California’s Climate Tab Is Being Sent To The Rest Of Us

You’re paying more for groceries, gas, and everything else. Politicians blame tariffs and supply chains. Another real culprit is hiding in plain sight: California’s unelected Air Resources Board (CARB), which is writing energy policy for the entire country and sending us the bill for its climate fantasy.

You never voted for CARB. Your senators didn’t. No one in your state did. Yet federal waivers let this rogue agency impose extreme emissions rules that exceed federal law, jack up costs for every business serving the national market, and have no real-world effect on the climate.

CARB’s rules drive up trucking, shipping, and freight costs in California, and those costs hit every American because California ports move nearly 40% of all U.S. imports. That is not a regional impact. That is a national tax levied without representation.

Congress and the Trump administration took important steps in response last year. In June 2025, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) was used to revoke three major Biden-era CARB waivers covering electric vehicle mandates for passenger cars, heavy-duty trucks, and engine emissions.

That was the right call. The bipartisan support it received proved that people across the political spectrum are fed up with California making expensive decisions that the rest of the country has to live with and pay for.

But California refused to accept defeat. Gov. Gavin Newsom immediately signed an executive order directing agencies to circumvent Congress. CARB kept enforcing the voided rules anyway. The Department of Justice had to sue the state in August 2025 to force compliance.

This isn’t a state defending its rights. It’s a state defying democracy by attempting to impose its ideology on the rest of us by any means necessary.

Active waivers are still doing real damage. The At-Berth Regulation, operating under a waiver granted by the Biden administration to CARB in 2023, requires cargo ships docked at California ports to shut down their diesel engines and either plug into the state’s grid or pay fines of nearly $50,000 per day.

CARB has collected tens of millions of dollars in penalties since 2025. Shipping companies do not absorb that cost. They build it into freight rates. Freight rates flow into wholesale prices. Wholesale prices hit you at checkout.

CARB put the price tag at $2.23 billion by 2032. They called that figure reasonable. It is not reasonable when the people paying for it never get a vote.

The same scam runs with drayage truck rules, forcing zero-emission vehicles on an impossible timeline. The technology and infrastructure aren’t ready. The costs simply roll through the supply chain to every American.

Californians can choose this path. The rest of us never did. California has every right to its own policies. It has no right to export the costs to families in Ohio, Georgia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

Right now, they get to feel virtuous about their climate agenda while spreading the bill to people who had no say in writing it. That is not environmentalism. That is cost-shifting dressed up as moral leadership.

On June 12, 2026, the EPA transmitted four additional CARB waivers to Congress for action under the Congressional Review Act. These cover strict vehicle emissions, greenhouse gas standards, and small off-road engines. This latest move confirms the administration is systematically reviewing California’s overreach and that the legal path for ending At-Berth shipping and drayage trucking waivers is wide open.

There is a straightforward solution. The At-Berth shipping and drayage trucking waivers should be the next ones submitted to Congress under the CRA. The administration has implicitly confirmed that these waivers are eligible for review. The precedent is set. The legal authority is established. What is needed now is the political will to use it.

Midterms are coming. Lawmakers who want to campaign on lowering costs now have a clear, concrete chance. One state should not dictate national energy and shipping costs while sticking the rest of America with the bill.

Call your representatives today. Demand they end CARB’s power to run national policy from Sacramento. The tools are in place. The only question left is whether Congress will use them.

***

Frank Lasee is the president of Truth in Energy and Climate.