It’s easier to destroy something than to build it. In the physical sciences, this is known as entropy. Even if you’ve never heard the term, it’s intuitive. Consider infrastructure: building a bridge might take years — blowing it up takes seconds. The same holds true in politics. Hard-fought progress can be dismantled quickly by those with the will and the power to do so.

Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, I remember when “smog days” were declared vividly. While we did get out of school, our eyes burned. Our lungs ached. We couldn’t play outside. Back then, Los Angeles had some of the worst air quality in the world — largely due to its explosive growth in vehicle traffic and industrial activity.

In response, Governor Ronald Reagan established the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in 1967. Over the decades, CARB has spearheaded pioneering environmental standards, including the nation’s first NOₓ emissions rules and the introduction of catalytic converters. Between 1962 and 2012, concentrations of volatile organic compounds in L.A.’s air fell by a factor of 50, even as millions more vehicles hit the road. L.A.’s air isn’t perfect today — but it’s dramatically better than it was, thanks to science-based policy and state leadership, and also despite the huge increase in the number of cars in the L.A. basin.

Now, that progress is under threat. The Trump administration, aided by a compliant Senate, is using the little-known Congressional Review Act (CRA) to dismantle CARB’s authority. This effort has ignored expert analysis from the Government Accountability Office and overridden the Senate Parliamentarian’s guidance — sidestepping procedure for political theater. It’s easier to blow things up than to build them, and dismantling CARB plays well to a political base hungry for spectacle over substance.

This kind of recklessness has long-term consequences. The Senate’s choice to ignore its own rules — sometimes described as “going nuclear” — sets a dangerous precedent. The filibuster, while not in the Constitution, is one of the guardrails of deliberative democracy. What happens when a future administration uses these same tools to overturn other divisive laws? The 119th session of the US Congress and the corresponding Senate have just handed a future Administration the necessary tools.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has already signaled that the state will sue over this misuse of the CRA. When I was a child, I was taught that the issue of states’ rights was settled. Apparently, we have to learn that lesson again. But if there’s one thing I know about Californians, it’s this: we don’t back down when it comes to defending clean air — for ourselves, and for generations to come.