As U.S. abandons climate fight, Washington state feels the heat to do more

February 14, 2026

Washington state’s push for a rapid switch to electric vehicles is in jeopardy— with its ultimate fate likely to be decided in the courts.

A Trump administration move Thursday to axe the centerpiece of federal climate policy jeopardizes state-level efforts to control pollution from motor vehicles as well.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday erased the U.S. government’s ability to fight climate-changing pollution from motor vehicles and other sources. It is now official U.S. policy that climate change does not endanger human welfare.

“The endangerment finding and the regulations that were based on it didn’t just regulate emissions. It regulated and targeted the American dream,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said Thursday at the White House, with President Donald Trump at his side.

“In 2009, Barack Hussein Obama, his EPA, designated fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and other things that actually make factories rock and roll and other things drive very nicely as a threat to health and human welfare,” Trump said.

The Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama issued a finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangered human welfare, enabling regulation of the gases under the federal Clean Air Act.

“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards,” Trump said.

“It really kind of wipes clean what has been the major domestic vehicle for addressing climate change in this country,” University of Washington law professor Sanne Knudsen said.

“This is the most pro-pollution President in American history,” Sen. Patty Murray said in an emailed statement. “This crook of a President promised to let Big Oil and giant corporations trash our environment—and now we’re all paying for his corruption.”

Murray said she would fight back “every way possible.”

“This federal action is unlawful, ignores basic science and denies what we can see with our own two eyes: Climate change endangers our communities and our health – period,” Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said in an emailed statement. “From historic floods to devastating wildfires, Washingtonians have seen the impacts of the climate crisis firsthand.”

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said in an emailed statement that leaving greenhouse gas pollution unchecked would “invite catastrophe.”

“For the sake of our communities and our future, this illegal action will not go unchallenged,” Brown said.

Brown was part of a coalition of 23 attorneys general who urged the EPA in September, in a 225-page comment letter, to abandon the proposal.

Washington state Republican Party chair and state Rep. Jim Walsh called the now-defunct endangerment finding “a pretty thin branch on which a lot of heavy regulatory burden was weighted.”

“This is a good thing,” Walsh said of Thursday’s long-expected announcement. “It will allow the streamlining and, frankly, rationalization of public policy that has not been streamlined and not been rational in quite a long time.”

Climate action pushed to the state level

The rule announced Thursday immediately removes emission limits on motor vehicles, the nation’s leading source of heat-trapping pollution, with deregulation of power plants and methane emissions expected to follow.

“It’s radical,” Knudsen said of the federal government canceling its own authority to regulate climate pollution. “It’s a big move that would have major implications for how this country addresses greenhouse gas emissions, and it would mean that states become a much more important part of the picture here.”

With the new rule, the EPA is both ending its own restrictions on planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks and claiming that it still has the authority to prevent states from regulating that pollution.

“They’re trying to thread a needle here,” Knudsen said. “They cannot walk back federal regulation and at the same time prevent state regulation.”

The Clean Air Act forbids states from regulating emissions from motor vehicles, with one big exception. California, which had been regulating air pollution from cars and trucks before the Clean Air Act existed, has been granted waivers over the years to keep doing so. States including Washington and Oregon have adopted California’s tougher vehicle emission standards.

Washington state is currently phasing out petroleum-powered cars and trucks, requiring all new passenger vehicles and 40% to 75% of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state have zero emissions by 2035.

In June, Trump rescinded California’s latest waiver. California and 10 other states sued to restore the waiver, and their tighter vehicle rules, the same day.

With manufacturers free to sell as many gas-guzzling, highly polluting vehicles as they can, state and local efforts to fight climate change now face more of an uphill battle to help preserve a livable climate.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, vehicle manufacturers can once again build what Americans want, not what politicians and bureaucrats in Washington demand,” Zeldin said.

A spokesperson for Bellevue-based truck manufacturer PACCAR said the new federal policy would not affect the company’s plans to produce cleaner trucks.

“We have a strong economic incentive to continuously improve the fuel efficiency of our trucks,” spokesperson Ken Hastings said by email. “Customers benefit from lower fuel costs and factor that into their truck purchasing decisions.”

Legal experts say the demise of the endangerment finding will not undermine the centerpiece of Washington state’s efforts to reduce climate-altering pollution: the state’s cap on emissions from major polluters.

Auctions of the permits needed to emit industrial quantities of carbon dioxide have been a major revenue source for the state’s environmental programs and a major expense for polluting businesses, with $5 billion worth of pollution permits auctioned off in three years.

Spokespeople for the Association of Washington Business and the Western States Petroleum Association declined to comment.

“EPA can try to erase the science, but climate change is real and impacting every community in our state,” Washington Department of Ecology director Casey Sixkiller said in an emailed statement. “Washington state will continue our work to protect communities from the impacts of air pollution and double down on decarbonizing our economy.”

Federal agencies under Trump have pursued a multipronged effort to promote fossil fuels and end the regulation of their climate-altering emissions. By eliminating the legal basis for limiting carbon pollution, revoking the endangerment finding is the farthest-reaching of all the federal actions.

“The Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America,” Zeldin said.

The Trump Administration claims its deregulatory move will save $1.3 trillion by 2055 by making cars and trucks more affordable and avoiding the expense of installing electric-vehicle chargers.

Environmentalists claim the move will cost up to $4.2 trillion in climate harm, up to $1.4 trillion in increased fuel costs, and up to $500 billion in damages to people’s health from breathing in more fossil fuel exhaust over the same time period.

According to the estimate by the Environmental Defense Fund, Washington state residents would pay up to an additional $73 billion for fuel and suffer up to $11 billion in health harms from the increased exhaust.

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