California: Latest mass shooting will spark calls for tighter gun control – but don’t expect action any time soon
It is immediately obvious that Monterey Park is unlike anywhere else in California.
The small city of around 61,000 people is eight miles east of downtown Los Angeles but could be a different country, with its Chinese supermarkets, dumpling restaurants and shop signs written in Chinese alongside English.
More than 65% of the people who live here are Asian American. It is, as one scholar described it, “an ethnic enclave in the suburbs that thrives because it refuses to assimilate, instead unapologetically catering to its own immigrant community”.
Still, it is not immune to the most American of tragedies. But even as Monterey Park comes to terms with 10 people shot dead during a ballroom dance class, there is a quiet and peaceful resolve.
In front of a police cordon on the street where the massacre took place, a group of people kneel and pray, asking their God for strength.
The Lunar New Year celebrations have been cancelled
Chinese New Year took place at the weekend and just hours before the shooting the street had been filled with thousands of people listening to live music or buying meat skewers from food stalls.
“It is so horrible, it’s like this happening for many people on a Christmas Eve or something, it’s just terrible,” says Robert Chao Romero, a professor of Asian American studies at UCLA.
On Sunday, families with children wearing traditional Chinese dresses came to Monterey Park from other parts of LA, expecting the second day of the Lunar New Year festival to be under way, but arrived to see stalls and signs being dismantled and police blockades.
When they learned the reason why, they were horrified.
One local woman came to lay flowers but dissolved into tears when she considered the contrast of what this weekend should have looked like for Monterey Park.
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“I was so looking forward to celebrating,” says Deanna Trujillo, who is part of a large Hispanic population in Monterey Park.
“It’s extremely painful, it kills me that this is happening to these families. This is one of the most united, kind and friendly communities.
“I might not be celebrating but I wanted to be part of this to let the Asian community know that they are so special to me.”
An evening news conference brought the news that a 72-year-old suspect had been found dead inside a white van 30 miles away in the city of Torrance with self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
The immediate danger was over for Monterey Park, bringing relief to people who had been terrorised for hours, but gun violence is the never-ending scourge of life in America.
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Police surround van linked to California shooting suspect
This is the deadliest mass shooting since 19 children and two teachers were killed in a primary school in Uvalde, Texas, last May but it is far from the only one.
Since the turn of the year there have been 33 mass shootings – defined by the Gun Violence Archive as when four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed – in the US.
Police believe the gunman in Monterey Park used a semi-automatic rifle to murder and maim, perhaps obtained illegally.
California has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country but still it was not enough to deter a determined killer.
Another mass shooting has prompted another chorus of calls for tighter gun control, particularly over automatic and semi-automatic weapons, which are designed to kill.
But America’s long list of mass shootings tells us any meaningful change is unlikely in the near future.
Porn star Stormy Daniels has described to jurors an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter she claims she had with Donald Trump in 2006.
Ms Daniels was testifying at the former president’s criminal trial over hush money she was paid to keep silent about the alleged encounter during the presidential race.
Ms Daniels, 45, said she tried not to think about having sex with him while it was allegedly taking place.
Trump trial as it happened: Raging ex-president calls for mistrial over ‘difficult to control’ witness Stormy Daniels
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Stormy Daniels recalls bedroom encounter with Trump
Mr Trump, 76, stared straight ahead when she entered the courtroom and occasionally shook his head and whispered to his lawyer.
After the lunch break, Mr Trump’s defence lawyers demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.
The judge rejected the defence’s request and said defence lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony.
Later in the day, the Trump team used its opportunity to question Ms Daniels to paint her as motivated by personal hatred of the former president and hoping to profit off her claims against him.
“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defence lawyer Susan Necheles asked.
“Yes,” Ms Daniels acknowledged.
Donald Trump in court. Pic: Reuters
Stormy Daniels in Manhattan in 2018. Pic: AP
Hush money payment
In the final weeks of Mr Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms Daniels $130,000 (£103,000) to keep quiet about what she described as an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Mr Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006.
Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2018 related to the payments and served more than a year in prison – with federal prosecutors saying he acted at Mr Trump’s direction.
Mr Trump, the Republican candidate for president again this year, has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to cover up the payment and denies having sex with Ms Daniels.
Trump’s ex-personal lawyer Michael Cohen served more than a year in prison. Pic: AP
Imbalance of power
Ms Daniels described how an initial meeting at the golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a “brief” sexual encounter she said Mr Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.
She said she did not feel physically or verbally threatened during the encounter, but she perceived an imbalance of power, with Mr Trump being “bigger and blocking the way”.
She said she found it “hard to get my shoes” after it ended “because my hands were shaking so hard”.
“He said, ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch’,” Ms Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”
Read more:
This was Donald Trump with his trousers down – no doubt | James Matthews
Daniels expected to return to witness stand
Mr Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments.
Speaking outside of court at the end of the day, Mr Trump said: “This was a very big day, a very revealing day. As you see their case is totally falling apart.”
Ms Daniels is expected to return to the witness stand when the trial resumes tomorrow.
There are moments, more than others, that scream the humiliation of it all.
Take this, before Tuesday’s proceedings got underway. “No descriptions of genitalia or anything but it’s important to elicit that she had sex with him.”
It was the prosecution’s assurance prior to questioning Stormy Daniels after Donald Trump’s lawyers had objected, in advance, to her testifying to the details of sexual acts.
It would be that kind of day in this kind of trial.
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In a dingy New York courtroom, this was the president and the porn star, together again, in a reunion most reductive for Mr Trump.
He might have secured guarantees on anatomical detail but, from the moment the court heard “The People call Stormy Daniels” this was Mr Trump with his trousers down, no doubt.
Ms Daniels told her story, of growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the daughter of a single mother. She edited her high school newspaper, enjoyed ballet dancing and horses and had ambitions to be a technician.
By the time she met Mr Trump, aged 27, we learned she was an adult film actress and director, star of the likes of 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.
By her telling, the Trump encounter was more Austin Powers – the penthouse suite, the satin pyjamas and the spanking with a rolled-up magazine.
“Bullshit,” Mr Trump was heard to mutter. His problem is that this kind of bullshit sticks.
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Stormy Daniels recalls bedroom encounter with Trump
Whatever his lawyers’ protestations about Ms Daniels’ credibility – and there are holes – that’s hardly the headline for a watching, voting, public.
What will they take from court to the polling booth in November? Quite apart from the imagery, what message does it send to key demographics?
An affair with a porn star, whilst married, is a poor fit with the principles of evangelicals, so critical to the Trump vote in 2016. Suburban women might also reel from this tawdry peek backstage at the presidency.
How much will Mr Trump worry? About $130,000 (£103,000) worth. It is the premium he paid to stop the story coming out in the first place.
Sadly, for him, the insurance policy has run out.
After a night with the porn actor, it’s the hard-core consequences.
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