Sullivan joins a national fight to strip California of its power to set tougher emissions rules

Sen. Dan Sullivan has signed on to a coordinated push in Congress to roll back a piece of federal law that lets California — and, through it, much of the country — set stricter vehicle emissions standards than the federal government requires.

The fight turns on a decades-old feature of the Clean Air Act. The law bars states from writing their own vehicle emissions standards, with one exception: California, which can ask the EPA for a "waiver" to set its own. And once California has a waiver, any other state may adopt California's standards as its own. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have done so, together accounting for roughly 40% of new light-duty vehicle sales in the country. California's rules thus function as a second national emissions standard, reaching well beyond the state that writes them.

What Sullivan and his colleagues want to undo are waivers behind rules like California's Advanced Clean Cars II program, which requires all new cars sold in the state to be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid by 2035. Sullivan has cosponsored resolutions targeting California's greenhouse-gas standards for cars and its Advanced Clean Cars program, and separately filed his own resolution against an EPA decision on emissions from ocean-going ships at berth. Each uses the Congressional Review Act, a tool that lets Congress wipe out federal decisions by simple majority.

Supporters of the effort, including the Trump administration's EPA, describe California's rules as de facto electric-vehicle mandates that drive up costs and narrow consumer choice nationwide, and argue that a single state should not be able to shape the vehicle market for everyone. California and ten other states see it the opposite way: they have sued to defend the waivers, arguing the standards are a lawful exercise of authority Congress granted California more than half a century ago to address its air quality, and that the states adopting them are exercising their own right to cleaner air.

Whether Congress can legally do this at all is unsettled. The Government Accountability Office and the Senate parliamentarian have both concluded that California's waivers are not "rules" subject to the Congressional Review Act, but adjudicatory decisions outside its reach. Congress moved ahead over those objections — three earlier waivers were nullified this way in 2025 — and the dispute may ultimately be settled in court.

For Alaska, the direct effect is limited: the state is not among those that have adopted California's standards, so the rules do not bind Alaskan drivers. What plays out nationally still reaches the state indirectly, through the emissions rules automakers design to and the broader question of how much power one state, or Congress, holds over them. Sullivan, who faces reelection this year, has now placed himself among the effort's active participants, extending a pattern of using the same tool against EPA actions tied to California.