Republicans Are Rewriting Congressional Rules So Cars Can Pollute More

Freed to call all manner of administrative actions into question, the GOP, Becker said, is likely to “get a bad case of bloodlust and look around to see what else the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 have put in the index for elimination.” Everything from vaccine and contraceptive approvals to broadcast licenses for media outlets that are critical of Trump could be on the chopping block, as California’s Senator Alex Padilla has argued. Should Democrats take back the government, they’d in turn have an easier time undoing the Trump administration’s actions, such as corporate merger approvals, and accomplishing more of their legislative priorities with a simple majority.

While California Attorney General Rob Bonta and others are likely to fight the disapprovals in court, CRA actions are typically insulated from legal challenges. “There’s a very open question about what happens if you apply it to things the act doesn’t cover,” said Ann Carlson, the Shirley Shapiro professor of environmental law at UCLA, who served as chief counsel and acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from 2021 to 2024. She reasoned, when we spoke on Wednesday, that lawsuits against this particular usage of the CRA may be able to proceed given the circumstances, but it’s too soon to tell what will happen. “If it’s insulated from judicial review,” Carlson added, “Congress can apply the CRA seemingly to anything: a license renewal, a permit, a court settlement that DOJ enters into. Why not have the Congressional Review Act apply to those, as well?”

These aren’t just far-off theoretical possibilities. Just before the Senate vote, Republicans passed their “one big, beautiful bill” through the House. In addition to gutting Medicaid, repealing large parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, and lowering taxes for the wealthy, that package includes provisions to throw out fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards put in place by the Biden administration and institute a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. Bills passed through budget reconciliation, however—and by a simple majority—have to relate to raising or spending revenue, or changing the debt limit; those parts don’t. House Republicans, who aren’t subject to those rules, may have included those sections expecting them to be stripped out by the Senate. They still could be, but the Senate has just proved its willingness to bend the rules.