Fatigue and despair build as Calif. copes with massacres

The Associated Press

MONTEREY PARK, Calif.

In the wake of the worst massacre in Los Angeles County history, the California governor was meeting gunshot victims in the hospital when he was pulled away and briefed on a mass shooting at the other end of the state.

“Obviously there’s a systemic problem in the executive branch,” Sen. Rubio said. “We’re talking about two successive administrations from two different parties, with officials at the top level having, in their possession, documents in places that they don’t belong.”

The Democratic chairman of that panel, Sen. Mark Warner

Please turn to A4 western bar in 2018; the killing of three and wounding of 17 at the 2019 Gilroy Garlic Festival; the slaying of nine workers at a San Jose rail yard in 2021.

“I started writing in ‘Monterey Park,’” Gov. Newsom said. “And now I gotta write in, ‘Half Moon Bay.’ What the hell is going on?”

A 66-year-old farm worker was booked on murder and attempted murder charges after shooting eight people, killing Please turn to A4

Word that a gunman had killed seven people at mushroom farms in a scenic coastal stretch of Northern California came just hours after Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke of his fatigue and frustration with mass shootings.

“I can’t keep doing them,” he told reporters earlier Monday in Monterey Park, where 11 people were killed at a dance studio. “Saying the same thing over and over and over again, it’s insane.”

Yet Gov. Newsom was in Half Moon Bay on Tuesday to address the third mass shooting in just over a week in a state with some of the nation’s toughest gun laws and lowest gun death rates. His voice brimming with anger and emotional at times, Gov. Newsom said he consulted notes he used at past mass shootings: the slaying of 12 at a Thousand Oaks country and

Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press

Readers and leaders

Gov. Glenn Youngkin and First Lady Suzanne S. Youngkin read the popular book “Where the Wild Things Are” to Alexis Evans’ first grade class at Carver Elementary School on Thursday, Jan. 19. The governor’s visit was in support of the expansion of a new Virginia education law, the Virginia Literacy Act (VLA).The legislation passed during last year’s Virginia General Assembly and becomes effective during the 2024-2025 school year. “We want to have an academic and education system that raises the ceiling for all of our children and recognizes that we have kids that need some extra support,” said Gov. Youngkin. “We can do both.”