Tailpipe: The Trump administration is expected today to revoke California’s authority to set auto emissions standards that are stricter than federal regulations, directly confronting the state’s efforts to fight climate change. When the Trump administration announced lower federal standards earlier this year, the car companies said they would adhere to the stricter California standards, a poke in the eye to President Trump.

  In a speech yesterday EPA chief Andrew Wheeler said, “We embrace federalism and the role of the states, but federalism does not mean that one state can dictate standards for the nation.”

  The abolishment of California’s rules on tailpipe pollution is expected to be announced this afternoon at the Environmental Protection Agency while Trump is in the state to attend political fund-raising events. No previous presidential administration has ever overruled a state’s air quality standards and regulations. California’s leaders have said they’ll fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

  Loosening standards on tailpipe emissions is just part of the Trump agenda to cripple regulations written to fight climate change, which he has described as a “hoax.” He has rolled back rules governing coal-fired power plants and the release of methane gas into the air.

Stonewall:An angry and obstinate former Trump campaign manager and political adviser Corey Lewandowski yesterday stonewalled the House Judiciary Committee asking questions about potential obstruction of justice by President Trump in the Russia investigation.

  He was called to testify about how President Trump asked him to speak to then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and get him to stall or divert the investigation into Trump campaign links to Russia. Democrats hoping to tease out damning testimony about President Trump splattered like bugs on a windshield.

  The hearings are being held as a preliminary to potential impeachment of the President. From the opening questions Lewandowski filibustered. Ordered by President Trump under executive privilege to stick only to material published in the Mueller Report, he demanded that questioners specify the exact page and paragraph they were referring to and to read it to him. He refused to testify based on his own memory of events.

  Trump’s claim of executive privilege over Lewandowski is an unprecedented stretch. Lewandowski worked for the campaign but was never a paid employee of the White House or the administration. Nevertheless, Lewandowski repeatedly said, “The White House has directed that I not disclose the substance of any discussion with the president or his advisers to protect executive branch confidentiality.”

  Lewandowski is a loyalist who does Trumpspeak as well as the President. In his opening statement he said, “I am proud to say Mr. Trump won 38 primaries and caucuses and received more votes than any candidate in the history of the Republican party, all while being outspent most of the way.”

  Excoriating Lewandowski, the committee’s Democratic Chairman Jerrold Nadler said, “The pattern of obstruction laid out in the Mueller report has not stopped. You showed the American public in real time that the Trump administration will do anything and everything in its power to obstruct the work of the Congress.”

  During a break in the proceedings Lewandowski tweeted about his plans to run for the senate from New Hampshire.

Deadlock: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in danger of losing his job after his re-election race againstthe centrist former army chief Benny Gantz appears to be in a near tie.  With 63 percent of votes counted, Gantz’s partyhad 25.8 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of Netanyahu’s, with 25.1 percent.

  If that margin holds, Gantz will get the first crack at trying to put together a ruling coalition. The 69-year-old Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, forced this do-over election after he failed to assemble a coalition in May

The News Roundup:Tropical Storm Imelda is threatening parts of Texas with as much as a foot of rain. — Iran is warning Saudi Arabia and the US not to retaliate for attacks on Saudi oil facilities. — The New York Giants have benched their quarterback Eli Manning after a 16-year run in which he led the team to two Super Bowl wins. The 38-year-old Manning is in the final year of his four-year, $84 million contract.Rookie Daniel Jones takes over.

Busted:Prominent Democratic donor and LGBT activist Ed Buck has arrested and charged with running a drug house after a man overdosed last week at his West Hollywood home. The man survived, but two others have died at Buck’s home since 2017. The 65-year-old Buck is accused in court documents of being a “violent, dangerous sexual predator” who targeted homeless men for his “sexual fetishes.” 

The Obit Page:Cokie Roberts, the political reporter and commentator who was a fixture on National Public Radio and later for ABC News, has died at age 75 after a long fight with breast cancer.

  Roberts had a breezy and conversational knowledge of the goings-on in Washington. She knew everyoneand had her fingers on the pulse of national politics. Not only that, she was a nice person.

  Roberts was born into a political family. Her father was the former Democratic House majority leader from New Orleans and also a member of the Warren commission that investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Boggs was killed in a plane crash in 1972 and his wife, Cokie’s mother, stepped into his seat.

  Roberts was the only member of her original nuclear family who never ran for Congress. She said of becoming a journalist, “I have always felt semi-guilty about it. But I’ve sort of assuaged my guilt by writing about it and feeling like I’m educating people about the government and how to be good voters and good citizens.”