Senate Republicans are voicing their support for terminating Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waivers allowing California to impose a de facto national electric vehicle (EV) mandate on other states.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that the upper chamber is still mulling whether to take up three resolutions rescinding the waivers, which had all passed in the House last week. Five Senate Republicans, including a member of Thune’s leadership team, told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Monday that the Senate should move forward with nixing the EPA waivers as the chamber’s GOP conference continues to hash out the details.
The easiest path would be to repeal the waivers under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows Congress to rescind recently issued regulations by a simple majority vote. The Senate under Thune’s leadership has already repealed ten regulations issued by former President Joe Biden and are slated to rescind an additional four Biden-era rules this week.
The Biden administration issued the EPA waivers in December 2024 during the waning days of the 46th president’s single term. The waivers “allow other states to adopt California’s strict emission standards on gas-powered vehicles,” the DCNF previously reported.
The Golden State’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” regulations would gradually phase out the sale of new gas vehicles in California by 2035. Another one of the state’s rules would require that by 2035 all trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles.
The California regulations are slated to come into effect in vehicle model year 2026. Seventeen other states and Washington D.C. are intending to enact all or part of the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) vehicle standards, allowing the state to effectively set national environmental policy.
“It’s [California waivers are] an existential threat to the combustion engine and transportation in America,” Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines told the DCNF. “Thank God we’ve had the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal. It was a terrible terrible regulation.”
“We’re gonna get this done,” Daines added. “We must get it done. And this is the perfect example from a procedural point where the CRA should be used to overturn a rule from the Biden administration.”
However, the fight to repeal the California waivers hit a potential procedural snag with the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and the Senate Parliamentarian determining the waivers are not rules, and thus not subject to the CRA. Senate Democrats argued that Republicans would be blowing up Senate precedent by moving ahead with repealing the waivers under the CRA, citing “profound institutional consequences” in a May 1 letter to Senate GOP leadership.
Despite procedural hurdles, Senate Republicans voiced confidence to the DCNF that the conference would move forward in revoking the Biden-era California waivers.
“The Biden administration was keenly aware of what they’re doing,” Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford told the DCNF. “If they can control everything happening in California, they control the entire country on that and it would set off a contagion. This rule they’ve set up, we’ve got to find a way to confront it.”
“We don’t know exactly how we’re gonna deal with it,” Republican Arkansas Sen. John Boozman acknowledged to the DCNF. “I just simply don’t understand how an agency can draft a rule, claim it’s a rule, everybody assumes it’s a rule, and then GAO say, ‘it’s not a rule’. I think we’ll probably do whatever it takes to make sure that we actually get this thing passed.”
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told Axios that the Senate will “absolutely” take up the House CRA resolutions eliminating the California waivers in the coming weeks.
The White House backed the House resolutions nixing the California waivers. President Donald Trump repeatedly called for eliminating de facto EV mandates while on the campaign trail.
Absent the Senate rescinding the waivers under the CRA, the Trump administration’s EPA would have to undertake a lengthy rule-making process, which could last several years, in order to roll back the emission rules.
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