selection.interrupt()

selection.interrupt([name])

Interrupts the active transition of the specified name on the selected elements, and cancels any pending transitions with the specified name, if any. If a name is not specified, null is used.

Interrupting a transition on an element has no effect on any transitions on any descendant elements. For example, an axis transition consists of multiple independent, synchronized transitions on the descendants of the axis G element (the tick lines, the tick labels, the domain path, etc.). To interrupt the axis transition, you must therefore interrupt the descendants:

selection.selectAll("*").interrupt();

The universal selector, *, selects all descendant elements. If you also want to interrupt the G element itself:

selection.interrupt().selectAll("*").interrupt();