The Senate has voted to overturn the electric vehicle mandate in the state of California. This is going to cause some major anger and anxiety among the climate change activist community.
The EV mandate was one of the last things Joe Biden signed before leaving office. You may recall a last minute push by Biden’s team to advance as much climate change related legislation as they could during his final weeks in office.
The resolution to overturn the mandate passed along party lines with one Democrat senator voting for it as well.
The Washington Free Beacon reported:
Senate Votes To Overturn California’s EV Mandate in Resounding Defeat for Climate Activists
The Senate approved a resolution Thursday that would revoke California’s federal waiver allowing it and several other Democratic-led states to mandate electric vehicle sales, dealing a blow to activists’ efforts to push green energy and fight global warming.
The resolution, introduced by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) in April, passed in a bipartisan 51-44 vote Thursday morning. Just one Democrat, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), voted in favor of the resolution alongside every Republican who voted. Five lawmakers were absent from the vote.
“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,” said Capito, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The vote is a significant loss for both California, which passed its EV mandate in 2022, and for climate activists who loudly defended the law…
Thursday’s vote is also a win for President Donald Trump and other critics of policies forcing consumers to buy EVs. On the campaign trail, Trump said the “crazed concept of ‘all Electric Cars’” would devastate auto workers and decimate Michigan’s auto industry.
CBS News reports that California is planning to sue over this:
California filing suit over U.S. Senate vote revoking state’s EV mandate and strict emission standards
California is fighting back a day after the U.S. Senate voted to put the brakes on the state’s clean vehicle policies.
Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement Thursday saying the state will file a lawsuit after senators voted to revoke California’s emission waivers that set stricter standards than federal regulations. One of the rules, the so-called “EV mandate,” would phase out gasoline-powered cars and require new vehicle sales to be zero-emission by 2035.
Shutting this down was the right thing to do. You can’t force consumers to buy certain kinds of products in this way. The public has to want to do it.
Read the full article here