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this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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My understanding is that this time they want to force the states to collect the fee on behalf of the federal government, with the threat that they'll withhold federal funding if the states don't do it. I don't see how they could possibly enforce that either, though.
It's the same way they raised the drinking age to 21 despite there being no national drinking age laws nor a theoretically legal/constitutional method for enacting one. The latter was, obviously, successful.
Yeah, but with drinking ages, states keep records of births and it's easy to add 21 to those, and the federal government can easily subpoena the records to see whether they're telling the truth. Plus, there wasn't a whole ton of political will to resist the drinking age change. But with EVs, there's a ton of political will to keep this from happening (including, notably, from the richest man in the world), which means that EV-friendly states like California have all the motivation in the world to find creative ways around such a law.
I could see them levying the tax, but also offering an EV registration fee credit that offsets it exactly, or not keeping records on the number of electric vehicles registered (that seems like it would be tricky, since it's easy to identify Rivians and Teslas), or finding some other clever way to tie this up in court until an adult gets into office and cancels it.