California’s EV mandate that spread across the West Coast and into some East Coast states was just unplugged this week by the U.S. Senate and Oklahoma Sens. James Lankford and Markwayne Mulling helped pull the plug on the green energy effort pushed by the Biden administration.
Lankford and Mullin were among those who voted Thursday to block California’s first-in-the national rule to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. They voted in support of the mandate-killing bill which was sent to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. It was approved by the House earlier in the month.
It also came a month after Sen. Mullin was a co-sponsor ofthe Congressional Review Act (CRA) to repeal California’s EV waivers that prohibit the sale of new gas-powered light-duty vehicles by 2035, and set unrealistic and stringent requirements for heavy-duty trucks and heavy-duty diesel engines.
“We cannot allow California’s costly and extreme Green New Deal agenda to bankrupt families and eliminate consumer choice for hundreds of millions of American families,” said Mullin in announcing the measure.
“Thankfully, after four years of ineffective one-size-fits-all crippling bureaucracy, the Trump administration is bringing back common sense. I’m grateful to my colleagues for partnering with me on this effort.”
The California measure sparked an effort by more than a dozen other states to transition toward electric vehicles in the Biden administration’s push toward the EV industry.
But President Trump’s administration entered office and doubled down on fossil fuels.
The U.S. Senate vote targeted the Advanced Clean Cars II rule, enacted in 2022 by the California Air Resources Board and granted a federal waiver by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in December 2024. It required car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicles to California dealerships over the next decade.
Starting in 2026, at least 35% of all new vehicles sold in California would be required to be zero-emission vehicles and by 2035, the act would have banned all sales of new gas-only cars in the state.
