The Trump administration this week ramped up its efforts to erode nationwide climate progress with a sweeping executive order aimed at undermining states’ ability to set their own environmental policies, including key components of California’s fight against climate change.
In an order dated April 8, the president directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to identify and “stop the enforcement of” state laws that address climate change and other environmental initiatives.
“Many States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” the president wrote in the executive order.
“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy,” he wrote. “They should not stand.”
The assertion of federal power over states rights seems to go against some of Trump’s other positions — he campaigned, for example, on state’s rights for issues such as abortion. The order calls out several states specifically, including New York and Vermont, which he accuses of “extorting” fossil-fuel companies for their past contributions to planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
The order also takes aim at California’s cap-and-trade program — a first-of-its-kind initiative that sets limits on companies’ greenhouse gas emissions and allows them to sell “credits” for unused emissions to other companies.
“California, for example, punishes carbon use by adopting impossible caps on the amount of carbon businesses may use, all but forcing businesses to pay large sums to ‘trade’ carbon credits to meet California’s radical requirements,” the president wrote.
The executive order marks a continuation of Trump’s recent anti-environmental efforts, which have included cuts to grant funding, widespread office closures and layoffs in the climate research community, loosened regulations and renewed efforts to expand the production of oil and coal — two sectors that contribute heavily to global warming.
It also marks an escalation of Trump’s conflict with California. The president in recent months has taken particular aim at the Democratic stronghold, including threatening to withhold disaster aid for the state’s wildfire response and recovery over issues such as forest management and water policies.
“There’s a little bit of beef right now between Trump and the state,” said Maggie Coulter, a senior attorney with the Climate Law Institute at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity. “I think wanting to call out California was part of why cap and trade got mentioned.”
Cap-and-trade isn’t the only California program that could be in the federal government’s cross-hairs. The order directs Bondi to seek out and prioritize state laws that address climate change, environmental justice, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon taxes, which is “kind of like a laundry list of all the things the oil-and-gas industry doesn’t like,” Coulter said.
To that end, the executive order might also affect California’s ability to set strict tailpipe emission standards and its effort to transition to electric vehicles, including a state law banning the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035.
The Trump administration has already made moves to block that law, which are now playing out in the courts.
The executive order additionally could impact California’s Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act of 2025, a bill currently working its way through the state Legislature that would require fossil fuel companies to pay for damage caused by their greenhouse gas emissions. It is similar to the legislation in New York and Vermont that Trump called out in his order, Coulter said.
Blocking those laws would be akin to creating immunity for the fossil-fuel industry from those damages, not unlike protections that shield firearms manufacturers from certain civil lawsuits, according to Cassidy DiPaola, communications director with Make Polluters Pay, a campaign for climate accountability.
“President Trump’s executive order weaponizes the Justice Department against states like California that want to make polluters pay for climate damage,” DiPaola wrote in a statement. “This is the fossil-fuel industry’s desperation on full display — they’re so afraid of facing evidence of their deception in court that they’ve convinced the President to launch a federal assault on state sovereignty.”
Indeed, the oil and gas industry celebrated the order — issued the same week the president also ordered the immediate expansion of coal production in the country, including opening federal lands to coal leasing and extending the operating life of existing coal plants.
“We welcome President Trump’s action to hold states like New York and California accountable for pursuing unconstitutional efforts that illegally penalize U.S. oil and natural gas producers for delivering the energy American consumers rely on every day,” read a statement from Ryan Meyers, senior vice president with the American Petroleum Institute.
The Trump administration has stated that its slew of environmental rollbacks are intended to ease regulatory costs, lower taxes and expand the creation of an “affordable and reliable domestic energy supply.”
“Simply put, Americans are better off when the United States is energy dominant,” Trump’s executive order says.
The order gives Bondi 60 days to compile a list of applicable state climate laws and submit a report to the president regarding actions taken, along with recommendations for additional legislative steps necessary to stop the enforcement of those state laws.
Coulter, of the Climate Law Institute, said actually preventing states from enforcing their laws would be an illegal and unconstitutional overreach.
“It’s not really something that Trump or the attorney general can do,” Coulter said. “If you want to stop the enforcement of state law, you have to go to court, and that’s the jurisdiction of the court.”
Should the administration actually attempt to stop states from enforcing their own laws, she said, lawsuits and legal challenges are almost certain to ensue.
