The Trump administration's attempt to send California's clean car rules to Congress for potential repeal was temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

A judge in Washington on Wednesday blocked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from sending landmark California vehicle emissions rules for a potential repeal to the Republican-controlled Congress. The four waivers sent by the EPA to Congress ‌for review granted California authority to enact its own emission standards for cars and trucks as well as lawn-and-garden equipment. The Trump administration has mounted a multi-pronged effort to deny California the ability to require cleaner and more electric vehicles. The EPA and Congress have also enacted rules making it easier for automakers to sell more gas-powered cars and trucks, while making it more expensive to buy EVs. If the Trump administration is successful, ⁠ it would bar California indefinitely from regulating tailpipe emissions and a future Democratic president would be unable to easily reinstate its regulatory powers. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-judge-bars-epa-effort-send-california-vehicle-emissions-rules-congress-2026-09-03/

A federal judge late Wednesday temporarily blocked a Trump administration effort to overturn California’s clean car rules through Congress. Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Obama, blocked an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) move that would have allowed Congress and Trump to overturn California provisions related to vehicle and lawn equipment emissions.  In years past, the EPA allowed these regulations to move forward by granting waivers that exempted them from the Clean Air Act’s preemption of state laws that are stricter than federal standards. In June, the agency classified these waivers as “rules,“ -- an effort to let Congress overturn them using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows lawmaker to nix recently passed rules with simple majority votes and presidential approval.  “The central problem for EPA is that the waivers themselves explicitly state that they are not rules, while the CRA limits invocation of this statute only to agency rules of general applicability, which EPA, in its own words, has emphatically stated Clean Air Act waiver orders are not,” Howell wrote in her ruling.  https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/6068923-california-clean-car-rules-epa-cra/