California Energy Wackadoodles Triggered a Car Tire Apocalypse and Then Tried to Tone-Police a Reporter Who Dared Cover It

Right before 5 pm on a weekday, a California Energy Commission spokesperson emailed reporter Ashley Zavala with a demand disguised as a suggestion.

That email came days after the commission dusted off a 23-year-old law to force out roughly 70 percent of the tires sold in the state.

A state bureaucrat wanted the tone of her coverage adjusted, and Zavala published the email instead of complying.

A 23 Year Old Law Nobody Remembered Signing

Zavala covers California politics, and she had just reported that the California Energy Commission passed new "efficiency" standards for replacement tires.

The rule relies on a law that passed more than two decades ago and sat untouched until commissioners – including former state senator Nancy Skinner – decided this was the year to enforce it.

Zavala asked Skinner directly whether she had pushed to revive the dormant statute and why it took 23 years to act.

Multiple outlets, including the Yahoo Autos report on the rule change, put the number of tires that could disappear from store shelves at close to 70 percent of current inventory.

That is not a fringe blogger's estimate – it traces back to the commission's own proceeding record.

Higher prices, fewer choices, and a mandate nobody in California ever got to vote on – that is the actual tire story Sacramento does not want told plainly.

The commission is leaning on rolling resistance standards buried in a 2003 fuel-efficiency statute, the same law California regulators have quietly expanded for two decades without ever going back to voters or the legislature for fresh permission.

Skinner helped write the state's broader climate agenda for years in the legislature before commissioners appointed her to enforce it from the other side of the table, which is exactly the kind of revolving door this audience has watched play out on gas cars, gas stoves, and now tires.

The Email That Tried to Rewrite the Story

Instead of answering more questions about the specifics, the California Energy Commission's press office sent Zavala a message telling her to "consider taking a different tone" in her reporting.

Zavala posted the email on X for everyone to read for themselves.

She added one detail that guts any excuse the commission might offer: its own commissioners have not disputed the 70 percent figure she reported.

So the tone the spokesperson wanted changed was not the tone of an inaccurate story – it was the tone of an accurate one.

RedState's Bob Hoge framed the question bluntly: is this how "public servants" behave, or does it look more like a Goodfellas-style shakedown, minus the baseball bat.

Townhall and other outlets picked up the story within a day, calling it what it is – a government press office trying to manage a journalist instead of answering to her.

The commission has not denied sending the email, and it has not walked back the request either.

What it offered instead was tone-policing, which tells you exactly which part of the story actually worried them.

https://x.com/ZavalaA/status/2089882119908856279“>https://x.com/ZavalaA/status/2089882119908856279

Sacramento's Playbook Never Changes

This is not new behavior for people who think they run things instead of serve the public.

In 2021, a top press aide in the Biden White House, T.J. Ducklo, threatened to "destroy" a Politico reporter over a story about his personal life, and he only resigned after the threat became public.

The lesson those aides and bureaucrats keep failing to learn is that reporters who publish the pressure campaign, rather than absorb it quietly, are the ones who come out looking like public servants.

Zavala did exactly that, and now a California agency that wants to dictate what tires you are allowed to buy is stuck explaining why it also wanted to dictate how a reporter describes doing it.

Nothing forces Sacramento regulators to admit they got caught – they will simply insist the email was friendly guidance, not pressure, and count on a distracted news cycle to move on.

It will not work this time because the receipt is already public, timestamped, and impossible to spin.

California drivers have already lived through the gas car phase-out fight, the gas stove fight, and now a tire fight that most of them did not even know was coming, and the pattern is always the same: a rule written years ago by people no longer in office, enforced now by people who will not answer for it, and defended with a request that the reporter covering it soften her tone.

The tire rule survives or dies on its own merits in court and in the legislature, but the commission's press office just handed every future critic of California's regulatory state a script for how these agencies actually operate when a reporter gets too close to the real number.

Sources:

• Ashley Zavala, "Right before 5pm today, the California Energy Commission's spokesperson sent me an email urging me to 'consider taking a different tone'…," X (Twitter), August 18, 2026.
• Bob Hoge, "Goodfellas or Public Servants? CA Official Urges Reporter to Take 'Different Tone' on Tire Story," RedState, August 18, 2026.
• Amy Curtis, "California's 'Money-Saving' Tire Ban Just Got Worse, Including Threatening Reporters," Townhall, August 19, 2026.
• Bob Hoge, "California's War on Drivers Speeds Up — Now They're Coming for Your Tires," RedState, August 18, 2026.
• "California's New Tire Rule Could Wipe Out 70% of What's on the Shelf — And Sacramento Sat on the Law for 23 Years," Yahoo Autos, August 2026.
• Cristina Laila, "California Energy Commission Bans Sale of Majority of Tires… Far-Left Commissioner Licks Her Lips As She Boasts About New Rules," The Gateway Pundit, August 2026.
• Fox News Staff, "Biden press aide T.J. Ducklo resigns after threatening to 'destroy' Politico reporter," Fox News, February 2021.