WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Padilla vowed to block all nominations to the Environmental Protection Agency in response to the decision by Congressional Republicans to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian and alter Senate rules to allow the rejection of California's emissions waivers Tuesday.
"Republicans are overruling a thirty-year tradition of state policies that bolstered a new sector of the economy, helped domestic automakers fend off China’s manufacturing dominance, improved the quality of the air we breathe, reduced planet-warming carbon pollution, and protected the health of American families," argued a joint statement in late May from Democratic Senators Padilla, Schumer, and Whitehouse.
Section 209 of the Clean Air Act allows states -such as California- to request a waiver of federal preemptions the law created concerning vehicle emissions standards that differed from state to state.
California has used this waiver process to receive over 100 federal preemption waivers for its stricter vehicle emissions requirements and, as of 2025, 17 states and Washington D.C. have adopted the golden state's higher emissions standards.
Waivers for vehicle emissions standards that were different than federal standards had to be submitted and approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) before state-specific standards could be enforced.
Those EPA-granted state waivers could be rejected by the Senate with a majority vote, but any one Senator could hold up floor votes unless a 60-vote threshold is met under most conditions.
While the Senate functionally needs 60 votes to reject federal agency decisions, a simple majority vote is required to change rules in the Senate.
What qualifies as a rule change is decided traditionally by the Senate Parliamentarian -an unelected, nonpartisan interpreter of Senate rules- who determines if the resolution qualifies as a rule change under the Congressional Review Act.
Senate Republicans introduced a repeal of the EPA's approvals for California's waivers made during the Biden Administration as rules on April 4 of this year.
"I will continue to address all options available to strike down these rules and eliminate the consequential impact they would make across our country," vowed Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia who authored the resolutions that considered the California waivers as rules and therefore, subject to a majority vote.
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 and Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough confirmed that California's waiver requests did not qualify as rule changes and were not entitled to the majority vote process.
"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."
The decision to alter Senate rules to make changes with a simple majority instead of the 60-vote threshold necessary to invoke cloture, or stop any lone Senator's decision to hold the floor and prohibit any actions in the chamber -also known as a filibuster- are not a new topic and the change is known as 'the nuclear option' or 'going nuclear'.
During the Obama Administration, Senate Democrats voted 52-48 to allow the approval of judicial nominations with a simple majority vote and Senate Republicans during the first Trump Administration changed voting requirements to break a Democratic filibuster of Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Senator Padilla noted in a floor speech last month that changes to Senate rule submissions could result in an unprecedented expansion of executive authority into the chamber 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 any occupant of the White House going forward.
"Republicans have crossed the red line and gone nuclear. As the saying goes, 'what goes around comes around.' And it won’t be long before Democrats are back in the driver’s seat again," warned Senator Padilla. "We will not forget what happened here. History won’t forget. And California will not forget."
Any U.S. Senator, even ones in the minority party, can hold up nominations that require Senate approval by preventing the use of unanimous consent during consideration of nominees in the chamber.
In May, Senator Padilla stated his intent to block four pending nominations to the federal environmental agency if Senate Republicans continued to challenge California's waivers for more stringent emissions standards by presenting them as rule changes.
"I stated that I would continue these objections unless the Trump Administration’s EPA withdrew the waivers it knowingly and falsely submitted as rules, or the Majority Leader committed to not overturning the Senate Parliamentarian’s determination that these waivers are NOT rules entitled to expedited consideration in the Senate under the CRA [Congressional Records Act]," explained Senator Padilla in a Congressional Record Statement on June 3 of this year. "I want to make clear to my colleagues that I intend to object to the Senate proceeding to all nominations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), except for the vacancy for the EPA Inspector General, unless acceptable accommodations are reached for the State of California’s to protect the health of its people."
California is home to many of the nation's 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.
Senator Padilla vows to block all nominations to the Environmental Protection Agency over Senate rule changes Tuesday News Channel 3-12.
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