Two California EPA waivers — one regulating ocean-going vessels called "CARB at Berth" and another titled "Commercial Harbor Craft Amendments" — just got submitted to Congress for review under the Congressional Review Act. If Congress acts, both rules disappear.

They're the latest in a growing stack of California's environmental privileges getting pulled off the table.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the move on July 22, framing it in language that would make a civics teacher proud. "EPA is once again fulfilling our statutory obligation to submit California waivers to Congress," Zeldin said. "This is what the law requires, and it is our obligation to the American people to follow the best reading of the law every single time."

The two waiver rules in question gave California special authority to impose its own emissions standards on marine vessels and port operations — standards that exceed federal requirements. The EPA argues the rules increase shipping costs and create supply chain pressures that ripple far beyond California's borders. Which is exactly the problem with letting one state set environmental policy for industries that operate nationally.

Zeldin added a pointed line: "This is how we remain accountable to all Americans, instead of picking winners and losers like previous Administrations." That's a direct shot at the Obama and Biden EPA offices, which treated California's waiver requests like formalities rather than the extraordinary federal permissions they actually are.

These two aren't even the first. Back in June, four other emissions-related waivers were sent to Congress through the same Congressional Review Act process. The Trump administration is systematically running the table on California's regulatory empire — not through executive fiat, but through the legislative mechanism Congress created for exactly this purpose.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta responded with the kind of statement you write when you know you're losing ground. "The President's reckless, politically motivated, and illegal attacks on California continue, this time with his attempt to trample on our longstanding authority to maintain more stringent clean vehicle standards," Bonta said. He went further, claiming Trump "is busy playing partisan games with lives on the line and yanking away good jobs that would bolster the economy."

"Longstanding authority" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The authority in question was never California's to begin with — it was granted by federal waiver, which means the federal government can review it, modify it, or revoke it. That's not trampling. That's the process working as designed. Bonta calling it "illegal" while the EPA is literally following the Congressional Review Act is the legal equivalent of calling a referee biased because you don't like the rule book.

The broader pattern matters here. California has used its waiver privileges for years to set emissions standards so aggressive that automakers built their entire fleets around them — effectively making Sacramento's regulations the national standard without a single vote from the other 49 states. Townhall's exclusive report laid out how these two marine waivers follow the same playbook: California writes a rule, gets a federal blessing, and the costs land on every port, every shipping company, and every consumer who buys anything that moved through Long Beach.

Six waivers submitted for congressional review since June. Two more on the block as of this week.

Funny how "states' rights" stops being a liberal talking point the moment a state loses a privilege it was never supposed to have permanently.