All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. That's what many in California are worried will happen if the Trump administration gets its way on the environment. Today, on Parts Rebellion, we go California Nightmaring to talk about the Golden State's many conflicts with the President. What's Up? Welcome back to Parts per Billion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host, David Schultz. California has more people living in it than Canada and an economy larger than the UK's.
It's really really big, and there aren't very many entities out there that can push it around. One of those entities, however, is the US federal government. California has had a share of conflicts over the years with the Feds, but things have really escalated in the last few years, ever since the Trump administration came into office, and a lot of
these dispute center on how or whether to enforce environmental laws. Today, we'll be speaking with Emily Duley, Bloomberg Environments California correspondent, about what's driving these conflicts and about whether any state, even one as big as California, can really go up against the Feds and win Emily joins us on the phone from Sacramento. Hello, Emily, how are you doing pretty good? So can you just list off a few of the big environmental issues that California and the Feds have fought
over in recent years? Well, it seems it could almost be countless. I know, the Attorney General has filed more than fifty claims against the Feds and more than half of those have been related to environmental issues? Is that five zero fifty five zero? Yeah? Wow? And you know, so they relate from you know, big things like harming natural resources and wildlife relating to the border wall, to selling wild horses for slaughter, to stalling methane rules, rolling
back car emissions, weakening toxic air roles. So there's a lot, there's a lot going on here, and there's a lot of legal paperwork being filed all over the place. Yeah. Are you noticing any trends in the way that these fights play out? I mean, are they centering around similar issues or you know, does California usually back down, do the Feds back down? Or is it just all over
the place. I haven't seen much indication of either party really backing down, and California has been sort of fighting things. You know, the governor's been outspoken about things, the Attorney general has been outspoken about things, and now the legislature has gone after sort of a lot of the environmental rollbacks when it comes to clean air and clean water or worker protections. There's a there's a bill moving through the legislature right now that has been called labeled Trump Insurance,
So the author doesn't really like that. It basically says that if the Trump administration rolls back any of those federal rules, the state authorities have to kind of evaluate that and turn their roles back to prior to inauguration day so that you know, their protections would be Obama era and not Trump era. Wow, that's almost like sort of pausing or going back in time. You know. It's
like a time machine for environmental regulations, little time warp. Yeah, and we should also mention that the governor, the Attorney general, and the legislature are all Democrats. Are controlled by Democrats, and I think in the legislature democrats have like a two or a supermajority. Is that right, there's a super majority in both houses and governor who's a Democrat. So
there's a lot that can happen. But I will note that most policy and fiscal committees, the vice chairperson is generally a Republicans, So there is back and forth that happens. It's not just like there's no voices from the Republican side. Yeah. So California is pretty big and powerful, but I mean just one state, and you know there are lots of other states that have differing views. You know, a lot
of red states out there. Are there any people that you've spoken to in California who worry that, you know, going up against the federal government like this could have a backlash or could could backfire. I think when you talk to Republicans, they say, you know, like let's stop. It's always just we're kind of like poking the bear, and maybe let's focus on some of the local issues that are going on. And you know, we're spending money to kind of fight things in court when we could
be focusing locally. But the Attorney General's office says they're pretty confident in nearly every challenge the file they file because they don't think the administration has been on solid legal ground for a lot of things. So a lot of stuff is playing out in the courts right now, so we will see, but I think it sort of depends on who you talk to and where. You know, the Central Valley is pretty conservative, and you know, not all of California is San Francisco, though there is a
lot of sort of liberal liberal areas. Yeah, that's a good point that you bring up the Central Valley because that's an area that, as you mentioned, is conservative and also has a lot of environmental issues. I mean that's there, there's in terms of water, soil, air, How does that play out? You know, that that combination of an area with severe vier environmental issues but also pretty conservative political leadership. When I first moved here, someone said, welcome to the
state of emergency. And it's sort of true when you think about there's water issues, there's wildfires, there's earthquakes, there's sea level rise, there's all of these things. So sort of regardless of kind of what your party is, there are environmental issues happening all over the state, so they get a lot of focus. You know, the air quality is really bad in the Central Valley. There's a lot of water issues relating to agriculture and water contamination and
things like that. So it's sort of avery can be a very bipartis an issue when people are talking about you know, like kids having childhood asthma and other things like that. Finally, you know, we talked about the governor really briefly, but California has a new governor, Governor Gavin Newsom, who took over for Jerry Brown, who was a longtime governor, served I think two stints in the governor's mansion. Have
you noticed any change between and Newsome? You know, is Newsome more likely or less likely to sort of pick fights with the Trump administration. It seems like Governor Newsom is more willing to verbally spar with the President and the administration in words and on Twitter than Governor Brown. But also, you know, California needs federal assistance when it comes to wildfires and all sorts of things. So there's
a bit of a fine line. But so it sounds like Governor Newsom is talking very tough, but you know, in terms of the actions that the state is taking, maybe that hasn't differed as much. I would say the Attorney general has continued to sort of be aggressive. But also there you know, there's this big sort of war going on about vehicle emission standards and the air Board chairwoman has really been forceful and pretty tough in her words about sort of California not giving up their authority
to enact their own vehicle mission standards. And that's sort of escalating right now. So it seems like things are kind of heating up, but you never know sort of what point they'll get to. Yeah, and we should just actually mention really briefly what that's about. You know, the Trump administration came in and decided that it wants to roll back some of the car and truck efficiency standards that its predecessor, you know, enacted, and California has the
right to set its own vehicle standards. And it sounds like, based on what you're saying that you know, the state has not wanted to go along with that at all. I mean, the car makers want just one standard so they can make one car they can sell across the country. But if California and the federal government had different standards, that would be a big mess for them. And it sounds like the more the closer, you know, the further along we get in this conflict, the more likely that
is going to happen. Because these two sides really can't come to an agreement at all. Yeah, and you have to think like a lot of them auto manufacturers have spent a lot of money already researching how to get to some of these standards that were sort of thought to already be in place. And California it's the fifth largest economy in the world, but it also has more than a dozen states that follow it's a mission standard,
so that's huge buying power. So it's that's a lot of industry that's sort of like a bit in the middle. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I know automakers sort of asked for the state and federal authorities to you know, get back in a room and talk to each other. But there's been sparring that's sort of escalated since then. Yeah, all right, Well that was Bloomberg Environment's Emily Dooley. She covers environmental issues in California.
You can find more of her reporting at our website news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website is news dot Bloomberg Environment dot com and if you want to chat with us on social media, use the hashtag parts per B. That hashtag, once again is parts per B. Today's episode of Parts Pavilion was produced by myself along with Marissa Horne and Jessica Coombs. Nicholas Anzelada is our audio engineer. The music for this episode is a message
by Jizarre. It was used under a Creative Commons license, and thank you very much for listening. Suspending the Rules is Bloomberg Government's weekly deep dive into what's happening on Capitol Hill. As is often the case with suspension bills, there's something of a theme behind them. Every Monday, begov reporters and legislative analysts preview the week in Congress. This would be a rejection of what the Trump administration called for and break down the biggest bills on the agenda.
Autonomous vehicles are going to know everything about where we go and what we're doing. You can listen and subscribe to Suspending the Rules wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information at about dot begov dot com.