The U.S. House voted, 215-191, on Friday to roll back an Environmental Protection Agency rule strengthening standards for air pollution from car and truck tailpipes.

Eight Democrats joined all but one Republican present in voting to approve a resolution under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo certain executive branch rules, to disapprove of the rule that was announced in March.

The rule would set up a multiyear schedule to lower the limit on greenhouse gas emissions by passenger vehicles by nearly half by 2032.

Democrats Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Jared Golden of Maine, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Mary Peltola of Alaska and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington voted for the resolution.

Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick was the lone GOP member to vote against the resolution.

President Joe Biden has pledged to veto the resolution if it reaches his desk.

“The rule sets performance-based standards that manufacturers can meet using a wide range of technologies and avoids over seven billion metric tons of carbon emissions while significantly reducing other pollutants,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of administration policy.  “These standards will provide important health benefits to millions across the country.”

‘Force-fed EVs’

Republicans on the House floor Friday argued the rule was a mandate for U.S. consumers to buy electric vehicles, often called EVs, which they said were still riddled with reliability issues, especially for rural drivers and drivers in colder climates.

“Americans are being force-fed EVs and they’re being force-fed a lie saying that driving EVs is going to save the planet,” House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, said.

Democrats, who largely favor the rule, described the regulation as a common-sense measure to reduce pollutants that cause climate change and health issues such as asthma.

The rule does not mandate electric vehicles, House Energy and Commerce ranking Democrat Frank Pallone of New Jersey said.

“We’re not mandating EVs, we’re not forcing anybody to use EVs. I’m going to say that over and over again,” Pallone said. “What we are doing is trying to reduce air pollution and this resolution is a step backwards in addressing dangerous air pollution.”

The resolution’s sponsor, Michigan’s Rep. John James, was among the Republicans making an economic argument about the EPA rule, saying it would drive costs of vehicles higher than many Americans can afford.

“I think about every hardworking American whom Washington has forgotten when we talk about making vehicles that are affordable and making a nation that is competitive,” he said.

Saving money

Colorado Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette countered that argument, saying the standards would “save the average American driver an estimated $6,000 over the life of a vehicle.”

“My colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem to think this is bad for consumers when in fact it’s good,” she said.

The transportation sector is the single largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA’s rule. The sector accounts for 29% of emissions, with the light-duty vehicles covered by the rule comprising 58% of those emissions.

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A looming strike by dock workers at ports along the East Coast now “looks likely,” a Port Authority official told the agency board Wednesday, and outlined steps the agency is taking should a strike shut down the Port of New York and New Jersey, which includes key facilities in Newark and Elizabeth.

The International Longshoremen’s Association has threatened to strike if a new contract with East Coast port terminal and shipping companies is not ironed out by the time the old contract expires Oct. 1.

That would shut down some of the busiest ports in the country, including the Port of New York and New Jersey — the nation’s second busiest — potentially disrupting the delivery of billions of dollars worth of consumer goods as the holiday shopping season approaches.

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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is not involved in negotiations between the ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance, or USMX, a group of shipping and port terminal companies.

But the Port Authority, which leases the space at the ports to the shipping companies, is working to bring in as many ships as possible in the next few weeks and planning out an orderly shutdown of the ports, said Beth Rooney, the Port Authority’s ports director.

Once a strike occurs, all activity involving loading and unloading cargo containers and automobiles will come to a halt, Rooney said. Cruise ships will continue to operate.

The ports are unloading about 20 large container ships a week, and Rooney said they expect 150,000 containers to be unloaded before a strike hits.

Some carriers on Wednesday started issuing orders to their customers to embargo cargo from being sent to the ports for export so containers doesn’t start piling up at the port terminals, Rooney said.

The items that would need to travel the furthest to New Jersey ports from the Midwest would receive embargo orders first.

More: NJ ports have been slow to modernize. Will they take the leap to control costs?

“Many importers — retailers and other companies — have been aware for months of the possibility of a strike, and have therefore pushed forward their importing schedule so that a lot of holiday goods are already in the country and safe from a strike,” said Peter Tirschwell vice president for maritime and trade at S&P Global. 

In addition, shipping to ports on the West Coast has surged. But that rerouting process can drive up the cost of goods once they reach store shelves.

During a strike, container ships would moor offshore

Container ships with imports bound for Newark, Elizabeth and Staten Island, meanwhile, would end up mooring at designated sites in New York Harbor or off the coast while the strike lasts, or simply slow down, drift and loiter to ride the strike out in the Atlantic, Rooney said.

Once a strike was over, the U.S. Coast Guard, along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, would coordinate the orderly arrival of waiting ships into the port facilities.

Rick Cotton, the Port Authority’s executive director, told the agency’s board on Wednesday that a strike “looks likely.”

The ILA union cut off contract talks in June after learning that a form of automation had been introduced at the Port of Mobile in Alabama, which they said violated the existing contract.

The USMX has said it has been unable to schedule new meetings with the union.

Could mean weeks of supply chain delays

A strike could impact key ports on the East and Gulf coasts, from Maine to Houston.

Tirschwell said that a strike of a few days could mean weeks of supply chain delays, while a strike lasting a week or longer would mean delays of over a month. 

The ILA, based in North Bergen, represents 85,000 workers across the East and Gulf coasts.

Its leaders are seeking significant pay hikes for their members, saying they deserve a fair share of the profits that shipping and port terminal companies have made as cargo volume remains higher after the demand caused during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

They also oppose efforts to automate the ports, which would reduce jobs for dock workers.

President Biden does not plan to intervene to prevent a strike at this time, Reuters has reported.

Presidents do have the authority to intervene in certain labor disputes by imposing an 80-day cooling-off period under the Taft-Hartley Act, forcing workers back on the job while negotiations continue.

“We’ve never invoked Taft-Hartley to break a strike and are not considering doing so now,” the Biden administration official told Reuters.

Staff writer Daniel Munoz contributed to this article.

This article contains some information from Reuters.

New Jersey House Democratic candidate Sue Altman has disavowed several anti-law enforcement policies — including the “Defund the Police” movement — that she backed in past social media posts.

The former boss of the Garden State’s progressive Working Families Party has modified her past stances, telling NJ Spotlight News in an interview last week that she is “not in favor of defund the police.”

“I think it was a really silly hashtag from the middle of the pandemic that caught fire online,” she said. “I believe in a comprehensive vision for public safety that includes all stakeholders.”

But as her campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey’s 7th District was heating up last fall, a Democratic campaign operative tweeted out a screenshot showing she supported defunding the police — a post that has since been deleted.

“NJ’s Sheriffs … are overwhelmingly white and male, snuggled in w[ith] our massive county government, and control HUGE budgets,” Altman posted on Twitter, now X.

“Those of us working on #DefundThePolice in Jersey might consider looking here,” she added.

The screenshot did not include a date, but the profile image matches Altman’s Twitter profile photo between 2019 and 2021, according to archived posts from her account.

Another post from the operative, Checkmate Advisors President Steve Ayscue, called Altman out for celebrating the release from prison of a convicted cop killer.

In July 2020, she said it was “awesome” that the Working Families Party was pushing to “fight to shift resources from policing to real community investments instead.”

Other posts from the same period before Altman’s run for office criticized the alleged “extra perks” available to “white male dominated professions like cops [a]n[d] firefighters.”

She also encouraged others to attend a “police reform rally” in June 2021 organized by a left-wing activist who supports reparations payments for black Americans, a policy for which she has also stated her support.

Another pro-police defunding group, Reproductive Freedom for All, endorsed Altman’s 2024 run earlier this year, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Kean had an eight-percentage-point lead on both Altman and Democratic primary candidate Jason Blazakis in January, according to an internal campaign poll commissioned by the Blazakis campaign, before the state’s primary elections in June.

He still maintains a fundraising advantage against Altman, with the former recording a more than $3 million campaign war chest as of the second quarter 2024 filings and the latter listing $2.2 million cash-on-hand.

The 7th Congressional District is currently rated as a Republican toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, one of two dozen close races that will determine control of the House in November.

The Altman campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.