Regulatory war between California and Trump heats up
It’s now so hot that it may contribute to global warming.
Last fall, we featured California reporter Katy Grimes’ book, California’s War Against Trump, which chronicled the regulatory and legal volleys that the state’s politicians has lobbed against President Trump since the day of his historic election.
Now President Trump is turning the tables on the Golden State #Resistance. This weekend, we noted that the EPA was looking to reverse directions Obama-era fuel economy standards for cars. One of the concerns about the new proposals is compliance with California’s more stringent standards, based on green justice “science”.
Now, it appears Trump is moving to rescind the formal permissions that allow California to set its own standards.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday took steps to challenge California’s decades-old right to set its own air pollution rules, setting up a showdown between the federal government and a state that has emerged as a bulwark against the Trump administration’s policies.
The E.P.A. statement was part of the agency’s widely expected decision to reconsider, and most likely roll back, Obama-era rules requiring automakers to hit ambitious emissions and mileage standards by 2025. The statement, though, was notable for the forcefulness of its language suggesting that the Trump administration would take on California’s authority to set its own rules.
Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, signaled that he aimed to make California fall in line. The Obama administration, he said, “made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.” California’s history of setting its own emissions rules “doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” Mr. Pruitt said.
I have been following the Department of Justice lawsuit against Califoria’s “Sanctuary State” rules, which has now been joined by over a dozen red and purple states, as well as a handful of California cities and counties. The DOJ has not lodged another lawsuit, this one regarding the sale of federal lands.
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against California over a state law giving it the power to override the sale of federal lands, the department announced Monday.
The suit marks the latest battle between President Trump and the nation’s most populous state, where Democrats have tried aggressively to thwart the president’s agenda. Last month, Sessions visited Sacramento to announce he was suing California over laws that restrict cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Under the law, which was passed in September, California has the first right to purchase federal lands or to arrange for a specific buyer. Lawmakers had expressed concerns that the Trump administration would allow more logging, oil drilling or development.
…”The Constitution empowers the federal government—not state legislatures—to decide when and how federal lands are sold,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “California was admitted to the Union upon the express condition that it would never interfere with the disposal of federal land. And yet, once again, the California legislature has enacted an extreme state law attempting to frustrate federal policy.”
Meanwhile, it appears that Huntington Beach will be the next California city to opt out of enforcing the “Sanctuary State” rules.
“Build that wall!” Huntington Beach could be next OC city to battle state’s sanctuary laws. City council meeting minutes away #CBSLA #KCAL pic.twitter.com/os689FywHo
— Stacey Butler (@StaceyCBS) April 3, 2018
If California’s politicians are so keen to stop climate change, maybe they should focus more on the needs of their citizens and less on Trump. At this point, the regulatory war is so hot that it’s contributing to global warming.
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Comments
Can’t the market work some of this out? If CA has its own fuel economy standards, let them work that out with the automobile manufacturers and leave the rest of the USA out of it. Perhaps CA can have its own car models with its own pricing.
From an engineering standpoint this is a nightmare. From a business standpoint CA might as well be another country, and a lucrative country at that. You have heard about CA’s car culture?
Well said.
CA is now truly a third world “Cheat Hole!”
More problems for crazy CA Dim-O-Crats!
“China Announces $3b Tariffs on U.S. Imports – Pork, Scrap Aluminum, Wine and Fruits…”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/04/02/china-announces-3b-tariffs-on-u-s-imports-pork-scrap-aluminum-wine-and-fruits/
That will really hit the CRazy CA Dim-O-Crats where they live.
Trump’s vindictiveness has not gone unnoticed. But the last I checked (yesterday), Iowa is the biggest producer of pork and the state whose economy will be most affected by the initial round of retaliation.
The rust belt will not emerge unscathed, either. They don’t produce much steel anymore, but they sure use it in other manufacturing.
I suggest you do the math. I doubt any blue state is going to become a Trump state in 2020. But Trump is putting a lot of purple states in play.
Farmers adjust to the market conditions very rapidly. Selling hogs is the same as selling value added corn.
And he should.
Just as he should require about a 10-years past fraud audit of all the banks that got 2008 taxpayer bail-outs.
“Can’t the market work some of this out?”
I’m not sure. If you remember, most textbooks in America were written for the largest market – Texas.
We essentially had veto power.
I’m not sure how much of the auto market California controls
The market has adapted. 13 States have adopted the CA standards. Guess what? The auto manufacturers meet the CA standard. The cars operate fine. They are as reliable and they don’t cost much more.
The air in the cities of these states is clean and there is little to any SMOG. Let’s gut them!
Trump could cause California and cities within it a lot of problems by simply talking about violations of the Controlled Substances Act and all the crimes that officials in CA have committed. He could compound it by doing it right before before they are trying to sell govt bonds and talk about how bad off Cal cities and the state are already with pension obligations and debt and ask how they could possibly avoid bankruptcy, particularly with federal action against marijuana money.
And he should.
Just as he should require about a 10-years past fraud audit of all the banks that got 2008 taxpayer bail-outs.
Oops, some how that got posted above when it was to go here instead.
It’s a good thing you elected an ethical man who would never consider purposely hurting a state. /sarcasm
How are your own ethics?
Why would it be unethical to purposely hurt a state that is dead set on frustrating his administration?
“And be it further enacted, That the said State of California is admitted into the Union upon the express condition that the people of said State, through their legislature or otherwise, shall never interfere with the primary disposal of the public lands within its limits, and shall pass no law and do no act whereby the title of the United States to, and right to dispose of, the same shall be impaired or questioned; and that they shall never lay any tax or assessment of any description whatsoever upon the public domain of the United States;”
Nicely done, Millhouse.
I’ll return the favor by not frightening you with the prospect that we are in agreement 😉
When California got it’s EPA waiver back in 1963, CA faced pollution the other states supposedly didn’t have. So, the public got ’49 state’ cars with certain engine/option packages, and special ones for California. It was a manufacturer’s nightmare, but most of the cars were from the Big 3 in Detroit- they figured it out even though it was costly and pushed many citizens to imported cars with tiny engines.
Now, automobile sales are global and a bunch of hanger-on States wrote CA laws on to their books. It’d be a logistical nightmare for all auto manufacturers to comply in 2018. So, they are stuck- they want these standards rolled back, SUV’s are hot right now, and they want this EPA waiver gone so they can sell a model in all 50 states without having to deal with one State legislature.
Putting California in their place (one state in a United States) is good for everyone. I hope they can get this one done fast!
1965 Ford Mustang Coupe badged with “California Special” on the trunk spoiler was one of those early CARB approved models – loaded with goofy air recycling pumps, weird ill-functioning trap canisters and forever plugged ERG valves.
1965? Not much has changed from then?
I drive a car that meets the CA standard and I have nothing to complain about. If there are any
I don’t know anything about them because the car is 100% reliable, accelerates smoothly and I don’t get a bill for anything more than an oil change and tire rotation when I bring the car into the dealer for routine maintenance. If they are changing out or unplugging any other parts, they aren’t telling me about it or charging me.
My car is better than any car I could have bought in 1965. I am not sure why you would want to bring up the early history of attempts to deal with air pollution any more than you would want to compare the safety, reliability, and lifetime of a 1965 vehicle with one manufactured today.
I do get that you don’t want to pay for externalities and you have been indoctrinated into believing that you shouldn’t have to.
The DOJ has not lodged another lawsuit
It hasn’t?
s/not/now
Fine. Let them battle it all out in court. Could take years and years, but go ahead and do it.
Deregulation throughout assorted federal agencies like the EPA,USFS, BLM benefits all of us – especially those of us west of the Rockies. Onerous land use regulation being my top concern.
USFS disallowing salvage logging in national forests damaged by drought, beetle kill and wildfire. Trump’s people could make such salvage operations mandatory. And those timber sales will fund camping and day use recreation activities.
Order USFS to stop hassling small time patented mining claimants. Open forests to OHV use – instead of locking us out of public land with those frak’n yellow gates.
Order BLM-USFS to aggressively confront narco pot growers. Rangers and wardens know their forests and turn a blind eye to it – I’ve firsthand experience with this – and reported grow sites with GPS coordinates to zero effect.
Trump should declare major California population centers as National Monuments to preserve the land for “future generations and require residents to leave.
He can’t. He can only declare national monuments on federal land.
(This is why those who feverishly described 0bama’s, Clinton’s, and Carter’s awful national monument declarations as “land grabs” were wrong. Those declarations were wrong and excessive and harmful to the general welfare, but by definition they could only affect land that already belonged to the USA anyway.)
Federal lands comprise just shy of 30 percent of the country’s total land area. Sounds to me like rather a lot of Federal control.
And how is that in any way relevant or responsive? What point did you imagine you were making with that comment? Supposing the USA were to own 95% of the country’s total land area, how would that help Trump “declare major California population centers as National Monuments”?
Federalist paper no. 44 deals with this struggle between the federal and the states by arguing for the ‘Necessary and Proper Clause’ and the ‘Supremacy Clause’ to decide these issues.
I’ve many frustrations with the federal government owning huge swaths of land out west, and argue frequently for the divestment of these holdings back to the states.
As such, I can’t get too incensed at the sheenannigans by California thumbing its nose at the feds over land sales – EXCEPT this insurrection by California isn’t based on Constitutional principles for greater good – but unabashed, anti-Trump, mah feelings #resistance uber alles horse crap.
What do you mean by “back” to the states? They never belonged to the states in the first place.
And why is it better for the state government to own these lands than the federal government? If the USA has no legitimate use for them (and that is true of the vast majority) they should be divested to private ownership, not to the states.
The “necessary and proper” clause merely authorizes Congress to do things not specifically enumerated, only in the course of doing things that are enumerated. For instance the constitution doesn’t specifically authorize the federal government to rent offices or buy paper, but obviously it may do so, but only for purposes that are enumerated. It’s authorized to grant patents so it can rent office space for the patent office. It’s not authorized to run schools, or do pretty much anything the Dept of Education does, so it can’t rent office space for that purpose.
We’re on the same page, Milhouse, and in agreement in general, but you’re splitting grammatical hairs.
As to ‘why is it better for the state government to own these lands?’ is because these lands reside inside the states’ borders, and impact the citizens & local economy. Local control is the best control, imho.
As to “necessary and proper” clause; Congress. Thanks for making my point.
Plus, if you think the federal Dept. of Edu does not run doesn’t run schools, you’re not paying attention.
Name a school run by the DoEd.
So what? How would state ownership be better than federal ownership? Government is government, and if there’s no reason for the government to own these lands then they should be sold off, not given to another government.
WARNING: This blog contains opinions known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
The global warming of it all melts ze snowflakes
My official “Comment of the Day”.
While I applaud most of what Trump has done thus far, I question his motives on using the EPA on this matter. I am a firm believer in states rights and less federal intervention. If (and that is a big IF) we need to have the EPA, they should set minimum standards. If states choose to set their own standards that go above and beyond the federal standards, then so be it. One of two things will happen. Either technology will advance, or the automakers will tell them that the technology is not matured enough to meet their standards and the state will be forced to lower the standards.
I agree. Not sure why he’s picking this battle, but it is likely a bone he is throwing to someone or some country to get them to do something else he wants. California car market is a huge market and car makers somewhere must be VERY happy about this. Given that CA is a state that will never support him or provide him electors, he has nothing to lose by throwing them to the wolves anytime it suits his larger agenda.
I remember that legal insurrection posted on this topic awhile back. I found this article both interesting and frightening due to the fact that the conclusion seems almost inevitable.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/04/californias_illegal_alien_voting_law_is_secession.html
Out of curiosity, do you continue to vote democrat? If so, why?