Trump Blocks California E.V. Rules in Latest Move to Rein In the State

June 12, 2025

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by Laurel Rosenhall and Lisa Friedman (New York Times) California leaders said the state intends to challenge the move in court, and to find new ways to move drivers toward electric vehicles. -- President Trump signed joint resolutions of Congress on Thursday that block California’s effort to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles, his latest attempt to reduce the power of the nation’s most populous state.

The Republican-led Congress passed the resolutions in May to reverse the Biden administration’s approval of California’s electric vehicle efforts. When signed by the president, joint resolutions revoking federal rules carry the force of law and are not subject to judicial review.

Even so, the move is expected to draw an immediate legal challenge from California, as well as an executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom directing state officials to find another path that would move the state’s drivers toward electric vehicles and encourage companies to make them.

Mr. Trump signed the resolutions at a time when he was battling California on several fronts, most notably in a dispute over immigration enforcement, in which the president has sent National Guard and Marine troops to Southern California in an extraordinary use of military force.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump took aim at California’s longstanding authority under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970 to set pollution standards for the state that are more strict than federal limits, and at Governor Newsom’s ambition to fight climate change with an aggressive transition to electric vehicles. Repealing California’s automobile policy is central to Mr. Trump’s agenda of bolstering the production and use of fossil fuels in the United States, while eliminating policies that promote renewable energy and reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Trump’s action reversed a Biden administration decision that allowed the state to require that electric vehicles make up a progressively larger share of new vehicles sold in California until 2035, when the state would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars entirely.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, Mr. Trump called the California plan a “disaster” and said it “would effectively abolish the internal combustion engine, which most people prefer.”

Republican lawmakers, automobile and trucking industry leaders and oil industry executives including John B. Hess, chief executive of the Hess Corporation, were in attendance. California’s policy promoting electric vehicles would have been a major blow to the oil and gas industry.

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Rob Bonta, the state attorney general, has said he would file a lawsuit asking a federal judge to overturn the resolutions. And Mr. Newsom intends to direct his administration to develop new rules that encourage the use of electric vehicles and reward car manufacturers who agree to follow California’s plan to phase out gasoline-powered vehicles.

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“Everyone agreed these E.V. sales mandates were never achievable and wildly unrealistic,” said John Bozzella, chief executive of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents major automakers. “Customers don’t want the government telling them what kind of car to buy,” he said.

For more than 50 years, the Clean Air Act has allowed California to set pollution standards that are stricter than federal rules, as long as the state obtains waivers for them from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The resolutions Mr. Trump signed on Thursday also revoke waivers for two other California clean-air policies. One blocks California from requiring that half of all new trucks sold in the state be electric by 2035. Another stops the state from putting limits on allowable emissions of nitrogen oxide from cars and trucks. Those emissions can form smog and contribute to respiratory problems like asthma.

Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, said that ending California’s electric truck policy was “common sense,” because the policy would have forced long-haul trucks and others to transition away from diesel power far faster than the existing infrastructure for electric vehicles could support.

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The crux of the lawsuit is expected to be an allegation that Congress illegally used the Congressional Review Act to pass the resolutions that Mr. Trump signed. The 1996 act allows lawmakers to overturn rules that have been recently approved by the executive branch with a simple majority vote. Republicans asserted that the act also allowed Congress to overturn the E.P.A. waivers.

The Senate passed the resolutions over the objections of the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian and an independent watchdog, which both had ruled that lawmakers lacked the legal authority to revoke the waivers.

“This is a completely improper use of the Congressional Review Act,” Mr. Bonta said in an interview. “The Congressional Review Act applies to rules, not to waivers. It’s never been applied to any waiver, ever.”

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But the act includes a provision that could stymie California’s lawsuit, because it prohibits judicial review of actions passed under the act.

California’s ability to set tough emissions standards dates back to 1970, when heavy smog clouded the skies of Los Angeles. Since then, the state has received dozens of waivers allowing a range of policies to reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Air quality has improved, but remains poor in some regions, particularly in the Central Valley. State leaders see the transition to electric cars as a tool to improve it.

California’s ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars did not apply to used vehicles, so it would not have completely eliminated them from the roads. But voter concerns about the state’s high cost of living gave Republicans and some Democrats reason to object to California’s plan, because electric vehicles tend to cost more than comparable gasoline-powered models.

The executive order that Mr. Newsom plans to sign today will direct the California Air Resources Board to come up with new ways to encourage electric vehicle use and reduce emissions, according to the governor’s office. Under it, the state would prioritize funding for E.V. rebates and will seek to develop new incentive programs. And it would steer state agencies to purchase fleet vehicles from manufacturers who agree to phase out new gasoline-powered cars. READ MORE

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Excerpt from Politico: The president, in a wide-ranging speech before the signing, used the moment to hit on a range of issues, including inflation, his disdain for windmills and his recent fallout with Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

“Now we know why Elon doesn’t like me so much,” Trump quipped, before saying that Musk never asked him to save EV rules and that their break was over other “smaller things.”

While the Trump administration has also gone on the offensive against federal vehicle standards, California’s regulations aimed at phasing out gas-powered passenger vehicles and heavy-duty diesel trucks — which are followed by a dozen other states — have drawn the stiffest opposition from the auto and fossil fuel industries.

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The fight over whether Congress acted lawfully will now head to the courts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta said last month they would sue immediately after Trump signs the resolutions.

The outcome of that court case will have widespread implications, as Democratic leaders seek to wean drivers and industry off fossil fuels and hit lofty greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals.

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EPA said in a statement when asked about the possibility of sanctions that it will enforce the Clean Air Act.

“EPA will continue to implement the Clean Air Act as provided in law and will continue to hope that California can get into attainment after decades of nonattainment,” the agency said.

EPA could develop its own plan for California to meet federal standards, though air quality experts say that’s unlikely because the agency would have to take unpopular steps like restricting driving.

California Air Resources Board spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said in a statement that without the waivers, the state will need to find an alternative to reach compliance.

CARB chair Liane Randolph told state lawmakers during a hearing last month that she’s “confident California will prevail in litigation,” but that could take years, during which the rules are not enforceable. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Pro: “What we're seeing is a thinly veiled attempt by the president to retaliate against California for choosing progress over regression,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. -- California sued the Trump administration Thursday to defend its ability to set tough vehicle emissions rules, minutes after President Donald Trump signed legislation to prevent the state’s electric vehicle mandate from taking effect.

Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), joined by attorneys general from 10 other blue states, filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claiming that Trump’s move is an “unprecedented and illegal use” of the Congressional Review Act, which he said should apply only to federal rules.

Bonta, who noted the lawsuit was the 26th he’s filed against the administration since Trump took office in January, argued that the Clean Air Act waivers that give California the authority to set standards stricter than the federal government have never been considered rules subject to the Congressional Review Act.

“What we're seeing is a thinly veiled attempt by the president to retaliate against California for choosing progress over regression,” Bonta said, charging that the rollback is not only unlawful but “irrational and wildly partisan” and comes at “the direct expense of the health and the well being of our people.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Poltico: It didn’t have to get to this point. California officials had been in talks with automakers prior to the November election about how to keep them on board, but the state overplayed its hand, Nichols (Mary Nichols, head of California’s Air Resources Board for 17 years) said.

“Many people were acting on the assumption that it was going to be the Democrats continuing in power,” she said. “So the state felt like they had all the cards in their hand, and then after the election, it was pretty hard to reset the conversation.”

To hear Nichols tell it, California may have gone too far this time in nudging the industry to ever-higher sales of zero-emission vehicles. The rules would have required automakers to hit increasing percentages — 35 percent by model year 2026 and 68 percent by model year 2030 — before reaching 100 percent of new-car sales in 2035.

Maybe that would have worked if it were just about California. But a dozen other states are signed on to California’s targets, and they have been slower and less generous with incentives and EV charging infrastructure. Where California has more than a quarter of its new car sales coming from EVs, New Jersey is at 15 percent, and New York is under 12 percent, according to the industry’s latest figures.

“They were definitely having issues with the California program because they didn’t think they could meet the sales numbers in the mandate, especially [Gov. Gavin] Newsom’s target of nothing but ZEVs with a deadline attached to it,” Nichols said. “That was scary, and even the interim targets were going to be hard to meet.”

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But Republicans had never resorted to doing it through Congress, via an untested maneuver that congressional watchdogs have warned is likely illegal but that still drew 35 Democratic votes in the House and one in the Senate (Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), in the tradition of Detroit’s John Dingell).

It’s a far cry from the bipartisan consensus that reigned when President Richard Nixon famously signed the Clean Air Act, which set federal air pollution levels for the first time but gave California permission to continue going further, owing to its decade-plus of vehicle emissions rules aimed at the smoggy Los Angeles basin.

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Where Newsom signed deals in 2019 with Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Volvo to abide by the state’s rules even in the event of federal cancellation, he now only has Stellantis, which signed a separate agreement last year that goes through model year 2030.

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And several of the state’s allies are peeling off. California had 12 other states signed on to follow its lead as of last year, but it now has 10, after Republican-led Virginia dropped out and Vermont delayed enforcement by 19 months. And Democrats are getting cold feet, too: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order in April delaying enforcement, and Democratic lawmakers in New York introduced a bill this year to delay their participation by two years. (California and the other 10 states immediately sued Thursday to preserve the emissions standards.)

“If it was only California, I think [automakers] wouldn’t have been as eager to jump in on the federal level and work with the Republicans, but it’s the fact it’s the other states that had the California standards that were killing them, especially New York,” Nichols said.

That echoes the automakers’ argument. READ MORE

Excerpt from Jalopnik: The market obviously got ahead of itself with EVs and needed both regulatory and tax-incentive support to keep the party going. With those factors set to be yanked, automakers have to drastically reduce their enthusiasm for EVs or risk destroying their already tough profit margins to unload unwanted vehicles at fire sale prices. READ MORE

Excerpt from The Hill: Bonta submitted the complaint in the Northern District of California together with his colleagues in Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

He said he filed the lawsuit moments after Trump signed three congressional resolutions, which California regulations that had aimed to phase out gas-powered cars by 2035 — and then prompted 11 other states to follow suit.

Rather than directly overturning the rules, the resolutions revoked the Biden administration’s authorization of the Golden State’s policy. This action occurred via the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which enables the repeal of recently approved regulations with a simple majority.

“We refuse to let this unprecedented and illegal use of the CRA undermine the Clean Air Act waivers that give California the authority to enforce our own mission standards,” Bonta said.

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The attorney general was referring to California’s unique ability to set stronger-than-federal standards through a 1970 Clean Air Act clause, written amid historic smog conditions in the Los Angeles area. To do so, however, the Golden State must first apply to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver for each proposed rule — and only following that approval can other states adopt similar such thresholds.

The waiver targeted by Congress and the Trump administration through the CRA received the EPA’s approval in December under then-President Biden and enabled the implementation of several key California regulations.

Among the rules repealed as a result of the resolutions is California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which required that 35 percent of cars sold in the state in 2026 to be zero-emissions, 68 percent in 2030 and 100 percent in 2035.

A second rule was the Golden State’s Omnibus Regulation, which sought to cut heavy-duty nitrogen oxide emissions by 90 percent, revamp engine testing procedures and further extend engine warranties.

A third was the Advanced Clean Trucks rule — a regulation that has focused on accelerating the state’s transition to less-polluting trucks and would have required 7.5 percent of these vehicles to be emissions-free by 2035. READ MORE

Excerpt from Politico Pro: The Trump administration on Wednesday (June 18, 2025) argued that Congress' watchdog overstepped when it advised lawmakers they could not nullify California’s clean vehicle waivers via the Congressional Review Act.

Republicans ultimately rejected the Government Accountability Office’s argument, passing the three CRA resolutions,which were signed into law last week by President Donald Trump. The resolutions are now being challenged in court by California and allied states.

In a letter on Wednesday to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro obtained by POLITICO, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought argues that GAO — which is a part of the legislative branch — both went too far and misinterpreted the law when it said the waivers were not subject to the CRA. His letter echoed legal arguments made earlier this year by proponents of the novel effort to kill the waivers via the CRA.

“It is Congress that is optimally positioned to decide for itself when to put rules submitted to it to CRA votes, as it did in considering the three passed House Joint Resolutions 87 through 89. That is the path that best affords Congress its constitutional role of ensuring representative democracy in our Republic,” Vought wrote, adding emphasis to certain sections of the letter. “In enacting the resolutions of disapproval, Congress emphatically rejected GAO's inappropriate attempt to interfere with Congress's powers under the Constitution and CRA.” READ MORE