Senate votes to kill California's gas-powered vehicle restrictions

The United States Senate voted 51-44 mostly across party lines on Wednesday to repeal a waiver granted by the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency , allowing the state of California to enact its Advanced Clean Cars II Regulations . ACC II requires that 80 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in California by 2035 be zero-emission. Notably, the legitimacy of the vote itself was dubious, as the Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan staffer who helps the Senate understand its own rules — had warned that the waiver did not fall under the Senate's purview. The parliamentarian noted that the EPA waiver wasn’t a formal rule but an administrative order. This means the waiver is not subject to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), the law Senate Republicans used to justify the vote. The CRA only became law in 1996, and had seen little use until recently — it has been used to overturn federal rules a total of 20 times, 16 of which occurred during the previous Trump administra ... Read full article.