decision to hold a vote at all on California’s waiver has been the subject of fierce partisan and legal debate, as Republicans are overruling the Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan arbiter of chamber rules — to do so.
“It’s not even a sledgehammer. It’s like a nuclear bomb,” Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, said of the break from typical procedure. “It sets a really dangerous precedent and basically subjects a lot more to the procedures within the Congressional Review Act than the Act intends.”
Senate Republicans plan to vote on the California waiver using the CRA, a law that gives Congress the power to cancel rules set by outgoing presidents, so long as the rules were finalized within the last 60 legislative days of a given year. Proponents of the waiver have argued that it is not a rule and therefore not subject to the CRA.
Former Democratic President Joe Biden, notably, could have skirted the issue by issuing the waiver earlier in his presidency. But Biden’s wait until the final days of his term left the waiver vulnerable to a CRA challenge.
Crucially, all CRA measures require only a simple majority in both the House and Senate. That gives measures an easier path in the Senate, where most actions require 60 votes.
The House voted 246-164 earlier in May to pass a CRA measure to overturn the California waiver. Three Michigan House lawmakers were among 35 Democrats who voted for the measure: U.S. Reps. Shri Thanedar of Detroit, Hillary Scholten of Grand Rapids and Kristen McDonald Rivet of Bay City.
“You should get to choose what kind of car is right for you,” McDonald Rivet said in a statement following the vote.
Precedent, procedure
Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Ann Arbor opposed the measure on procedural grounds. She warned against setting a “dangerous precedent.”
“I share concerns about consumer choice, but this Congressional Review Act resolution has serious legal flaws,” she said in a May 1 floor speech. “Misusing the CRA today could open the door to striking down a wide range of federal programs tomorrow, including Medicaid waivers, which worries me greatly. I don’t sleep at night on that one.”
In passing the measure, the House went against an opinion from the Government Accountability Office — an independent, nonpartisan agency within Congress — that the California waivers could not be overturned through CRA action. The GAO affirmed that position in March.
Democratic senators said last month that the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, affirmed that emissions waivers for California, legally, are not rules and therefore not subject to the CRA. The text of her stance on the matter has not been made public.
Republicans, meanwhile, have disagreed with the GAO and Senate parliamentarian’s determinations and announced plans to move ahead anyway. Thune, in his Tuesday speech, pushed back against critics condemning the move as a break from procedure.
“Let’s be very clear: the EPA has submitted the waivers to Congress as rules, which is all the Congress has ever needed to decide to consider something under the Congressional Review Act,” he said. “There can be no question if these waivers are rules in substance, given their widespread effects.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration did not submit the waiver as rules to Congress. But Lee Zeldin, the agency’s new administrator under President Donald Trump, did so on Feb. 14.
Thune continued: “This debate … is not about destroying Senate procedure or any other hysterical claim the Democrats are making … The fact of the matter is that their purported concerns here are entirely misplaced. We are not talking about doing anything to erode the institutional character of the Senate.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., joined by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the GOP whip, left, talks to reporters at the Capitol, in Washington, Tuesday, April 1, 2025. Thune said Tuesday, May 20, that the Senate is within its rights to vote on canceling California’s emissions regulations that would essentially bad sales of new gas-powered cars in 2035. J. Scott Applewhite, AP
Michigan’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township and Elissa Slotkin of Holly, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the upcoming vote.
Overruling the Senate parliamentarian is legal, albeit rare. There have been two notable examples in recent history, Governing magazine noted in a 2021 article. In 2013, Democrats overruled MacDonough to eliminate filibusters to approve presidential nominees. Four years later, the GOP expanded the filibuster ban on Supreme Court nominations.
Michael Buschbacher and Jimmy Conde, two attorneys who represent clients seeking to block pro-EV regulations, have vigorously argued that California’s waivers can be canceled via the CRA.
“The Parliamentarian’s job is to advise on matters of Senate procedure and precedent. But whether an executive agency’s action is a ‘rule’ under the CRA isn’t a procedural question,” they wrote in March comments published by the Yale Journal on Regulation.
The duo continued: “Congress — not the Parliamentarian — is the ultimate arbiter of what its statutes mean. Any procedural question here is entirely downstream.”
Dan Becker, an environmental lawyer and director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign, forcefully disagreed.
“The Senate vote would be illegal and a fundamental betrayal of democracy. Republicans plan to kill clean air protections based on a lie about the law,” he said in a statement. “In their fervor to repay Big Oil and Big Auto campaign donors, Republicans are willing to defy the law, poison the air and cook the planet. We’re now witnessing one of the greatest payoffs in history.”
California and environmental groups are likely to mount legal challenges if the Senate overturns the rule.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom convened a special state legislative session in November to focus on “bolstering California legal resources” related to environmental issues, among others, against actions from the incoming Trump administration.
“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle. California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond,” he said in a press release at the time.
The state’s emissions regulator, the California Air Resources Board, bashed Republicans’ decision to hold the vote, saying in a statement that the move is “inconsistent with past precedent and violates the plain language of the Congressional Review Act itself.”
The agency added: “The vote does not change CARB’s authority. CARB will continue its mission to protect the public health of Californians impacted by harmful air pollution.”
State, national impacts
The U.S. auto industry has lobbied heavily in recent months to have the waiver overturned, claiming that the strict emissions rules would represent an existential threat to automakers and dealerships if they remain in place.
“That’s what we’re really afraid of, because we only have 22% of our sales statewide are electric vehicles,” said Brett Hedrick, owner of Hedrick’s Chevrolet near Fresno, California. He said dealers cannot force buyers to purchase EVs: “It should be dictated by the market.”
Commitments to California regulations
Originally, thirteen states and the District of Columbia pledged to adopt California’s newest light-duty vehicle regulations. Three states have since rescinded their commitment.
Committed to adopting rules
Withdrew or delayed commitment
Not committed
California’s new emissions regulations — for now — are set to begin in 2026 and ramp up over the next decade. The standards apply to California and all states that voluntarily adopt them within the next two years, with some joining in 2026 and others in 2027.
Thanks to particularities of the federal Clean Air Act, states cannot tweak or downgrade the rules to fit their auto market. They are either all in or all out.
States voluntarily adhering to California’s vehicle emissions rules is not a new phenomenon. They have had the authority to do so since 1977, and 17 have adopted at least one Golden State regulation since the early 1990s.
Thirteen states previously agreed to join California’s latest regulatory regime, known as Advanced Clean Cars II. Collectively, the mostly coastal states represent more than one-third of the U.S. population.
But some states, like Virginia last year, have backed out after determining that most automakers in their state would fail to meet annual benchmarks for EV sales. The governors of Vermont and Maryland have taken actions in recent weeks to delay enforcement as the regulations’ effective date — along with steep penalties for noncompliance — draws closer.
For each gas-powered vehicle an automaker sells out of compliance with the regulations, they would face a $20,000 fine. Companies have argued that the requirements will force them to sell fewer vehicles overall, manipulating sales to make it so EVs represent a higher share of transactions.
ZEV sales in 2024
Most states that have adopted California’s regulations are significantly behind the model year 2026 and 2027 sales requirements for zero emission vehicles, defined as plug-in electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Maryland and Vermont have recently sought to delay their adoption of the rules.
“It’s a situation that becomes very dire very quickly, not only for my business, but for the economic stability of my state,” Brion Stapp, who runs Stapp Interstate Toyota near Denver, told a group of D.C. reporters in February.
Stapp continued: “People who live in Colorado might want to go fishing, they might want to go camping, they might want to go skiing, and if I do not have a vehicle on my lot that’s available for sale that meets those needs, they’re going to drive an hour north to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and they’re going to buy it there.”
California and environmental groups have claimed, however, that the standards are reasonable and achievable as the United States seeks to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
Kathy Harris, director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s clean vehicles program, said in an October interview with The Detroit News that automakers were an active part of shaping the ACC II regulations before they were finalized and have had “lots of time to be prepared.”
“It’s also worth noting,” she said in an email, “that dealers have 76 billion very specific reasons to hate EVs: there are fewer expensive repairs with EVs. In just the first half of 2024, dealers did 133 million repairs, making $76 billion on that work.”
Harris continued: “Dealers may be sad about losing those profits, but that would be $76 billion in drivers’ pockets that they could use on something much more enjoyable.”
