EXCLUSIVE: Trump admin backs congressional efforts to end regulations on electric vehicles, delta smelt, and more

A series of Statements of Administration Policies (SAP) obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter are the latest moves from the Trump administration to push back against aggressive regulations from blue states on issues.

These issues include, but are not limited to, electric vehicles to excessive protections for the delta smelt — a species of fish that frequently finds itself the target of ire from President Donald Trump.

The SAPs pertain to resolutions introduced by Reps. John James (R., Mich.), John Joyce (R., Pa.), Celeste Maloy (R., Utah), Jay Obernolte (R., Calif.), and Doug LaMalfa (R., Calif.).

The White House backs LaMalfa’s resolution about the delta smelt, for example, because it disapproves of a regulation that “unnecessarily imposes undue restrictions on the local agriculture, logging, and mining industries, hampering economic progress and increasing compliance costs for American businesses.”

For her part, Maloy noted to the Reporter that the National Parks Service (NPS) regulation that her legislation targets “lacks common sense.”

In the final days of the Biden administration, the NPS prohibited off-road vehicles (ORVs) on 24 miles of roads in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Maloy’s Utah.

That move “force[d] recreationists to trailer their ORVs and ATVs for a few miles on a state highway, an unnecessary burden that ignores Congress’s directive to manage Glen Canyon for multiple uses,” Maloy explained.

“My resolution will nullify this rule and ensure Glen Canyon remains open and accessible for recreation,” she continued.

The Trump administration, for its part, agrees with Maloy. In its SAP about her legislation, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) explained that the Biden NPS’s “rule unnecessarily limits recreation opportunities on Federal lands and is not supported by local and State officials.”

“It is essential that recreational opportunities in the National Recreation Area remain open,” OMB said.

Finally, the OMB’s SAP about electric vehicles ties directly in to stated priorities of Trump and his administration. The OMB suggests that Trump would sign all three congressional disapprovals of rules about “California Clean Air Act Waivers.”

“The Clean Air Act allows California, and only California, to set emissions standards different from the federal standards if the EPA grants a waiver based on a very limited set of findings that the EPA may consider,” the SAP says.

“The previous Administration irresponsibly, arbitrarily, and unlawfully granted waivers that allowed California to implement what was effectively a national electric vehicle (EV) mandate because, in combination with Clean Air Act Section 177, these waivers allow other states to adopt California's EV-mandate policies without any further review or action required on EPA's part,”

The Trump administration supports a full reversal of these Biden-era rules.

“As a result, as of 2024, more than 40 percent of new light-duty vehicle registrations were subject to these more stringent standards, affecting the cost of vehicles and vehicle mix across the entire nation and costing Americans and manufacturers billions of dollars,” per the SAP. “These waivers are rules of general applicability and prospective effect because they distort the vehicle market across the country and because other states may adopt the standards reflected in the waivers.”