Senate Republicans led the push to block California's ability to impose tough limits on car emissions — a move Democrats call unprecedented.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to block California’s first-in-the-nation regulations that would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles statewide in 2035, setting up a certain legal battle over the future of electric cars in the United States.

The Republican-led Senate on Thursday overturned several key Biden-era waivers allowing California to set its own vehicle emissions, a major blow to that state’s effort to regulate pollution from cars and trucks that could have broad environmental impacts for the rest of the country.