Senate Republicans have voted to establish a new precedent that will allow them to roll back clean air standards in California, including a rule phasing out the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.

The winding series of Senate procedural votes that went late into the evening could have profound implications for California’s longstanding efforts to reduce air pollution. It also established a new, narrow exception to the Senate filibuster even as Republicans have insisted that they won’t try to change Senate rules.

Democrats strongly objected to the move, delaying the votes for hours as Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., cleared the way procedurally for Republicans to bring up three House-passed resolutions that would block the rules. The Senate could pass the resolutions later this week.

At issue are the three California rules — phasing out gas-powered cars, cutting tailpipe emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and curbing smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks.

  • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
    18·
    2 days ago

    This doesn’t even matter. State’s rights are still in effect, no matter what the Senate says and then… what the fuck are they going to do? Force California to register new combustion vehicles in 2035? See you in court in 2037 I guess.

    California is going to just keep their policy going and the Fed isn’t going to do shit about it. This is just performative bullshit.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
      10·
      2 days ago

      There’s one important detail that you might be missing here: Republicans are coming for the filibuster indirectly despite profusely saying how much they valued preserving senate rules

      They are overriding the senate parliamentarian to do this. They are carving out the filibuster without saying they’re doing so. Right now it’s on some more technical details, but they are setting precedent that they can ignore the parliamentarian. The senate parliamentarian is the one who decides what counts as budget related for reconciliation (which is used as a narrow way around the filibuster strictly for budget). If they can just declare anything budget related and ignore the parliamentarian, they can push all kinds of stuff through that they otherwise couldn’t get through now

      Through the series of votes Wednesday, Republicans set precedent for the Senate to reject the state EPA waivers with a simple majority vote. They made that move even after the Senate parliamentarian agreed with the Government Accountability Office that California’s policies are not subject to the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows Congress to reject federal regulations under certain circumstances

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      2 days ago

      This doesn’t even matter. State’s rights are still in effect,

      I’m not sure you understand what this means. “States rights” is a slogan, it’s not like codified law. Nothing is "in effect ". Federal law always supercedes state law, and the US Congress 100% can tell CA what to do here.

      California’s response will be interesting to see, as if they choose not to, then the federal government will come down on them (and trust me, they’re obviously looking for excuses)

      • rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        2 days ago

        Not really. Congress can revoke the ability of CA to have stricter standards but they can’t force them to continue to register IC engine vehicles.

        CA still controls which vehicles they will register within the state. They can’t prevent someone from driving into the state with a different registration but they already don’t have to register a project car from Colorado that doesn’t have fenders. Even Texas can refuse to register that project car. This is already established.

        Oh, and they can impound that fenderless project car from Colorado for not meeting their road regulations.