Radical California Energy Commissioner to Restrict Car Tires Because They Can’t Ban Cars

A bill to regulate car tires was passed by the California Legislature 20 years ago but never implemented.

“The California Energy Commission dusted off a 20+ year old bill to pass new rules restricting tire sales in the state,” KCRA’s Ashley Zavala reported Monday. “The CEC has not regulated tires before. I asked Commissioner (former State Sen) Nancy Skinner if she pushed it & why this sat dormant until now.”

The California Energy Commission dusted off a 20+ year old bill to pass new rules restricting tire sales in the state.

The CEC has not regulated tires before.

I asked Commissioner (former State Sen) Nancy Skinner if she pushed it & why this sat dormant until now. pic.twitter.com/Th8zpvHTtl

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) August 18, 2026

Assembly Bill 844 “directs the California Energy Commission to adopt a Replacement Tire Efficiency Program to ensure replacement tires for passenger cars and light-duty trucks sold in California are at least as energy-efficient as the tires sold as original equipment on new vehicles.”

Skinner justified the decision by the California Energy Commission “we regulate appliances, tires are kind of like that.”

Nancy Skinner is the same lawmaker who tried to ban “Bullets, the very thing that make guns deadly,” she said in a hearing in 2013 I reported on. When she couldn’t ban guns, she tried to ban bullets.

In 2013, Assembly Bill 48 by then-Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, passed the Assembly by a 46-26 vote and moved over to the state Senate.

Her bill would have banned the sale of magazine parts kits that can hold more than 10 cartridges, and require mandatory reporting of law-abiding citizens who purchase more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition within a five-day period.

So naturally, when she can’t get you out of your car and onto public transit, she will make tires more expensive and difficult to get.

“We reversed California’s ban on gas-powered cars so now the state is banning tires instead. This latest blow to common sense could cost drivers hundreds of dollars.,” Rep. Kevin Kiley posted to X.

We don’t need new tires.
Or new engines.
Or new doctors.
Or new bullet trains.
Or new rules.

We need new politicians. https://t.co/j1Ab7rTPUA

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 18, 2026

In 2024, when Senate Democrats rejected a bill to make purchasing a child for sex a felony, Senator Nancy Skinner actually attempted to offer cover to perps for buying and selling sex:

“Selling sex has been within human cultures for millennia,” Skinner said. “It is a very difficult area of law to get into.”

Really? Was Skinner serious? The short answer is Yes.

She’s a leftist Berkeley politician, authoritarian, pro-abortion, climate change zealot, gun control nut.

Former State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley (redundant, right?), was confirmed by the Senate in May 2025 for an appointment to the California Energy Commission. Nominated by Governor Gavin Newsom for the California Energy Commission, Skinner was an institution in the California Legislature, having served since 2008, and known for supporting some of the most radical policies: pro-abortion any time in the pregnancy, global warming, climate change and radical environmentalism. Skinner even authored SB 345 which provides legal protections for medication abortions and “gender-affirming care” – dangerous, irreversible hormone treatments for gender-confused “trans” persons.

Nancy Skinner is reason for term limits, and why voters never bargained for termed-out lawmakers to get appointments to cushy boards and commissions.

Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones brought 5 binders of Skinner’s bills to the Senate floor saying, “We disagreed with 2/3 of them, but on energy, it was a 90% disagreement.”

“Many of the state’s current energy problems stemmed from her legislation,” he said noting, “government bureaucrats come first and constituents come second.”

In 2023, Skinner authored a bill signed into law by Gov. Newsom to require venture capitalists report to the California Civil Rights Department the diversity of the founding members of the businesses they invested in.

Sen. Skinner, “a social justice advocate, clean energy and climate change trailblazer,” who has never run a business or signed the front of a paycheck – claimed SB 54 will “bring transparency to venture capital investments in California and is designed to help more women- and minority-owned startups access vital VC funding.”

The bill had nothing to do with the business of investing in start-up businesses, other than to harm the practice. Venture capital investing has made it possible for many businesses which had a solid business plan, but needed the capital: Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Whole Foods and many others.

In 2023 the Globe reported that Senator Skinner must despise the oil and gas industry as much as Gov. Newsom. The California Assembly hosted a side show, when after jamming SBX1-2, authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Gas Tax, through an expedited hearing, pretended that was enough exposure to the public, and debated the bill and voted on it. Skinner and Newsom’s SB X1-2 will create a new panel of unelected bureaucrats with subpoena power, to investigate oil and gas companies, impose penalties, new costs and regulations, which would inevitably lead to gas shortages, rationing and price spikes. The bill creates a new government agency to arbitrarily decide how much profit oil and gas businesses are allowed to make, disrupting California’s energy market and threatening the reliability of the state’s fuel supply, according to Assembly Republicans.

Gov. Newsom signed SB X1-2 into law, growing state government again.

In 2023, Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), called for a tax increase on major corporations, such as Coca Cola and Walmart, in order to fund middle-and-lower-income tax cuts, as well as infrastructure projects in the 2023-24 budget. And Senate Democrats praised the budget raising taxes on California businesses.

In 2023, the California Legislative Women’s Caucus and the California Future of Abortion Council announced their 2023 bill package on “reproductive justice” and abortion rights. Because of “the zealots on the United States Supreme Court,” who according to Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), “overturned a 50-year right,” the package includes 17 pieces of legislation “that will expand access to reproductive health care and strengthen California’s standing as a safe haven for abortion, contraception, and pregnancy care.

This is who Governor Newsom and Senate Democrats gifted with an appointment on the very powerful, totally unaccountable, unelected California Energy Commission.

This is why elections matter.