Senate Nullifies California’s Signature Gas-Car Ban, Sends Bill To Trump

The U.S. Senate voted 51–44 to overturn California’s ban on gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, sending the measure to President Trump’s desk for signature.

The vote nullifies a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency waiver that allowed California to set stricter emission standards than federal rules under the Clean Air Act. The vote also marks a significant blow to leftist climate radicals pushing de-growth green policies aimed at shaping vehicle emission standards at a national level. 

Nearly all Democrats voted against repealing the EV mandate, except Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who broke ranks to support the measure—likely due to her home state’s deep ties to America’s legacy automakers in Detroit. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) blasted the Biden-era EPA waiver, calling it an “attempt by the Biden administration to impose an electric vehicle mandate across the country.” 

As of May, eleven states, plus Washington, D.C., have adopted California’s plan to phase out new gasoline-powered car sales by 2035. The new requirements faced strong opposition from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an auto trade group representing BMW, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Honda, and many other manufacturers. Also, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued the 2035 target was unrealistic and would harm the economy because it was de-growth in nature. 

Republicans, led by West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, called Biden-era EPA waiver a federal overreach and a threat to consumer choice and jobs. 

“Today, the Senate voted to end California’s EV mandate and send my joint resolution of disapproval under the CRA to President Trump’s desk. The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats tried to block the will of the American people from this attempt by extreme unelected California and Biden EPA bureaucrats to ban gas-powered cars throughout the country, but Congress has now spoken and soundly rejected this rule,” Capito stated. 

She continued, “The impact of California’s waiver would have been felt across the country, harming multiple sectors of our economy and costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process. I’m proud to have led this effort to protect American workers and consumers from this radical and drastic policy.” 

Democrats in the Senate are watching key climate policies—linked to the Green New Deal—begin to unravel under President Trump’s first four months in office. The rollback is evident not only in the automotive sector, with efforts to block EV mandates, but also in utilities, where fossil fuel generation is desperately needed to stabilize fragile power grids amid the surge in demand from AI data centers and overall electrification trends. 

Environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, were furious with the vote, calling the move by Republicans “an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the pollution causing asthma, lung disease, and heart conditions.” 

“It is going nuclear,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday evening, adding this would enable MAGA Republicans to hijack the rules, erode “away at the Senate and undermine this institution they claim to care about.”

Meanwhile, the climate change policies have sparked a number of national security threats, first being the potential for unreliable power grids, plus flooding the nation with foreign solar panels has created a major issue:

• “Rogue” Devices Found Hidden In Chinese Solar Panels Could “Destroy The Grid”

And risk plunging into a net-zero death like Spain several weeks ago… 

• NatGas Generators Rescued Spain From Net Zero Death After Power Collapse

All in all, the Trump administration is bringing back energy policy common sense after four years of disastrous climate change nonsense that only boosted inflation.