Senate moves to unshackle America’s drivers from California’s ‘climate zealots’

FIRST ON FOX: Senate Republicans are launching a multi-front effort targeting the legal framework they say allows California to exert outsized influence over vehicle and equipment emissions standards beyond its borders, creating economic and consumer consequences.

Republicans argue California has become the nation’s de facto emissions regulator — as manufacturers rarely create separate product lines for the Golden State and instead are inclined to build to California’s standards, creating implicit national requirements.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo. — a top member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) — is leading the effort alongside Sens. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Jon Husted, R-Ohio, and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb. They argue EPA waivers granted to California during the Obama and Biden administrations under the Clean Air Act have turned narrow environmental exceptions into de facto climate regulation advancing the state’s sweeping climate agenda.

“California’s climate zealots have run roughshod over the rest of the country for too long,” Lummis told Fox News Digital.

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“Under Governor Newsom, Sacramento has decided it can dictate what Wyoming families drive and what equipment our small businesses use. That ends today.”

Last year, lawmakers successfully rescinded three Biden-era EPA waivers allowing California to create emissions standards for trucks, cars and buses that they said gave the state outsized regulatory control. Thursday’s package goes a step further by targeting earlier EPA decisions they say laid the legal foundation for those now-rescinded regulations.

Each resolution uses the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to nullify a different EPA waiver. The CRA gives Congress the power to check agencies’ executive power.

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Because the CRA bars agencies from issuing rules that are “substantially the same” without new authorization from Congress, Republicans argue overturning the waivers would prevent future administrations from simply reinstating them — which targets the legal foundation of such carveouts.

Collectively, the package targets California’s authority over gas-powered lawn equipment, passenger vehicle emissions standards, the Advanced Clean Cars program and the original 2009 EPA waiver allowing Sacramento to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles.

In the 1960s, the Clean Air Act gave California a narrow carve-out to seek EPA waivers for emissions rules that could be stricter than federal standards — but critics say the exemption, originally intended to address severe Los Angeles smog, has been weaponized to force manufacturing changes that reverberate across the country.

Andrew Bray, an executive with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, whose members rely on small off-road engines affected by the waivers, said he supports a responsible transition to lower-emission equipment — but underlined that it must come from “practical innovation” and not government mandates.

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“This resolution is a critical step in securing the flexibility businesses need while technology continuess to advance,” Bray said. Michael Lee of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America added that the legislative process, not state-specific fiats with “nationwide consequences,” is the way to address the situation.

The four lawmakers leading the fight said in a release that California regulators have “abandoned any pretense of addressing local air quality and turned the waiver process into a backdoor for imposing a radical climate agenda on the entire country… without a single vote in Congress.”

Lummis’ resolution would rescind a 2025 waiver granted just before President Donald Trump took office that she said allowed California to phase out gas-powered small engines such as chainsaws and leaf blowers.

In doing so, manufacturers would no longer be inclined to transition to electric or zero-emission models.

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Lummis’ resolution targets a 2025 EPA waiver that allowed California to move toward phasing out new gas-powered small engines such as chainsaws, leaf blowers and lawn mowers. Supporters say repealing the waiver would remove regulatory pressure encouraging manufacturers to transition those products toward zero-emission technology.

Husted’s resolution targets a 2022 EPA waiver that restored California’s authority to continue its Advanced Clean Cars program.

“Ohioans shouldn’t be forced to follow California’s lead when it comes to policies that make everyday life more expensive and less convenient,” he told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

Ricketts said the situation is proof that the Obama-Biden era of “overregulation and red tape” continues to cost Nebraskans and Americans writ large millions of dollars, citing his state’s massive agricultural industry as an example of regulatory reverberations from Sacramento.

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“They used California policies as a backdoor EV mandate and even tried to control how we cut our grass,” he said. His CRA resolution targets an Obama-era waiver originally authorizing the clean car program, while Schmitt seeks repeal of a waiver granted just months after President George W. Bush left office that allows California to enforce greenhouse gas emissions standards for new passenger vehicles beginning with the 2009 model year.

Schmitt said the waivers allow Sacramento to “continue to punish” manufacturers around the country and affect consumer choice and costs through their “climate alarmist rules.”

Together, Republicans say the four resolutions represent Congress’ broadest effort yet to unshackle states and manufacturers from California’s emissions framework by targeting not only individual regulations but the EPA decisions they argue made those regulations possible.

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Opponents are expected to counter that the effort would undermine California’s longstanding authority under the Clean Air Act to adopt stricter environmental standards.

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Fox News Digital reached out to former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for comment.