Senate votes to block California’s rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate voted on Thursday to block California’s first-in-the nation rule banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, moving to kill the country's most aggressive effort to transition toward electric vehicles as President Donald Trump’s administration has doubled down on fossil fuels.

The measure overturning the rule now goes to the White House, where Trump is expected to sign it, along with two other resolutions that would block California rules curbing tailpipe emissions in certain vehicles and smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution from trucks. All three measures were approved by the Senate on Thursday and by the House earlier this month.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and state air regulators say that what Congress is doing is illegal and they will sue to keep the rules in place.

“This is not about electric vehicles,” Newsom said at a news conference while the Senate was still voting on the measures. “This is about polluters being able to pollute more.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state plans to sue over the way that Republicans passed the measures blocking the emissions rules. Senate Republicans established a narrow exception to the filibuster Wednesday to clear the way for the votes.

The GOP effort could have a profound impact on California’s longtime efforts to curb air pollution. California makes up roughly 11% of the U.S. car market, giving it significant power to shape purchasing trends — especially because about a dozen states have already followed California's lead. Vehicles are one of the largest sources of planet-warming emissions.

Senate Democrats charged that Republicans are acting at the behest of the oil and gas industry and they say California should be able to set its own standards after obtaining waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the votes should “send a chill down the spine of legislators in every state."

“What we have at stake is a state’s ability, it’s right to make its own laws and to protect its own citizens, without having this body overturn that right,” Schiff said.

Republicans say the phaseout of gas-powered cars, along with other waivers that California has obtained from the EPA, is costly for consumers and manufacturers, puts pressure on the nation’s energy grid and has become a de facto nationwide electric vehicle mandate.

“America cannot meet these impossible standards –- not next year, and not in 10 years,” said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the second-ranking Republican.

Newsom announced plans in 2020 to ban the sale of all new gas-powered vehicles within 15 years as part of an aggressive effort to lower emissions from the transportation sector. Plug-in hybrids and used gas cars could still be sold.

The Biden administration approved the state’s waiver to implement the standards in December, a month before Trump returned to office. The California rules are stricter than a Biden-era rule that tightens emissions standards but does not require sales of electric vehicles.

Biden’s EPA said in announcing the decision that opponents of the California waivers did not meet their legal burden to show how either the EV rule or a separate measure on heavy-duty vehicles was inconsistent with the Clean Air Act.

Republicans have long criticized California's waivers and have worked to find a way to overturn them. The Government Accountability Office said earlier this year that California’s policies are not subject to the Congressional Review Act, a law that allows Congress to reject federal regulations under certain circumstances with a simple majority vote not subject to the filibuster. The Senate parliamentarian agreed with that ruling, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., cleared the way for the votes anyway with a workaround that established a new Senate precedent.

Democrats fought those changes, which were the latest attempt to chip away at the Senate filibuster after both parties have used their majorities in the past two decades to lower the threshold for nominations. Democrats tried in 2022 to roll back the filibuster for legislation, as well, but were thwarted by members of their own caucus who disagreed with the effort.

Republicans have insisted that they would not try a similar move after regaining the majority this year. But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said the move to block California’s laws were a “point of no return” and called the Republicans “fair weather institutionalists.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan was the only Democrat to support the measure to block the phaseout of gas-powered vehicles. She said in a statement after the vote that she has a “special responsibility to stand up for the more than one million Michiganders whose livelihoods depend on the U.S. auto industry.”

John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an auto industry association and lobby group, said there is a gap between the vehicles that car buyers are purchasing and the rules that would force a transition to electric vehicles.

“The fact is these EV sales mandates were never achievable," Bozzella said.

Austin reported from Sacramento. Associated Press writers Alexa St. John in Detroit and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X: @sophieadanna

Traffic converges on a freeway Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

An electric vehicle is seen charging at a charging station Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Long Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses the U.S. Senate vote against California Emissions rules which include the ban on the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035 during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, May 22, 2025. Newsom was accompanied by Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, left, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.I(Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

An electric vehicle is seen charging at a charging station Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Long Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Traffic makes its way along the 110 freeway Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Standing atop the Cal. EPA building, Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses the U.S. Senate 's vote against California Emissions rules which include the ban on the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035. Sacramento, Calif., Thursday May 22, 2025. At right is California Attorney General Rob Bonta. (Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Traffic converges on a freeway Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses the U.S. Senate vote against California Emissions rules which include the ban on the sale of new gas powered cars by 2035 during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, May 22, 2025. Newsom was accompanied by Liane Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, left, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.I(Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

FILE - Charging bays are seen at the new Electrify America indoor electric vehicle charging station in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)