So much for Gavin Newsom's electric vehicle mandate

California's leading the world on climate. So where's California going?

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Gavin Newsom speaks at the California Economic Summit in 2019. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Brazil this week, basking in the limelight as the face of American climate diplomacy. But back home, his administration is signaling it may abandon his highest-profile climate achievement.

In an interview with Politico late last month, California Air Resources Board chair Lauren Sanchez — who was tapped by Newsom to lead the agency after serving as his climate advisor — said she and her colleagues will “rethink” the state’s 2035 mandate to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles.

The 2035 deadline will be a “very active area of discussion,” Sanchez said.

I haven’t seen Sanchez’s comments getting much attention. But they’re a potentially huge deal. The requirement for most newly sold cars to be electric (up to 20% can be plug-in hybrids) is one of Newsom’s crowning accomplishments. When he signed the executive order in 2020, he described it as “the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change.” When officials finalized the rule, Sanchez said it was “a huge day not only for California but the entire world.”

And now we might backtrack? Really?

It’s easy to guess why Newsom’s administration is getting queasy. Electric vehicles sales haven’t risen as fast as expected, prompting automakers such as Ford and GM — which not long ago enjoyed bragging about their growing slate of electric models — to pare back their EV offerings. And now congressional Republicans have eliminated federal tax credits for clean cars. So Newsom and his advisers are probably wondering whether the 2035 mandate is still realistic.

Meanwhile, President Trump signed a bill in June revoking California’s authority to set clean car rules. So in theory, the 2035 deadline is already bunk.

Here’s the thing, though: California is suing to overturn that law. And even if the 2035 target feels increasingly out of reach, the point was to push car companies toward EVs as fast as possible, using California’s immense market power.

So it’s hard for me to understand why the Newsom administration is broadcasting its willingness to back down. That doesn’t feel like the wisest negotiating tactic — unless Newsom’s goal is to buffer himself against criticism that he’s a woke environmentalist ahead of a presidential run.

I’m speculating, of course. I reached out to the Air Resources Board for comment but didn’t hear back in time for publication.

There’s a more generous way to interpret Sanchez’s remarks.

If California loses the lawsuit over its right to set clean car rules, the Air Resources Board might have trouble replacing the 2035 requirement with anything whatsoever — even a weaker deadline. It’s possible Sanchez is trying to bring automakers to the negotiating table ahead of a possible courtroom loss.

Again, speculation. And there’s another option California could pursue.

Ann Carlson, a UCLA law professor and former Biden administration official, has floated the idea of California directly regulating greenhouse gases. That would be possible if Trump succeeds in undoing the “endangerment finding,” thereby giving California the power to regulate greenhouse gases — at least in theory.

It sounds complicated. But basically it means that even if California loses the clean car lawsuit, it has another tool to pressure automakers to sell EVs.

That strategy would face lawsuits, too. But just the threat could be valuable.

“If you’ve got more legal uncertainty, it potentially gives you more leverage [over car companies],” Carlson told me.

I’m happy Newsom is repping the U.S. on the world stage. I’ll be happier if he does everything he can to hold out for 100% clean car sales by 2035.

In China, by the way? More than half of new cars are already electric.

Sympathy for the Sierra Club

Sierra Club founder John Muir is quoted at Disney California Adventure. (Photo by Sammy Roth)

The New York Times’ David A. Fahrenthold and Claire Brown wrote a detailed story on the turmoil that rocked the Sierra Club as the group embraced social justice while navigating the Trump years. To quote several key paragraphs:

The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.

Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.

And this year, as the Trump administration returned better organized and better prepared than in its first term, the Sierra Club was the opposite. While Mr. Trump boosted coal power, canceled wind farms and rolled back pollution limits, the club was consumed by internal chaos, culminating when the board fired its executive director, Ben Jealous, a former president of the N.A.A.C.P.

The Sierra Club pushed back hard. In a written statement, executive director Loren Blackford called the story a “hit piece,” saying the NYT “proved remarkably resistant to the facts, data, and perspectives of anyone who disagreed with their narrative.”

I’m not going to mediate a dispute between two organizations whose work I respect and admire. Read the story, read the response and make your own judgments.

But I will say this: Although the Times focused on Sierra Club leaders who feel the group has strayed from its core mission of protecting the environment, I personally have lots of sympathy for the decision to embrace social issues such as racial justice and immigrant rights.

For one thing, social and environmental justice are deeply intertwined. When you’re working to fight climate change and reduce air pollution, the people with the most to gain are marginalized communities. If you want to build your environmental coalition, fighting to defend people of color and immigrants is absolutely the right idea.

The other reason I’m sympathetic is that the generational struggle described in the NYT article — between younger activists demanding an intersectional approach to environmental advocacy, and older greens who’d prefer to stick to the environment, broadly speaking — mirrors the larger debates roiling the Democratic Party: What’s the best response to Trump, old-school centrism or radical progressivism? Who gets to decide the future of the movement? How do we win?

The Sierra Club insists it’s in stronger financial shape, with more members, than the article suggested. I hope that’s the case.

In other news

Runners near the finish line of the Los Angeles Marathon in March 2025. (Photo by Sammy Roth)

Here in Los Angeles:

• Startling new research finds marathon times go up when there’s more fossil fuel pollution in the air — and folks running the L.A. Marathon have it worst. (Hiroko Tabuchi and Brad Plumer, New York Times)

• California is trying to force an oil company to stop drilling in the Baldwin Hills. The question after that: Should public parkland or affordable housing replace the pumpjacks? (Doug Smith, L.A. Times)

• Did regulators vote to cut air pollution at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach? Or did they give the ports a free pass? Environmental justice advocates worry it was the latter. (Tony Briscoe, L.A. Times)

Elsewhere in California:

• The Trump administration plans to open the Pacific coast to offshore oil leases for the first time in decades. But it’s not clear if any oil companies actually want to drill. (Hayley Smith, L.A. Times)

• Trump hasn’t tried to undo Chuckwalla National Monument in the California desert. Now five tribes have established a coalition to co-manage the monument with the federal government. (Tyrone Beason, L.A. Times)

• An investigation finds home insurers have exploited loopholes in wildfire rules to avoid high-risk areas while still charging higher rates. (New York Times)

Around the West:

• The Colorado River Basin states blew past a Tuesday deadline to agree on a plan to cut water use. The Trump administration is letting them keep negotiating. (Ian James, L.A. Times)

• The Colorado River Indian Tribes have accorded personhood status to their life-giving waterway. (Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic)

• At popular national parks, visitor services continued during the government shutdown. Behind the scenes, though, the Trump administration neglected key environmental work. (Lila Seidman and Alex Wigglesworth, L.A. Times)

Climate politics:

• New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration approved a new gas pipeline championed by Trump. (Marie J. French and Mona Zhang, Politico)

• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro abandoned an important climate program to secure Republican votes for a budget. (Jon Hurdle, Inside Climate News)

• In better news, Illinois passed a huge clean energy package under the leadership of Governor JB Pritzker. (Sarah Mattalian, Inside Climate News)

• Also cool: In a major political upset, Katie Wilson will be Seattle’s next mayor. She co-founded the Transit Riders Union has been a strong advocate for public transit and safe streets. (Nathan Dickey, Seattle Transit Blog)

Farewell, Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney speaks at a conference in Washington, D.C., in 2011. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Vice President Dick Cheney, who passed away this month, won’t be remembered by most Americans for his impact on energy policy.

But Cheney — who led oil services company Halliburton before being elected VP — helped craft the Bush administration’s “all of the above” energy agenda, back when Republicans loved oil but didn’t hate renewables. And some environmentalists will always associate him with the “Halliburton loophole,” which exempted fracking from certain environmental regulations. Although as E&E News reports, it was never clear whether Cheney was responsible for the loophole.

All things considered…simpler times.