WASHINGTON D.C.– Senator Padilla has vowed to hold up four pending nominees for the Environmental Protection Agency until Congressional Republicans stop their attempts to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian's decision over California's waivers for more stringent air quality standards.
Section 209 of the Clean Air Act allows states like California to request a waiver of the federal preemption the law created concerning vehicle emissions standards.
Waivers for vehicle emissions standards must be submitted and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before state-specific standards can be enforced.
California has used this process to receive over 100 federal preemption waivers for its vehicle emissions requirements and, as of 2025, 17 states and Washington D.C. have adopted the golden state's emissions standards.
Those waivers can be denied by Congress under the authority of the Congressional Review Act which allows the legislative branch to reject certain federal agency decisions if a 60-vote threshold is met.
An expedited process with a lower vote requirement can be implemented if the Senate Parliamentarian -an unelected, nonpartisan interpreter of Senate rules- determines the request follows rules established by federal law.
Earlier this year, the Senate Parliamentarian affirmed that California's waiver requests were not entitled to the expedited process after the Environmental Protection Agency submitted three California waiver requests as rules in an attempt to subject those waivers to a lower 51-vote threshold.
"Congress put California’s ability to set vehicle emissions standards in the Clean Air Act, which has already protected generations of Americans from fossil fuel emissions," explained Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee in April of this year. "We’re gratified that the Senate parliamentarian followed decades of precedent showing that California’s Clean Air Act waivers are not subject to the Congressional Review Act. The lie about ‘cooperative federalism’ as the model for EPA to follow is laid bare when environmental regulatory and enforcement authority of the states is stronger than federal requirements. Here, the Clean Air Act provides California the authority to set more stringent vehicle emission standards, and [Environmental Protection Agency] Administrator Zeldin pulled out all the stops to attack that authority despite decades of practice and precedent."
According to Senator Padilla's Office, none of California's waivers have ever been submitted to Congress as a rule since the waiver authority was established in 1967.
"Here, for the first time in the history of the CRA [Congressional Review Act], an agency submitted matters that they knew were not rules. Some of my Republican colleagues are now arguing that the Parliamentarian should have no role to limit this partisan gamesmanship, and the Senate should throw out the rulebook and overturn the Parliamentarian," said Senator Padilla. "If the Trump EPA and Senate Republicans are successful at this ploy, the Senate will have no choice but to accept this as status quo in the future. This would grant agencies unchecked control over the Senate floor — an unprecedented encroachment by the executive branch into the Senate’s internal operations."
Senator Padilla then noted that changes to rule submissions by federal agencies could result in an unprecedented expansion of executive authority that could include revoking the broadcast licenses for media outlets with unfavorable coverage, rescinding Food and Drug Administration approvals of vaccines, and the targeting of organizations that draw the ire of the occupant of the White House.
"I must object to proceeding to any nominations for the EPA pending on the Senate's executive calendar," concluded Senator Padilla during his floor speech. "I will continue to object until the agency withdraws its false submissions to Congress or the Majority Leader commits not to overturn the Parliamentarian’s determination on this matter."
Any U.S. Senator can hold up nominations by preventing the use of unanimous consent during consideration of nominees in the chamber.
Senator Padilla's block now puts the nominations of Deputy Administrator nominee David Fotouhi, Chief Financial Officer nominee Catherine Hanson, and Assistant Administrator nominees Jessica Kramer and Aaron Szabo to the Environmental Protection Agency in limbo.
"The Biden Administration failed to send rules on California’s waivers to Congress, preventing Members of Congress from deciding on extremely consequential actions that have massive impacts and costs across the entire United States. The Trump EPA is transparently correcting this wrong and rightly following the rule of law," argued Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. "The American people are struggling to make ends meet while dealing with rules that take away their ability to choose a safe and affordable vehicle for their families. As an agency, we are accountable to Congress, but most importantly we must be accountable to the American people."
In February, EPA Administrator Zeldin explained the more stringent emissions standards would increase the cost of vehicles and announced his "Powering the Great American Comeback" initiative that seeks to balance the statutory mission of the EPA with plans to energize the nation's economy.
In May, House Republicans voted to revoke three of California's waivers despite a determination by the Government Accountability Office that the waivers were not technically rules in the lower chamber setting up a show down over the waiver applications in the Senate this week.
"Clean air didn’t used to be political. In fact, we can thank Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon for our decades-old authority to clean our air," noted California's Governor Gavin Newsom while pointing to a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions since 2000 while seeing a simultaneous 78 percent increase in the state's GDP. "The only thing that’s changed is that big polluters and the right-wing propaganda machine have succeeded in buying off the Republican Party – and now the House is using a tactic that the Senate’s own parliamentarian has said is lawless. Our vehicles program helps clean the air for all Californians, and we’ll continue defending it. Washington may want to cede our economy to China but California is standing by American innovation."
California is home to many of the nation's ten most polluted cities by multiple metrics including four of the top five based on the presence of surface-level ozone and the top three based on year-round particulate matter detailed the American Lung Association's 2025 State of the Air City Rankings.
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