WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is escalating its battle with California over the future of gas-powered cars in the United States, plotting a legislative maneuver with congressional Republicans to strip California of a decades-old authority to establish a national fuel-efficiency standard.

Two Trump administration officials confirmed Wednesday that discussions are underway about invoking the Congressional Review Act to end the decades-old waiver giving California vast sway over mileage standards. The review act allows lawmakers to reverse government rules drafted within a certain window with a simple majority. One GOP lawmaker from California introduced legislation last month to end the federal waiver.

For decades, automakers have bent their car production lines to meet California mileage standards, in part due to the size of the California market and in part because the industry has found it a safer bet — with changes in power so common in Washington — to be more stringent on fuel efficiency standards than the alternative.

Dating more than 50 years to the administration of President Nixon, the federal government has recognized the unique and severe air pollution problems that beset California. The Environmental Protection Agency under eight presidents of both parties permitted waivers of the Clean Air Act, allowing California to set anti-pollution standards more stringent than required under federal law.

Molly Vaseliou, associate administrator for public affairs at the EPA, told The Times that the California waivers “have national impact.”

“It’s not isolated to California. When EPA grants a waiver, every state has the option to follow California’s rules instead of the federal government’s rules,” Vaseliou said. “California’s policies are a national alternative.”

“It will take vehicle choice away from millions of Americans and increase the cost of gas cars and hybrids nationwide. It’s a major economic rule,” she added.

Asked at a news conference Wednesday about the administration plan, reported earlier by the New York Times, Gov. Gavin Newsom said: “It does not surprise me, their current stance, because it’s a stance that’s well established, not just by the Trump Administration 1.0, but by previous Republican administrations that have been trying to vandalize California’s waiver and pollution standards for decades.”

One the state’s of the most ambitious goals, supported by Newsom, is to ban the sale of new, gas-powered cars in California by 2035. Under President Biden, federal regulators approved that goal under the continuing waiver of the Clean Air Act.

But the California waiver has become even more contentious because the EPA has allowed 11 other states to piggyback on the stricter clean air rules, including the 2035 mandate of selling only zero-emission vehicles.

Though the California rules affect only a dozen states, Republicans argue that they amount to national policy because about half of the nation’s car sales occur in those states.

Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency’s administrator, last week sent the waivers to Congress.

“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,” Zeldin said in a statement last week.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, already announced plans for a resolution to “disapprove the waiver.”

“Californians should be able to choose the vehicle of their choice and should not have that choice dictated by Gavin Newsom or unelected bureaucrats,” Kiley said in a statement.

Trump and other Republicans have expressed skepticism about the consensus of the world’s scientific community — that human activity, especially emissions from vehicles, has helped drive up the concentration of Earth-warming greenhouse gases.

During his first term in the White House, Trump managed to hobble California’s leadership role on vehicle emissions. His Department of Transportation issued a rule barring any state from setting its own car pollution standards. Based on that change, Trump’s EPA revoked the state’s legal waiver from the EPA, preventing it from enforcing its tailpipe emissions standards.

California tried to counter by going directly to auto manufacturers, with the state’s top air quality official able to broker a deal with five automakers in 2019 to reduce auto emissions, regardless of what the federal government did. When Biden took the White House in 2021, the Democratic administration restored California’s special ability to set air quality-related rules.

Trump and attorneys general in 16 conservative-leaning states also previously challenged California’s ability to set its own rules. The U.S. Supreme Court in December dismissed that challenge, while leaving open an avenue for a narrower appeal.

In 2023, the Government Accountability Office found that the California waiver is not subject to congressional review. But the EPA said that other agency rules have been subject to the Congressional Review Act despite similar GAO rulings.

California Air Resources Board spokesperson Dave Clegern questioned the legality of the Trump administration’s move.

“The Trump EPA is doing what no EPA under Democratic or Republican administrations in 50 years has ever done, and what the GAO has confirmed does not comply with the law,” Clegern said in a statement.

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(Pinho reported from Washington, Rainey, Wick and Wilner from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.)

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