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Some said they worried that California’s planned ban on gas-powered vehicles would raise the price of cars. Another cited “intense and misleading lobbying” by the oil industry.
May 6, 2025, 9:58 a.m. ET
Representative Lou Correa, a Democrat who represents parts of Orange County, Calif., drives a hybrid car and wants the federal government to tackle climate change.
But he joined 34 other Democrats last week to help Republicans repeal his state’s landmark requirement that all new vehicles sold in California be electric or otherwise nonpolluting by 2035. In doing so, he helped President Trump and the Republican majority to undercut the nation’s transition away from gasoline-powered cars.
“I don’t like giving Trump a win,” Mr. Correa said in an interview after the vote. But electric vehicles remain expensive and impractical in his heavily blue-collar district, he said.
“We just finished an election where every poll I’m seeing, everybody I talk to, says, ‘You guys need to listen to the working class, the middle class people,” Mr. Correa said. “I’m listening to my constituents who are saying ‘don’t kill us.’”
The 246-to-164 vote in the House stunned environmentalists, who said they were struggling to understand why nearly three dozen Democrats voted to kill one of the most ambitious climate policies in the country. For the past few years, Democrats have overwhelmingly voted for stronger policies to tackle global warming.
Some wonder whether that unity is starting to fray in the face of intense lobbying and worries about rising prices amid Mr. Trump’s trade wars.
