Trump Signs Illegal Attack on California’s Clean Car Authority

President Trump signed illegal congressional resolutions today to use the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, to block California’s clean car waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency. The waivers allow the state to set strong pollution standards to protect people and wildlife.

The Republican-controlled Congress passed the resolutions despite the Government Accounting Office and the Senate parliamentarian ruling that the waivers are not subject to the CRA since they are adjudicatory orders, not rules.

“Ripping away California’s clean air protections is Trump’s latest betrayal of democracy,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. “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. Trump bet that Big Oil CEOs would deposit a billion dollars into his campaign. Now he’s the one-armed bandit that pays them off with environmental health rollbacks that cost consumers at the gas pump and the hospital.”

The illegal repeal of California’s clean air protections is part of a broader assault on environmental regulations.

On Wednesday Trump’s EPA proposed repealing rules that limit planet-heating pollution from coal- and gas-fired power plants, the nation’s second-largest source of greenhouse gas pollution after transportation.

Trump’s EPA has said it will roll back or repeal dozens of regulations, including those governing clean cars and trucks.

Climate protections from cleaner cars and trucks would save lives and ultimately lead to cost savings of more than $100 billion a year from reduced illnesses and deaths.

The makers of California’s clean vehicle policy estimated that electric vehicle owners would save $7,500 in gas and auto repair costs during the first ten years of ownership.

Congress voted decades ago to allow California, with the nation’s most smog-choked cities, to adopt stronger vehicle air pollution standards than the federal government as long as the EPA grants the state a waiver under the Clean Air Act. The EPA has issued these waivers to California more than 100 times. Although California’s protections have dramatically improved air quality, more work needs to be done. Five of the 10 cities with the country’s worst smog pollution are in California.