President Trump, on Tuesday, at a truck rally in Wasilla, Alaska, spoke about changes coming to the state’s energy future, announcing that a long-awaited 800-mile natural gas pipeline now has every federal permit it needs and can move forward, and signed onstage pardons for Anchorage diesel shop owners Zachary Czubak and Patrick Fleming.
Czubak, Fleming, and Hanzuk, co-owners of Anchorage diesel shop Arm Rippin Toys, pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act after removing emissions equipment on at least 37 vehicles; each got five years’ probation and a $66,000 fine with no prison. Hanzuk was pardoned in September and Spurlock earlier in July.
For years, Clean Air Act diesel rules, tightened under Obama and enforced as felonies by the Biden Justice Department, treated Alaska’s remote bush the same as the Lower 48. Federally mandated systems designed for milder climates freeze, clog, trigger limp mode, or shut engines down in extreme cold. This strands drivers, families, and loads hours from help.
When the law was written, no one took into consideration that commercial trucks would shut down in subzero conditions.
The Biden administration began enforcing the rules in Alaska’s freezing terrain. Mechanics who removed or bypassed the failing equipment for reliability rather than power gains were prosecuted as polluters.
The Trump administration has moved toward a broader shift in which it has directed prosecutors to drop remaining criminal “defeat device” cases and has granted clemency to other mechanics previously convicted for similar work. For the mechanics who received them, the pardons remove felony records that carried lasting consequences for employment, firearms rights, and, in Spurlock’s case, military service.
A lasting fix is already in motion under President Trump. The Cold Weather Diesel Reliability Act (S. 3135), sponsored by Republican Senators Dan Sullivan and Cynthia Lummis and advanced by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, directs the EPA to update the rules so manufacturers can stop engines from shutting down or losing power in freezing temperatures and give real relief to trucks operating in extreme cold. A House version of the same bill is ready too.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has already stepped in with guidance telling manufacturers to ease up on the worst DEF-related engine problems.
