Blue states are bracing for a battle with the Trump administration over their authority to limit tailpipe emissions, a showdown that will have major repercussions on the types of cars and trucks sold to American drivers.

All sides expect President-elect Donald Trump to try to revoke states’ authority to adopt California’s strict rules on the pollution spewed by vehicles.

Many states’ efforts to fight climate change hinge on a federal process that allows them to adopt stringent regulations for transportation, the country’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

This long-standing waiver authority allows California — and the dozen or so states that follow its lead — to apply rules that go beyond federal limits and cover everything from specific pollutants to sales of certain vehicles. The states following the stricter California standards make up a significant portion of the U.S. auto market and exert major leverage over the cars that are offered to American consumers.

“It becomes a de facto national standard,” said Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “The combined might of California and those other states is pretty significant.”

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During his first term, Trump attempted to revoke California’s waiver authority, an action many states challenged as unlawful. The effort to deny the waivers was tied up in legal challenges until President Joe Biden took office. This time, Trump will have a “much more cohesive plan” to block state efforts to clean up their cars and trucks, Elkind said.

California is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to finalize several pending waivers before Trump returns to the White House. Officials in blue states are preparing to defend their authority in court should Trump seek to revoke the waivers. And attorneys general in some red states are pushing to end the waivers altogether — mounting a legal challenge to California’s power to set its own rules.

“Without [California’s waiver authority], we would probably be a decade or more behind where we are today in terms of the U.S. automotive market,” said Mary Nichols, former chair of the California Air Resources Board, the agency that issues the state’s auto regulations. “In terms of reaching our climate goals, it’s essential.”

Nichols now serves as the distinguished counsel for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law.

State efforts

When Congress enacted federal air quality laws in the 1960s, it gave California the authority to go above and beyond national standards because it was the only state to already have passed its own auto emissions rules. The state’s geography, with mountains that trap harmful pollution in heavily populated areas, also contributed to California’s unique status. Over 50-plus years, the state has received more than 100 waivers from the feds covering everything from particulate matter to catalytic converters to “check engine” lights.

The EPA allows other states to adopt the regulations set by California. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted some portion of California’s regulations — representing 40% of the light-duty vehicle market and more than 25% of the heavy-duty market.

“These waivers are a really important part of our strategy to reduce emissions in line with what climate science tells us what we need to do,” said Joel Creswell, climate pollution reduction program manager with the Washington State Department of Ecology. “They’re also really important for our air quality near road communities.”

In the waning days of the Biden administration, California leaders have urged the EPA to finalize an assortment of pending waivers that cover issues including electric car sales, heavy-duty fleets, yard equipment and refrigerated trucks. The agency approved several of those waivers in December and January, including a landmark rule that will ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

California Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, who spoke to Stateline in November, said the law requires the feds to grant and uphold the waivers unless the state’s actions are “arbitrary and capricious.”

“If there's an attempt to revoke them by the Trump administration or a denial of them that's unlawful, we'll be very aggressive in taking action to protect California's ability to seek its waivers,” he said.

Elkind, the legal expert, said Biden’s administration likely has delayed the waivers until the last minute because officials want to build a strong case that will make it difficult for Trump to revoke them.

“EPA is having to be more careful and specific about the justification for granting them,” he said, building the case that “California has an obligation to reduce emissions of these very specific pollutants, and it’s not going to be able to meet its Clean Air Act requirements without zero-emission vehicles.”

Pushing back

California’s waivers have faced opposition from a slew of industry groups, including automakers, trucking associations, railroads, agriculture interests and fossil fuel providers. In many cases, they argue that the standards require a switch to cleaner technologies that aren’t yet in wide supply or cost-effective. For instance, trucking groups say there are few semitruck engines available that meet the new standard for nitrogen oxide emissions.

“They [federal regulators] put in an aggressive standard and gave little time for the manufacturers to come up with that product,” said Mike Tunnell, senior director of energy and environmental affairs with the trade group American Trucking Associations. “As it turned out, they didn't give them enough time.”

Tunnell said trucking dealerships in California have struggled with product shortages. As a result, some companies are continuing to use existing trucks, keeping dirty engines on the road. His group opposes another pending waiver sought by California that would require companies to transition their truck fleets to zero-emission models. Current trucks that meet that standard are significantly more expensive than typical models, Tunnell said.

Truckers in New York — which has adopted the California standard — already are struggling to buy the equipment they need, said Kendra Hems, president of the Trucking Association of New York. She noted that the state lacks charging infrastructure to support a transition to electric trucks, and that current models have a limited range that would force drivers to stop frequently along their routes.

“We're not opposed to it, we're simply not ready,” Hems said. “They're asking an industry to comply with something that there's simply not supporting infrastructure for.”

Automakers have made a similar argument about California’s electric vehicle sales mandate, saying in a statement that it will “take a miracle” to phase out new gas-powered cars by 2035.

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The industry groups have argued for a consistent national standard, a cause backed by 17 Republican-led states. A coalition of attorneys general filed a lawsuit in 2022 challenging California’s power to set stricter rules.

“This is not the United States of California,” said Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who has led the legal effort, in a 2021 news release challenging California’s waivers.

In a letter to the EPA opposing Biden’s reinstatement of a waiver, Yost argued that California’s rules create a de facto national standard for automakers, which results in more expensive cars for consumers in every state. That violates states’ right to equal sovereignty, he asserted.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review whether fuel producers — which have joined the case against the waivers — have enough cause to sue. But the court declined to consider the lawfulness of California’s underlying waiver authority.

While the legal fight continues, Elkind asserted that opponents of California’s long-standing status don’t have a strong case.

“The waiver has been granted to California repeatedly for more than a half century,” he said. “There's solid legal ground in the Clean Air Act, and the justification is extremely well documented.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Most Revolutionary War history buffs know the story of Francis Marion, the Continental Army officer called the Swamp Fox for his guerrilla-style attacks that bedeviled British forces in South Carolina’s backcountry. But volunteers and historians have identified 560 Revolutionary War battle sites and other places of interest with connections to the state’s role in the nation’s founding.

“While we all love Francis Marion, let’s talk about some other people,” said Molly Fortune, executive director of SC250, the commission charged with restoring the public memory of the state’s Revolutionary War legacy. To do that, they’re reviving forgotten historical markers as well as installing new ones and making them all easier to find from the highway or online.

As the United States prepares to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, many states are inventorying, mapping and repairing old historical markers, as well as installing hundreds of new roadside signs, plaques and interpretive panels. In South Carolina, the focus is on sharing lesser-known stories of women, children, Native Americans, enslaved and free Black people and even the Loyalists who sympathized with King George III.

Beyond re-engaging with lesser-known stories, many states see the national commemoration, known as America250, as an opportunity to refresh their heritage tourism offerings. But it’s also an occasion to reexamine markers or monuments with questionable historical facts or outdated language.

The renewed interest in the accuracy or cultural sensitivity of the nation’s historical markers is part of the wider discourse over who or what belongs on a pedestal or a bronze plaque, and where they should be sited. Since the 2020 murder of George Floyd, those efforts have led to the removal of Confederate monuments as well as the toppling of statues honoring Christopher Columbus and artwork that extols westward expansion without telling the story of the effects on the Indigenous people displaced by settlement.

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Markers that reflect more inclusive stories make history relevant to more people, said Jason Hanson, the chief creative officer of History Colorado, which operates museums around the state and administers Colorado’s register of historic places. When history is incomplete or told only by those with the money or power, it strips complexity and nuance from the American story, rendering it less accurate and vibrant. The roadside panels and bronze plaques affixed to buildings are how many people encounter the nation’s history, Hanson said.

“They really are some of the most accessible and valued history lessons that we have,” he said.

Satanic imps

That history can be lopsided, inaccurate or racist, according to an NPR investigation in 2024 that looked at 180,000 historical markers across the nation. For example, the investigation found that about 70% of markers for historic plantation homes failed to mention that its owners bought and sold enslaved people and used their labor to construct the mansions.

Among the problematic examples NPR found was a Michigan marker celebrating a woman who “successfully defied frenzied Indians who invaded the premises and lapped from the basement floor whiskey which she had emptied from the barrels.” In Texas, a marker praises Primus Kelly, an enslaved Black man, for demonstrating loyalty during the Civil War — describing him as “typical of most Texas Negro slaves. Hundreds ‘went to war’ with their masters.”

Many markers, especially those installed by private individuals, stretch the definition of “history.” A Massachusetts marker, for example, indicates the former site of a mill operated by a wizard who employed satanic imps to run it at night, while a sign in New Hampshire marks the spot where a Portsmouth couple had a close encounter with a UFO in 1961 — and experienced two hours of “lost time.”

In Colorado, the state found recently that 96% of listings on its state register of historical sites were places connected primarily to the history of white men, Hanson said. To mark the state’s 150th anniversary in 2026, Colorado will begin adding 150 new sites and markers highlighting the history of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and other historically underrepresented communities. The state will ask community groups to nominate who and what should be on the markers.

Markers or monuments often were paid for by people who wanted to tell a particular story, meaning that those with money were the only ones leaving a lasting mark. Even now, historical markers are expensive. In Michigan, for example, large markers cost $4,700, before installation. Some states appropriate money for new markers, but often, local communities must find the cash.

But an investment in heritage tourism can and does pay off, said South Carolina’s Fortune. She and other public historians have persuaded their state legislature not only to fund new markers but also to pay for new highway signs alerting visitors to historic sites. It’s an effort she says boosts the rural communities where many markers are located.

“People want to walk and listen and hear and connect with their ancestors,” Fortune said. “And so it allows us to find those accidental tourists. They’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve always wondered about that.’ And then they leave their money, and they go home. That’s basically it. It’s a vehicle for economic development.”

‘The whole story’

In 2023, Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources began adding dozens of historical markers signifying Green Book sites, places that accommodated Black travelers safely during the Jim Crow era. They’re also adding nine new markers that, among other things, tell the origin story of Mountain Dew soda, the discriminatory racial history of the first heart transplant in the state, and the backstory of lesser-known Virginians who participated in the Lewis and Clark expedition.

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The Washington State Historical Society began taking a closer look at its markers in 2020, identifying 42 as potentially problematic. Most commemorate white settlement and were placed by a handful of individuals who “just decided that these were the places that they were going to put monuments up,” said Dylan High, the statewide partnerships coordinator for the agency.

In recent months, the historical society has hosted public meetings to examine how the markers portray the history of westward expansion. Among those under review is a 1925 marker with a statement asserting that the “civilization of Washington started at Vancouver,” the site of an 1806 fort on the Columbia River for the Lewis and Clark expedition, and a subsequent Hudson’s Bay Company fur trading post.

Such statements erase the presence of Indigenous people who lived in the area for thousands of years before the arrival of European explorers. The narratives weren’t created in consultation with tribal people of the land, said Polly Olsen, who is Yakama and the tribal liaison for the Burke Museum in Seattle. It comes from a settler narrative of “the first schools, the first church, these civilized practices or, you know, ‘civilization began here,'” Olsen said in an interview with KIRO Newsradio.

As they’ve traveled the state of Washington, High said, they’ve found that most people don’t want old markers removed. Sometimes, it’s impractical: The Vancouver marker sits in a traffic island, unnoticed by most passersby, and would be costly to move. Instead, High said, people want to add new interpretive panels or new markers nearby to tell “the whole story of the history.” Most people are wary of anything that seems as though it is “rewriting history,” a phrase the state agency tries to avoid.

“That kind of implies that the history of what happened somehow is somehow changed,” High said. “What we are really interested in saying is that there is more to the context of that history of what happened than just what that monument represents or implies.”

“And to be very specific about it,” High added, “what is not represented is very often the tribe’s perspective and the experience of our tribal communities around the state.”

Sometimes, states must point out hard truths, Fortune said. She points to Henry Laurens, a wealthy South Carolinian planter who was president of the Continental Congress in 1777 and 1778 and the only American to be held captive in the Tower of London. He was also a partner in a Charleston firm that brokered the sale of more than 8,000 enslaved Africans.

“We’re in the business of telling history the way it was,” Fortune said. “So it can be good, bad and ugly. Henry Laurens owned slaves. That’s just a fact. Just say it’s a fact.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Last month, city council members in Fort Worth, Texas, decided developers that received massive tax breaks to build affordable housing would no longer be able to buy their way out of the obligation by paying a $200 annual fee in lieu of each unbuilt low-income unit.

In Columbus, Ohio, leaders voted in December to expand the city’s tax break program for affordable housing. And in Cincinnati, builders can now get an automatic property tax exemption for some affordable housing projects, rather than having to apply.

Tax abatements have long been a tool cities use to encourage developers to build homes low-income residents can afford. Developers pay lower property taxes in return for setting aside homes or apartments for potential residents with lower incomes. Cities lose that tax revenue, but they gain affordable housing.

As the nation’s housing crisis continues, many cities are altering their policies. Some are making the programs stricter; some are offering more money or extending tax breaks for more years. No matter the approach, municipal leaders say they’re trying to figure out how to get more of their residents safely housed.

“As a city, we can’t force developers to make housing affordable. But we have tools,” said Sarah Odle, neighborhood development coordinator for the city of Fort Worth.

“The name of the game for a developer is to make money,” Odle said. “And the name of the game for us is if we’re going to give you incentives, then we want something substantial in return — and that’s housing that is truly affordable.”

Expanded tax breaks

In Fort Worth — which attracted nearly 50,000 new residents from 2020 to 2023, the most of any city in Texas — tax abatements have driven affordable housing for years. Developers can receive a five-year tax break if they build in designated zones and set aside 20% of their units as affordable housing.

Last month, however, the Fort Worth City Council removed the option that allows developers to pay an annual $200 fee per unit in lieu of building affordable homes. Developers are now required to set aside affordable housing if they want the tax breaks.

In December, the Columbus City Council in Ohio expanded the tax abatement program beyond certain neighborhoods to include the entire city, granting developers a 100% tax break for 15 years.

A spokesperson from Columbus’ Department of Development told Stateline that housing building permits are projected to be down 10% from last year. But officials expect the expanded tax incentive to accelerate affordable housing in all areas of the city — including in historically underinvested areas.

An hour and thirty minutes away in Cincinnati, an ordinance passed by the city council last month allows affordable housing developments funded by public-private partnerships there to get an automatic property tax exemption without council approval, streamlining the building process.

In their bid to spur more affordable housing, cities also are trying to boost the post-pandemic trend of downtown office-to-housing conversions.

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In 2022, D.C. expanded tax breaks for developers converting downtown offices into housing, with tax exemptions for up to 20 years if they meet affordability requirements.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat, last year also announced a public-private partnership that expands tax breaks for conversions to housing. Developers must reserve at least 20% of their new units as affordable, with some space for federal voucher holders as well.

Chicago and Pittsburgh have put similar tax deals in place in the past two years, with affordable housing stipulations attached.

Washington state legislators recently held a hearing on proposed legislation to offer affordable housing tax incentives for conversions statewide.

Washington state Sen. Yasmin Trudeau, a Democrat who represents Tacoma and who sponsored the measure, said her bill is a quick approach to address Seattle’s need for more housing, which is estimated at 1 million new units over the next 20 years.

Trudeau is optimistic about the bill’s chance of success this legislative cycle, as it passed a Senate committee in January. But some aspects of her legislative package didn’t advance, including a tax incentive for converting market-rate apartments to affordable units, as well other legislative levers to maintain affordability.

“There’s a larger conversation we’re not having about ways to maintain affordability, such as rent stabilization or transit-oriented development, which are built-in affordability measures,” she said.

‘Double-edged sword’

Tax abatement deals might not always live up to expectations, according to David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, a Washington, D.C.-based affordable housing advocacy group.

“I think tax abatement is a double-edged sword. If you have it, you can create fairly significant incentives to create and maintain, to create and preserve affordable housing where you don’t have it,” said Dworkin.

However, he said, new construction can displace current residents with low incomes, and oversight is needed to ensure that developers follow through on promises of affordable units.

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In a review of New York’s affordable housing tax incentives, the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, suggests increased abatements hurt cities by removing their primary source of revenue, handicapping them to handle other costs associated with rising populations and burdening school districts.

Meanwhile, some states are seeing conflicts between legislative action and local goals.

In Florida, for instance, a law passed with bipartisan support last year, the Live Local Act, offers developers sweeping tax breaks in exchange for building affordable units for people making up to 120% of the area median income. Developers that participate also can override local zoning rules to build in commercial and industrial areas.

Developers have rushed to take part, according to The Wall Street Journal.

But Pasco County, on Florida’s west coast, is aiming to change the law, arguing that the cutoff for affordable housing should be at 80% of median income to help more families in need.

The law puts local governments in a financial bind, county officials say. In Pasco’s case, commissioners had made plans for their industrial zones and are trying to lure more employers — not residents — to the suburban bedroom county outside of the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

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The Pasco County Attorney’s Office told Stateline in an email that the Live Local Act “forces the county to make these sacrifices for housing” with no guarantee of homes that will be affordable to residents.

In various meetings on the issues, Pasco County administrators have discussed imposing a moratorium on all multifamily development if no change is made to the law.

Other states have sought to rein in local tax breaks.

This year, a Republican bill in the Arizona legislature would halve the period a property can receive tax breaks from eight years to four.

Last year, Texas lawmakers approved a revision to how tax breaks are used for affordable housing. The law closes loopholes that allowed some properties to be tax- exempt for years and requires regular audits for future tax deals.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.