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Climate
'Latest Betrayal of Democracy': Trump Signs Order Blocking CA Effort to Ban New Gas-Powered Cars
"There is no reason politicians in Washington should be stepping in at this late date to try and undercut states' protections for their residents," said one climate advocate.
Jun 12, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed multiple Congressional Review Act resolutions that target California's efforts to adopt electric vehicles statewide and phase out gas-powered cars, in a move that one climate campaigner called "Trump's latest betrayal of democracy."
Trump reversed a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency waiver granted to California during the waning days of the Biden administration that allowed the state to enforce tougher vehicle pollution standards. That decision allowed California to require that gasoline-powered cars be phased out, and implement a ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars completely in 2035.
The other resolutions signed by Trump revoked waivers for a policy that required half of all new trucks sold in California be electric by 2035, and overturned a policy that placed limits on "allowable emissions of nitrogen oxide from cars and trucks," according to The New York Times.
Congress, which is Republican-controlled, passed a measure in May that paved the way for Thursday's signing. At the time, the Senate parliamentarian, the unelected arbiter of the chamber's procedures, said that the EPA waivers did not qualify as federal rules for the purpose of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The Government Accountability Office has also said they aren't subject to the law.
The CRA gives lawmakers a limited window to overturn federal rules, and resolutions brought under the law are not subject to the Senate filibuster.
Green groups sharply condemned Trump's signing of the resolutions.
"Signing this bill is a flagrant abuse of the law to reward Big Oil and Big Auto corporations at the expense of everyday people's health and their wallets," said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, on Thursday.
Simon Mui, managing director for transportation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Thursday that "California's vehicle standards reduce costs for drivers, increase customer choice, boost domestic manufacturing, improve air quality, and help address the climate crisis."
"There is no reason politicians in Washington should be stepping in at this late date to try and undercut states' protections for their residents," Mui continued. "The oil industry may be celebrating today, but the rest of us are going to continue to keep fighting for cleaner air, lower energy bills, and a safer climate."
Katherine García, director of the Sierra Club's Clean Transportation for All campaign, said on Thursday that "instead of investing in electric vehicle manufacturing here in the U.S. and leading us towards a healthier future, the administration is dead set on pushing us backwards and ceding EV innovation and leadership to China."
Shortly after Trump signed the resolutions, California officials announced they had filed a lawsuit over the move. A statement from Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office called the resolutions "illegal."
"The president's reckless, politically motivated, and illegal attacks on California continue, this time with his attempt to trample on our longstanding authority to maintain more stringent clean vehicle standards," said California Attorney General Bonta in a statement Thursday announcing the legal challenge. "The president is busy playing partisan games with lives on the line and yanking away good jobs that would bolster the economy—ignoring that these actions have life or death consequences for California communities breathing dirty, toxic air."
California also recently filed a legal challenge over Trump's decision to order the deployment of National Guard members and Marine troops to Los Angeles in response to protests that sprang up in response to federal immigration raids.
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'Completely Reprehensible': Trump EPA Attacks Bedrock Power Plant Pollution Rules
"If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to stand they'll only fan the flames of extreme heat and wildfires, and they'll trigger more child deaths, more cancers, more lung diseases, and more heart attacks."
Jun 11, 2025
Advocates for public health and the planet denounced a Wednesday announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to decimate regulations on power plant pollution, calling the repeal effort a "completely reprehensible" assault on natural ecosystems and communities nationwide.
"EPA is proposing to repeal all 'greenhouse gas' emissions standards for the power sector under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and to repeal amendments to the 2024 Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)," the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed in a statement.
The move is a direct attack on Biden-era regulations aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases and other toxic chemicals from coal-, oil-, and gas-fired power plants, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed are inhibiting U.S. fossil fuel production and increasing energy costs.
Meanwhile, Moms Clean Air Force director Dominique Browning put out a statement slamming the announced repeals as "a reckless betrayal of EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment."
"Rolling back these protections is ugly and unpatriotic and would make our air filthy and toxic, piling on to this administration's ballooning record of flagrant disregard for protecting people's health," she said. "The proposed elimination of the carbon pollution standards is based on a fictitious and cynical claim by this administration that power plants are not a significant form of climate pollution. This is blatantly false."
"This is a cynical—and dangerous—attempt to stop the remarkable progress America has made in cleaning up climate and air pollution," Browning added. "It is also based on another falsehood: the energy emergency. There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency that is growing more severe."
Center for Biological Diversity environmental health attorney Ryan Maher also framed the administration's moves as dishonest.
"As Trump and his EPA continue to shovel dirty old coal down our throats, they're now adding more toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead, and arsenic to the mix," Maher said. "They had to fire hundreds of scientists to advance these destructive policies because they know the facts are indisputable. If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to stand they'll only fan the flames of extreme heat and wildfires, and they'll trigger more child deaths, more cancers, more lung diseases, and more heart attacks."
Similarly warning of the climate and health consequences of the repeals, Sierra Club climate policy director Patrick Drupp declared that "it's completely reprehensible that Donald Trump would seek to roll back these lifesaving standards and do more harm to the American people and our planet just to earn some brownie points with the fossil fuel industry."
"This administration is transparently trading American lives for campaign dollars and the support of fossil fuel companies, and Americans ought to be disgusted and outraged that their government has launched an assault on our health and our future," Drupp added, pledging that his group "will not stand by and let this corrupt administration destroy these critical, lifesaving guardrails."
Trump and Zeldin's long-feared rollbacks could be finalized by the end of this year, according toThe Washington Post. However, legal battles are expected. Julie McNamara from the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program said Wednesday that "these actions can, should, and will be challenged in court."
"These are astoundingly shameful proposals. It's galling to watch the U.S. government so thoroughly debase itself as it sacrifices the public good to boost the bottom line of fossil fuel executives," she said, highlighting the global impacts of the repeals.
McNamara warned that "there's no meaningful path to meet U.S. climate goals without addressing carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants—and there's no meaningful path to meet global climate goals without the United States."
Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, shared some specifics: "Power plants are the largest industrial source of carbon emissions, spewing more than 1.5 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually."
"The EPA claims this pollution is insignificant—but try telling that to the people who will experience more storms, heatwaves, hospitalizations, and asthma attacks because of this repeal," he said. "What's more, the EPA is trying to repeal toxic air pollution standards for the nation's dirtiest coal plants, allowing the worst actors to keep poisoning the air."
"Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law," he concluded. "Our lawyers will be watching closely, and if the EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we'll see them in court."
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In 'Disservice to the Public', Trump Fires Content Team for Climate.Gov
"Hiding the impacts of climate change won't stop it from happening, it will just make us far less prepared when it does," one fired contractor said.
Jun 11, 2025
In its latest attack on climate science, the Trump administration has fired everyone who produced content for Climate.gov, the public-facing website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office.
A former contractor who asked to be anonymous told The Guardian that their entire team had been let go from their government contract on May 31, the outlet reported Wednesday.
"It's targeted, I think it's clear," Tom Di Liberto, a former NOAA spokesperson who was fired earlier in the year, told The Guardian. "They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for Climate.gov. I mean, that's a clear signal."
"I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was."
The site's former program manager Rebecca Lindsey, who lost her job in the Trump administration's mass firing of probationary employees, agreed.
"It was a very deliberate, targeted attack," Lindsey told The Guardian, explaining that her former boss had told her that the orders came "from above" to cut the team's funding from a larger NOAA contract slated for renewal in May.
Climate.gov is currently well-respected for providing accurate, accessible information about the causes and consequences of the climate emergency.
"We were an extremely well-trusted source for climate information, misinformation, and disinformation because we actually, legitimately would answer misinformation questions," the anonymous contractor said. "We'd answer reader emails and try to combat disinformation on social media."
Oliver Milman, an environmental correspondent for The Guardian U.S. who did not break the news, described it as "one of world's leading sources of information on climate change."
Now, its ultimate fate is uncertain. The contractor said that a few pre-written pieces were scheduled to be posted on the site during June, but after that, it is unclear whether the site would continue to update or remain visible to the public.
There is also what Lindsey termed a more "sinister possibility": that the administration would use the site to publish false or misleading information dismissing the reality and risks of the climate emergency.
"I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was," the contractor said.
The administration did keep two web developers on staff, which means it is possible it intends to keep the website running with new content.
In either case, however, the firing of the content team builds on a pattern in which President Donald Trump and his administration are making it harder for the public to access accurate scientific information, thereby impeding people from making informed decisions. It follows moves such as the dismissal of all of the scientists working on the National Climate Assessment and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's purging of a panel of vaccine experts.
"To me, climate is more broad than just climate change. It's also climate patterns like El Niño and La Niña," the contractor said. "Halting factual climate information is a disservice to the public. Hiding the impacts of climate change won't stop it from happening, it will just make us far less prepared when it does."
Outside scientists responded to the news with dismay.
"Sigh," wrote Robert Rohde, the chief scientist at Berkeley Earth.
Eliot Jacobson, a retired professor of mathematics and computer science, called the firings "your 'moment of kakistocracy' for today," referring to government by the least qualified.
The move comes amid other attacks on Americans' ability to prepare for and respond to the climate emergency and the many extreme weather events—from heatwaves to more extreme hurricanes—that it fuels.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) warned on Tuesday that the Trump administration's firings of heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System would make it harder to respond to heatwaves—the deadliest type of extreme weather in the U.S.—as summer intersects with global heating to increase risk.
"Instead of investing in keeping people safe as temperatures spike, the Trump administration's staff and budget cuts to NOAA have left local weather service offices serving millions of people in hundreds of U.S. counties without the experienced leadership of meteorologists in charge. And firing federal heat health experts will further jeopardize protections for people," Juan Declet-Barreto, a bilingual senior social scientist for climate vulnerability at UCS, said in a statement.
"The president's proposed budget calls for more massive cuts to agencies like NOAA doing lifesaving work," Declet-Barreto continued. "And its regulatory rollbacks and cuts to climate and clean energy funding are aimed at increasing the use of fossil fuels, which are largely responsible for these rising temperatures. So, while the country suffers in what could be record-breaking temperatures, especially outdoor workers and vulnerable populations, fossil fuel executives will sit back in their air-conditioned offices watching President Trump do their bidding and grow their profits."
Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday offered a timeline for winding down the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—which he has long threatened to eliminate.
"I'd say after the hurricane season we'll start phasing it out," Trump said, as NBC News reported. In the future, Trump said, more responsibility would fall with the states, any federal disaster relief would be dispersed directly from the president's office, and less money would be offered.
However, a FEMA higher-up toldCNN that the president's proposal was unrealistic.
"This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the federal government in emergency management and disaster response and recovery, and it's an abdication of that role when a state is overwhelmed," they said. "It is clear from the president's remarks that their plan is to limp through hurricane season and then dismantle the agency."
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Ocean Summit Wake-Up Call on Plastics Treaty 'Only Matters If Countries Back It Up With Action'
Civil society groups responded to the declaration by stressing that the statement must be a "floor, not a ceiling" going into the next round of global plastics treaty talks.
Jun 11, 2025
Nearly 100 countries at the United Nations Ocean Conference on Tuesday issued a joint declaration demanding a bold global plastics treaty ahead of the next round of negotiations—a call that civil society groups welcomed, while also stressing that any strong language must be followed by similar action.
The "Nice Wake-Up Call for an Ambitious Plastics Treaty," named for the French coastal city hosting this week's U.N. summit, says that "we are heartened by the constructive engagement of the majority of Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) members to conclude an effective treaty that is urgently needed, acknowledging the scale of socioeconomic challenges that ending plastic pollution may represent for certain parties."
The declaration focuses on five key points for the next talks, INC-5.2, scheduled for August 5-14 in Geneva, Switzerland:
- We recognize that addressing the increasing and unsustainable levels of production and consumption of plastics is essential;
- We call for a legally binding obligation to phase out the most problematic plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastic products;
- We emphasize the importance of a binding obligation to improve the design of plastic products and ensure they cause minimum environmental impact and safeguard human health;
- We recognize the need for effective means of implementation and accessible, new, and additional financing, noting the special circumstances of least developed countries and small island developing states; and
- We call for an effective and ambitious treaty that can evolve over time and is responsive to changes in emerging evidence and knowledge.
"A treaty that lacks these elements, only relies on voluntary measures, or does not address the full lifecycle of plastics will not be effective to deal with the challenge of plastic pollution," warns the declaration, backed by the European Union and countries including Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Barbados, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Iceland, Madagascar, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Switzerland, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, and Vanuatu.
Erin Simon, vice president for plastic waste and business at World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said Tuesday that the statement "sends a positive signal that there is strong collaboration and support to secure a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution."
"These are the types of priorities we're hopeful will be included in a final treaty," Simon noted. "Millions of people around the world have called for a solution to the plastic pollution crisis and while today is a step in the right direction we must continue to push toward advancing a meaningful and enduring agreement in Geneva."
Graham Forbes, Greenpeace USA's global plastics campaign lead and head of the group's delegation for the treaty talks, said that "the Nice declaration, signed by an overwhelming majority of countries, is the wake-up call the world needs. Governments are finally saying the quiet part out loud: We cannot end plastic pollution without cutting plastic production. Full stop."
Forbes continued:
The Nice Declaration tackles the root cause of the crisis, which is the ever-growing, reckless production of plastics driven by fossil fuel giants. The message to industry lobbyists is loud and clear: The health of our children is more important than your bottom line.
We welcome the call for a legally binding global cap on plastic production, and real rules to phase out the most toxic plastic products and chemicals. For too long, treaty talks have been stuck in circular conversations while plastic pollution chokes our oceans, poisons our bodies, and fuels the climate crisis.
But this statement only matters if countries back it up with action this August in Geneva at INC-5.2. That means no voluntary nonsense, no loopholes, and no surrender to fossil fuel and petrochemical interests. We need a treaty with teeth—one that slashes plastic production, holds polluters accountable, and protects people on the frontlines.
Greenpeace and WWF's global groups are part of a coalition of over 230 civil society organizations and rights holders focused on the plastics treaty—which responded to the new declaration by emphasizing that it must be a "floor, not a ceiling."
🚨Today, +230 civil society organizations welcome the renewed commitment of +90 countries to forge a binding global treaty to end plastic pollution and protect human health and the environment by addressing the full life cycle of plastics 🌍✊www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2025/06/11/n...
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— Break Free From Plastic (@breakfreefromplastic.org) June 10, 2025 at 1:10 PM
"The Nice declaration is a welcome step, but words must be followed with actions if we are serious about protecting the rights and health of all. Member states must show decisive leadership at INC-5.2 and deliver a strong, legally binding plastics treaty that leaves no one behind," said Juressa Lee, co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Plastics, a coalition member.
"Communities on the frontlines, including Indigenous Peoples, are bearing the brunt of plastic pollution at every stage of its toxic lifecycle: from oil and gas extraction, to plastic production, to waste dumping, and the challenging process of environmental remediation, including the restoration of contaminated sites and the recognition of those who have protected these oceans and territories for millennia," Lee added. "We need action, not delay, to safeguard the ocean and the communities that depend on them."
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