WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill that would require federal agencies to monitor domestic terrorism incidents, including those potentially related to white supremacy.

The failure of the Senate procedural vote showed again how difficult it is for Congress to agree on any response to U.S. gun violence. It followed a racist mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, earlier this month that took the lives of 10 Black people in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Another mass shooting, this one at an elementary school in Texas on Tuesday, killed 19 children and two adults.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had scheduled the domestic terrorism legislation, already passed by the Democratic-controlled House, for a vote following the shooting in Buffalo.

“The bill is so important, because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism. We need to call it what it is: domestic terrorism,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat.

“It was terrorism that fed off the poison of conspiracy theories like white replacement theory. […]