With supporters calling it more than 100 years in the making, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Wednesday that makes lynching a federal hate crime for the first time in U.S. history.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act was approved in a vote of 410-4. Only three Republicans and one independent representative voted against it.

Advocates say there have been more than 200 attempts to pass the legislation in the past, and the latest effort has been in the works for nearly two years.

“This act of American terrorism has to be repudiated,” Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, who sponsored the legislation nearly two years ago, told NPR. And “now it’s being repudiated. It’s never too late to repudiate evil and this lynching is an American evil.”

Sponsors say while there are no recently recorded lynchings, the House bill remains critical.

The legislation was named for the 14-year-old Chicago teenager who was lynched in the 1950s during a visit to see relatives near Monroe, Miss. His body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River.

California Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, a co-sponsor of the House bill, says although the legislation touches on a difficult period in U.S. history, it also stands as a reminder of the hate crimes that continue today.

For example, she noted that a Mississippi memorial in Till’s honor has been vandalized several times. Last year, cameras were installed and the memorial was covered in bulletproof glass to prevent new attempts of vandalism.

“Even today, periodically, you hear news stories of nooses being left on college campuses, worker locker rooms, to threaten and terrorize African Americans — a vicious reminder that the past is never that far away,” Bass said.

Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ted Yoho of Florida and the chamber’s lone independent, Justin Amash of Michigan, voted against it.

A painful legacy

The U.S. saw more than 4,000 cases of lynching between the late 1800s and the 1960s, according to the Montgomery, Ala.,-based nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative. Many of those cases involved black men.

“We often like to only talk about only the glorious parts of our history and it’s difficult for us to hear some of the ugly parts,” Bass, the co-sponsor, said. “But it is important that we do hear and understand our history in full.”

Rush said he first filed the legislation in June 2018 after hearing from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who asked the lawmaker if he knew that lynching wasn’t a federal crime. Rush said he did not.

But Rush says his journey to sponsoring the legislation probably started long before that.

As a child, Rush said his mother sat him and his four siblings around a table in their Chicago, home to share images of Emmett Till. Jet magazine published graphic photos shared by the teen’s mother of Till’s body in a casket to illustrate the painful legacy of lynching.

“That atrocity has been really something that has been with me, that’s a part of who I am,” Rush said in a struggling, soft-spoken voice, his vocal cords previously damaged as a result of an illness. “Emmett Till in that casket launched the civil rights movement in America.”

Rush’s mother told her children that Till’s story was why they left their home state of Georgia, and moved to Chicago instead.

A path forward

The Senate passed similar anti-lynching legislation, led by California Democrat Kamala Harris, for the first time in December 2018. However, the legislation failed to gain traction in time for the end of the legislative session that year.

So, in Feb. 2019, Harris introduced and gained passage again for her anti-lynching bill for the new legislative session. But since the House bill is titled differently, now the Senate must take up Rush’s measure in order to send it to the president’s desk.

Harris lauded the news of the House passage on Wednesday.

“It’s about time that the United States Congress take this issue up,” Harris told NPR a day before the vote. “It represents the thousands of lives that were the subject of extreme violence and criminal activity in saying — finally — that it was a crime that was committed against those folks, and it should never be repeated. So it is one of the most significant pieces of legislation that we could ever address.”

Lawmakers have said they hoped the Senate could take up the House measure during the final days of Black History Month, but that remains to be seen. The Senate returns Thursday after a 1-day recess for party retreats.

But lawmakers remain hopeful the Senate can pass the House measure in the near future and send it to President Trump’s desk.

“I’m very proud of that, I helped negotiate it and I’m grateful for the leadership of the House and the House members who were part of it. It’s really historic,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who co-sponsored the Senate measure with Harris, told NPR.

In terms of the timing, Booker said, “it’s Black History Month, it’s been too long, and the time to do right is always right.”

On Wednesday, a White House official told NPR that Trump is expected to sign it.

NPR’s Franco Ordoñez contributed to this report

Updated 10 p.m. ET

Law enforcement officials said at least five people were killed in a shooting rampage at the Molson Coors Beverage Co. in Milwaukee on Wednesday afternoon.

Authorities believe the gunman, who was identified only as a 51-year-old Milwaukee man, also died of what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“The hearts of the people of Wisconsin go out to the folks that were needlessly murdered at Molson Coors this afternoon,” Gov. Tony Evers said at an evening news conference. “It’s a tragedy for Milwaukee, yes, but it’s a tragedy for the entire state of Wisconsin.”

Police said that there is no threat at this time and that the site remains an active crime scene as the investigation is in its earliest stages.

In an email to employees, Molson Coors CO Gavin Hattersley called the gunman “an active brewery employee.”

“There are no words to express the deep sadness many of us are feeling right now,” he said in the email, according to The Associated Press.

The identities of the victims will be released after relatives have been contacted, they said. Police did not rule out another gunman but added that the scene appeared to be contained.

No motive has been determined at this time.

“It’s a terrible day for Milwaukeeans,” Police Chief Alfonso Morales said. “The victims all worked at Molson Coors, and no members of the general public were involved.”

Morales said there were still several employees on the Molson Coors campus because police were continuing a search of the campus. He said the sprawling complex has more than 20 buildings and 1,000 employees, adding that it would take “several hours” before authorities could account for all employees.

Officials said shortly after 2 p.m. local time, Milwaukee police responded to a call of a shooting at the 4100 block of West State Street. Once on the scene, law enforcement located the suspect, who was deceased.

Police said further information will be provided by the executive team of Molson Coors at a later news briefing.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett called the incident “an unspeakable tragedy for our city.”

“Six families actually are grieving and will be grieving because of this horrific act of this individual,” Barrett said. “This is a time for us to think about those families.”

Speaking at a White House news conference on the Trump administration’s response to the new coronavirus, the president offered his “deepest condolences” to the families of the shooting victims.

“Earlier today, a wicked murderer opened fire at a Molson Coors brewing company plant, taking the lives of five people,” Trump said. “Our hearts break for them and their loved ones. We send our condolences. We’ll be with them,” Trump said.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, shortly after the shooting, employees at the brewery complex received an email alert saying “an active shooter was in or near the second-floor stairwell” of Building 4 of the company’s factory.

The newspaper notes that nearby schools were locked down, causing heightened anxiety for parents looking to pick up their children while awaiting an “all-clear.”

Earlier in the day, the Milwaukee Police Department tweeted that it was investigating “a critical incident” and urged residents to “stay clear of the area at this time.”

Milwaukee television station WISN 12, an ABC affiliate, is reporting that the suspected shooter is a former Molson Coors employee. NPR has not independently verified that information.

Molson Coors, which brews Coors Light, Miller Lite, Blue Moon Belgian White and others, changed its name from MillerCoors last year. USA Today reported in October that hundreds of corporate jobs were being moved to Milwaukee, resulting in the loss of “400 to 500 employees” throughout the company.

This is a developing story and will be updated when more information becomes available.

As fears spread of a wider coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., experts in global health pandemics as well as some of President Trump’s leading political adversaries contend that the federal government’s response may be lacking a key figure: a coronavirus czar.

“The Trump administration must appoint a point-person—a czar—to implement a real plan to manage the coronavirus: an independent, non-partisan, global health expert with real expertise,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared Tuesday in a floor speech. “Somebody who is a scientist, who knows these issues and can coordinate the myriad of federal agencies to fight the fight and prevent American lives from being lost.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has been leading the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force since it was announced in late January. Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug company executive, is the only member of Trump’s Cabinet on the 12-member force.

Some experts question whether Azar has sufficient clout to coordinate a government-wide response to the outbreak.

“I think it’s helpful to have somebody who is senior enough to be able to tell the agencies what to do, to make sure the agencies stay on top, to adjudicate any disagreements that come up, and also to be able to potentially move money around,” says epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo, who is a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.

“That needs very senior leadership to be able to do that,” she adds, “somebody who’s tasked by the president, who’s ultimately responsible for decisions that are made within the agencies and between them.”

It’s been done before. In October 2014, during an epidemic in West Africa of the deadly Ebola virus, President Obama designated Ron Klain — who was previously chief of staff to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden — to be the White House’s Ebola czar.

“We saw the real value of that,” says infectious disease expert Dennis Carroll, who led the U.S. Agency for International Development’s response to the Ebola outbreak. “I participated in those meetings before [Klain] came on board and after he came on board, and the level of enhanced coordination and singular focus in the U.S. government was quite significant.”

But the Trump administration appears unlikely to heed calls for new leadership in its coronavirus response effort. On Wednesday, the Trump administration vehemently denied a Politico report that the president was considering naming a coronavirus “czar.”

“This is not true!” deputy White House press secretary Judd Deere wrote on Twitter. “The President took decisive action by creating the Coronavirus Virus (sic) Task Force a month ago and is pleased with the leadership of @SecAzar to protect the public health.”

Trump himself praised Azar’s efforts shortly after arriving Wednesday morning from a three-day state visit to India.

“@SecAzar and all doing a great job with respect to Coronavirus!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

At a House hearing Wednesday on the proposed HHS budget, Azar was asked by Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., if he anticipated the appointment of a czar.

“I don’t anticipate one,” Azar replied. “This is working extremely well.”

In previous administrations, the job of coordinating a governmentwide response to health-related epidemics fell to the president’s National Security Council.

Up until May 2018, Rear Adm. Tim Ziemer had been the NSC’s point man for dealing with global health crises. “He essentially had the role of health security,” says Dr. Gerald Parker, who directs the Pandemic and Biosecurity Program at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. “You had somebody there that, you know, knew health things and health security and had a career experience in more international global health-type things.”

After Ziemer’s abrupt departure, which coincided with John Bolton taking over as Trump’s national security adviser, he was not replaced at the NSC and his unit has been eliminated.

“There’s an enormous vacuum with the abolishment of that particular unit, and certainly Adm. Ziemer was doing an extraordinary job,” says Carroll. “His departure from the NSC, I think, has left us all in a much more vulnerable position.”

At a Democratic presidential candidate debate Tuesday in Charleston, S.C., former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg offered a scathing assessment of Trump’s coronavirus outbreak management.

“The president fired the pandemic specialists in this country two years ago,” said Bloomberg, “so there’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing.”