National Wins

Regulatory Wins

Moms Clean Air Force has organized our members to advocate for health-protective pollution standards from the Environmental Protection Agency. We educate our membership, mobilize written comments to public dockets, organize and support testifiers at public hearings, meet with EPA and White House officials, collaborate with community groups and other advocacy allies, and raise our voices in local, state, and national media outlets. Major campaigns have included:

Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)

Moms Clean Air Force was birthed in 2011 through a fight for national standards to protect babies from mercury—a brain poison that comes from coal-fired power plants. When we learned that the Trump administration wanted to undermine those standards, we made it a top priority to fight this effort every step of the way. Our perspective became central in the national conversation.

Methane

In 2016, we celebrated the finalization of EPA setting first-ever standards to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations. But the next administration sought to roll back these vital climate and health protections. EPA’s efforts to undermine limits on methane pollution culminated in 2020, and we fought them at every turn.

In 2021, we mobilized to reinstate federal methane standards, and we won. With bipartisan votes, the House and Senate reinstated the 2016 standards and jump-started EPA efforts to strengthen a methane rule that protects families and communities from harmful air pollution and climate change. We will continue to push EPA for much-needed national protections from existing methane sources.

Clean Car Standards

Moms Clean Air Force has mobilized strong grassroots support from every part of the country to push for robust tailpipe emissions standards for passenger vehicles and light trucks, one of largest sources of climate pollution in the US. In 2020, EPA updated these standards with much weaker requirements, and Moms Clean Air Force fought this dangerous weakening with grassroots action, testimony, meetings, media outreach, and more. With an EPA now recommitted to climate action and environmental justice, Moms Clean Air Force is turning out in force to support more ambitious pollution reductions from the auto industry.

In December 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced finalized—and ambitious—Clean Car Standards for model years 2023–26 that will greatly reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution. These final protections were significantly strengthened from EPA’s original proposal after Moms Clean Air Force and our coalition partners submitted more than 200,000 comments in favor of the strongest possible protections from tailpipe pollution.

Ozone

In 2015, we joined a groundswell of grassroots support for stronger national protections from ground-level ozone, or smog, resulting in EPA lowering the standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb. In 2020, the Trump administration declined to strengthen the ground-level ozone standards, despite robust science indicating that the standards are not adequately protecting our health, and despite an outpouring of grassroots support for more protection. We are currently advocating for the EPA to fix this harmful mistake.

Legislative Wins

The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2016. This law was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and is designed to help protect our children from exposure to toxic chemicals. Moms Clean Air Force led the way at the grassroots level for support of this bill.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in November 2021. This bill invests $1.2 trillion in rebuilding and repairing roads, bridges, and railways; expanding access to clean drinking water and reliable broadband internet; creating well-paying, in-demand jobs for our families; addressing the climate crisis; and advancing environmental justice. This is the largest investment in upgrading US infrastructure in the last 70 years. Moms Clean Air Force members advocated for several important climate provisions in this bill, including funding for clean electric school buses and for the cleanup of oil and gas pollution from orphan wells.

We are currently working to pass bills on a range of issues, including regulating methane pollution from oil and gas operations, ensuring environmental justice, cleaning up the electric grid, protecting maternal health from the impacts of climate change, building out electric vehicle infrastructure charging stations, and electrifying school buses. Learn more about the Legislation We Support.

At heart, Moms Clean Air Force is about bringing back old-fashioned values of citizenship, and opening doors for mothers to participate in our democratic process on issues about which they care passionately, to protect our children and their future.