Senate Repeals California’s National EV Mandate Delivering On Campaign Promise

The Senate repealed California’s de facto national EV mandate Thursday morning, delivering on a key pledge of President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to undo bans on gas-powered cars.

Senators voted 51 to 44 along party lines to approve a resolution sponsored by Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia that would rescind a Biden Environmental Protection Agency waiver allowing California and any state that adopts its vehicle emission standards to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The resolution passed the House on May 1 with 35 House Democrats supporting the EV mandate repeal and heads to Trump’s desk for signature.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, who helped lead the fight to rescind the California waivers, cast the Senate’s vote as a fundamental rejection of Democratic lawmakers’ Green New Deal proposal.

“Washington bureaucrats will not dictate the vehicles we can drive in Wyoming or across America,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso of Wyoming said in a statement following the vote. “Republicans rejected the Democrats’ delusional dream of banning gas-powered vehicles forever. We rejected their effort to force-feed electric vehicles to every single American. The electric vehicle mandate was a pillar of the Democrats’ Green New Deal. Today, Republicans toppled that pillar. The American people are back in the driver’s seat, exactly where they belong.”

Trump frequently called for the repeal of all EV mandates during the 2024 presidential campaign.