On August 6, 2026, five Republicans in Congress — three in the House, two in the Senate — moved on the same day to tear up the same set of clean-air protections.

They introduced seven resolutions between them. Every one of them does the same basic thing: strip the rules that keep pollution out of the air you and your kids breathe.

And in the press release announcing it, two groups funded by the Koch political network were quoted cheering them on.

What they actually did

The House side came first. August Pfluger of Texas, Gary Palmer of Alabama, and Jay Obernolte of California introduced a three-resolution package to kill the Clean Air Act waivers that let California set tougher limits on tailpipe pollution than the federal government does.

• Pfluger's resolution undoes the reinstatement of the Advanced Clean Cars I waiver.
• Palmer's revokes California's authority to set greenhouse gas standards for cars built in 2009 and after.
• Obernolte's kills the rule covering small off-road engines — lawn and garden equipment.

All three of them sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the committee that oversees the EPA and the Clean Air Act. They wrote in their own release that the goal is "to rein in regulators."

The Senate side landed the same day. Jon Husted of Ohio joined Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Eric Schmitt of Missouri to introduce four more resolutions. Husted is leading the one that targets Advanced Clean Cars II — the standard that phases out new gas-only vehicle sales and tightens greenhouse gas limits. He's co-leading three others covering vehicle emissions generally, small off-road engines, and heavy-duty trucks.

Seven resolutions. One target.

This is not just about California

Every one of these lawmakers framed this as stopping California from bossing everyone else around. Pfluger said California "should not be allowed to dictate what kind of vehicles Texans and Americans across the country can drive." Palmer said families "deserve affordable, reliable vehicles." Husted said Ohioans "shouldn't be forced to follow California's lead."

Here's what that framing leaves out.

Under Section 177 of the Clean Air Act, other states get to choose whether to follow California's cleaner standards instead of the weaker federal ones. Nobody forces them. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have chosen to — including Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Those states weren't forced. They voted for it. Their legislatures and their governors decided they wanted cleaner air.

So when these five Republicans say they're protecting states from California, what they're actually doing is overruling seventeen other states that made their own choice. That's the opposite of states' rights. It's Washington telling New Jersey and Colorado they're not allowed to have cleaner air than Texas.

What gets lost

The standards they're attacking aren't paperwork. They're measured in lives.

When the EPA approved the Advanced Clean Cars II waiver in December 2024, the American Lung Association said the program would save roughly 1,200 lives and deliver $12.9 billion in public health benefits in California alone — with more as other states adopted it. "Approving the Advanced Clean Cars II program is an important step in the ongoing progress needed to clean the nation's air," said the group's president and CEO, Harold Wimmer.

Vehicle exhaust causes asthma attacks, heart attacks and strokes. It sends kids to the emergency room. That's the thing being repealed here.

They already knew this was against the rules

Here's the part that should bother anyone who cares about how Congress is supposed to work.

The Congressional Review Act is a fast-track tool that lets Congress kill federal rules with a simple majority. Clean Air Act waivers aren't rules. That's not an opinion — it's the finding of the Government Accountability Office, which determined in March 2025 that the waivers are adjudicatory orders, not rules, and therefore not eligible for CRA treatment. The Senate parliamentarian — the Senate's own nonpartisan referee — agreed.

Senate Republicans went around both of them. In May 2025 they held a party-line vote on a point of order, 51-46, to declare the resolutions eligible anyway, then passed them. Democrats warned at the time that this creates a precedent letting the CRA be used to retroactively wipe out decades of agency decisions that nobody ever considered rules — permits, licenses, adjudications.

This new batch of seven is built on that same precedent. The rulebook said no. They changed the rulebook and kept going.

This isn't the first time we've written about this campaign, either. Wyoming's Harriet Hageman introduced her own resolution to revoke California's waiver in July — a bill the Sierra Club called putting "Big Oil's profits ahead of Americans' health and wallets."

Who's actually cheering

Read Husted's own press release and you'll find the answer. Two of the outside groups quoted praising the resolutions are part of the Koch political network:

• Americans for Prosperity, whose chief government affairs officer Brent Gardner urged "the full Senate to pass all four."
• The LIBRE Initiative, AFP's Latino-outreach arm, whose executive director Sandra Benitez said the same thing.

The third voice quoted is the Ohio Auto Dealers Association. Not a single doctor, lung association, public-health group or parent appears anywhere in the release.

The donor picture behind these five fills in the rest. Pfluger's top funders are a roll call of the oil industry — Permian Resources, Valero, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum and Exxon Mobil among them. He has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025, and a 0% lifetime score.

Obernolte's donor list includes Chevron's employee PAC and Koch, Inc.'s corporate PAC, alongside PG&E and Edison International — the two California utilities regulated by the very committee he sits on. His LCV score is 3% for 2025 and 6% lifetime. Only 4% of his money came from small grassroots donors.

Ricketts scores 3% from LCV for 2025 and 2% lifetime. He isn't just funded by billionaires — he is one, having personally put more than $1.6 million into a super PAC supporting Nebraska Republicans, and he ranks #96 out of 100 senators in grassroots funding.

And Husted's relationship with the oil industry is already on the record: Chevron and other oil companies put $220,000 behind his reelection while he voted thirteen straight times against ending the Iran war that sent their profits — and Ohioans' gas prices — through the roof.

The affordability argument doesn't survive contact with the record

Every one of them used the word "affordable." Husted said the resolutions are "part of our work to make life more affordable for working families." Ricketts said he'd "continue to fight for policies that empower our families, farmers, and ranchers."

But these are the same members who have spent the year making things more expensive. Husted has taken $69,750 from the tech and utility companies at the center of Ohio's data center fight — the fight over who pays when data centers drive electric bills up. Obernolte voted for a budget bill whose food-assistance cuts are expected to push about 560,000 Californians off CalFresh.

Cheaper for whom? Cars built to a weaker standard burn more gas. Gas costs money. The savings they're promising at the dealership come back out of your tank — and out of your lungs.

Seventeen states looked at that trade and said no thanks. Five Republicans just voted to take the choice away from them.

Source

Reporting on the House package appeared in Brownwood News; the Senate resolutions were announced by Sen. Jon Husted's office.