REVENGE: EPA Threatens California’s Highway Funding

The Sacramento Bee reports:

The Trump administration is ratcheting up its threats against California with a letter warning the state faces sanctions – including cuts in federal highway funding – over its “failure” to submit complete reports on its implementation of the Clean Air Act. In the letter to the California Air Resources Board, Andrew Wheeler [photo], administrator of the EPA, wrote that the state had the “worst air quality in the United States” and had “failed to carry out its most basic tasks” under the federal law.

Wheeler’s warning to California is the Trump administration’s latest front in a protracted battle with the state over climate change and, in particular, the state’s unique authority to set its own standards for carbon dioxide emissions – a potent greenhouse gas. The EPA moved last week to rescind the federal waiver allowing California to do so, granted by the Clean Air Act of 1970, prompting a lawsuit from California joined within hours by 22 other states.

Before heading the EPA, Wheeler spent years lobbying the Obama administration for the coal industry.