President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans plan to use a once-obscure law called the Congressional Review Act to revoke the waiver that President Joe Biden gave to California for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gas car ban.
As Breitbart News reported, Newsom announced in September 2020 — mere weeks after a massive statewide shortage of electricity — that California would ban sales of gas-powered passenger vehicles by 2035. After that, electric vehicles (EVs) would be mandated, as part of California’s effort to achieve goals on “climate change” policy.
Newsom’s policy was finalized in regulatory form in 2022, and Biden granted the waiver in December 2024. As CalMatters.org reported: “The granting of the waiver by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows California to move forward in requiring 35% of new 2026 model cars sold in the state to be zero-emissions, 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035. Nearly all zero-emission cars are powered by electricity.”
Now, Trump and the Republicans are taking aim at that waiver. The Los Angeles Times reported:
The Trump administration is escalating its battle with California over the future of gas-powered cars in the United States, plotting a legislative maneuver with congressional Republicans to strip California of a decades-old authority to establish a national fuel-efficiency standard.
Two Trump administration officials confirmed Wednesday that discussions are underway about invoking the Congressional Review Act to end the decades-old waiver giving California vast sway over mileage standards. The review act allows lawmakers to reverse government rules drafted within a certain window with a simple majority. One GOP lawmaker from California introduced legislation last month to end the federal waiver.
Trump invoked the Bill Clinton-era Congressional Review Act in 2017 to overturn many regulations that the outgoing Barack Obama administration had made, but which had not been submitted to Congress for approval.
Democrats, according to the New York Times, will argue that the Act does not apply: “[T]he California ban is not a federal regulation, it’s a different animal. It’s the result of a waiver that was granted by the Biden administration under the 1970 Clean Air Act, something that has been done more than a hundred times over the years by administrations of both parties. And it is not subject to congressional review, according to a 2023 decision by the Government Accountability Office.”
As Breitbart News has reported, Newsom is unlikely to reach his goal by 2035 anyway, because of lagging EV sales.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.