The lawsuit is the 97th the state has filed against the Trump administration over the past year and a half.
Page B1From§Eachthe early bird edition — 2 October 2026
Administration claims fuel rule saves drivers $1,300 a car; its own analysis bills them 122 billion more gallons.
As it ran on the front
On Wednesday night, Sept. Four weeks later, Monday, Sept. 28, the Transportation Department did not need that door. It filed through another one: a finalized rule rolling back the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, the mileage rule, on its own authority.
The department's number for that rollback, filed the same day: $1,300, the average savings per car, per its own release.…
…(cont) The department's other number, filed in the same rule by its own agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: the 2031 fuel-economy target the new rule sets comes in below 35.4 miles per gallon — the average the 2024 fleet already hit. The target goes down from here, not up.
NHTSA's own estimate of what that rule produces: Americans consuming roughly 122 billion more gallons of gasoline, as a result of the change.
A $1,300 saving and a 122-billion-gallon bill arrive in the same rule, from the same agency, on the same day. One is filed under what the driver keeps at the dealership. The other is filed under what the driver buys back at the pump, a gallon at a time, for years. Running the two columns against each other: the net does not land in the driver's column at all. It lands in the column marked inventory — the older, less efficient vehicles and the gasoline to run them, still for sale, for longer, from the industries the rule exists to let keep selling.
Friday, two more filings landed on top of it. A coalition of environmental groups sued, calling the rollback "a callous giveaway to Big Oil and Big Auto" — naming, in its own title, who the $1,300 is actually collected for. California sued the same day, its 97th suit against this administration in a year and a half, the mileage rule simply the latest line item on a docket that long.
Ninety-seven suits is not a dispute. It is a running tab, kept by a state, against an administration that files its savings under the industry's ledger, with the driver's name stamped on the cover.
“They lose in court over one route to kill the mileage rule, so four weeks later they write themselves a permission slip through another agency. Call $1,300 savings if you want — the 122-billion-gallon bill shows up at the same pump that savings was supposed to come out of. Your kid rides in the same car burning the gas either way.”
“Look, $1,300 back in a driver's pocket is $1,300 back in a driver's pocket — that's the number, that's the headline. The 122-billion-gallon figure, that's — well, that's also in our own agency's analysis, I didn't mean to say that part out loud.”
The receipts
A coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block the Trump administration's rollback of fuel efficiency standards, which they called a "giveaway" to the oil and auto industries. Earlier this week, the US Department of Transportation finalized a rule weakening Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards…
· Trump rolls back Biden fuel-efficiency rules, claiming $1,300 average savings for cars from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· 'Consumers Will Pay the Price': Fury as Trump Pushes Through Rule Change to Make Vehicles Less Efficient, More Polluting from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Court halts Trump effort to help Congress overturn California clean car rules from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Judge halts EPA effort to overturn California car rules from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.