California had a game plan to counter Donald Trump’s assault on electric vehicles — and then the president blew it up.
The Golden State’s power to shape the national car market is in tatters thanks to Trump 2.0. Where it took federal officials nearly 18 months in Trump’s first term to revoke the state’s nation-leading electric vehicle sales mandate, they accomplished it in less than five months this time around — and California has yet to come up with a way to counter it.
The result is a stark reversal from Trump’s first term, when California repeatedly slowed or blunted federal rollbacks — and often outmaneuvered a White House mired in internal dysfunction. Now, he is running roughshod over one of the signature policy priorities of this heavily Democratic state.
The infighting, sloppy rulemaking and a lack of clear policy goals that marked Trump’s first administration have been replaced by an aggressively overhauled government workforce stocked with MAGA loyalists and an eagerness to test the bounds of executive authority. Backed by more-seasoned agency staff, congressional Republicans in lockstep with Trump’s agenda and a playbook in the form of Project 2025 — the conservative Heritage Foundation’s comprehensive policy blueprint — Trump 2.0 has looked like a completely different animal.
