Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a bill that would create domestic terrorism offices within federal law enforcement agencies.
The bill was introduced following the recent mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York that left 10 dead, Just the News reports.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer positioned the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act as an opportunity to vote on amendments to curb gun violence.
"The bill is so important because the mass shooting in Buffalo was an act of domestic terrorism," Schumer said prior to the vote. "We need to call it what it is, domestic terrorism. It was terrorism that fed off the poison of conspiracy theories like White replacement theory."
The bill, which needed 60 votes to move forward, received a 47 to 47 party-line vote.
It would have established an interagency task force composed of the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and the FBI that would work to assess and combat the infiltration of white supremacists within law enforcement agencies.
Republicans argued that such a task force could lead to unlawful surveillance of Americans and a disproportionate handling of extremist groups on the right and left ends of the political spectrum.
