From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Analy.

Today, a murderous rampage at three spas in the Atlanta area has killed eight people, six of them Asian women.

That has stirred fear and outrage among Asian Americans, who see it as the latest burst of racist violence against them.

Even as the shooter himself offered a more complicated motive.

I spoke with my colleague, Nicole Ha, about why it's proving so difficult to classify the growing violence against Asian Americans as hate crimes under the law.

And whether the US legal system has caught up to the reality of this moment.

It's Thursday, March 18th.

Nicole, what were you thinking when you learned about these murders in and around Atlanta at these massage parlors?

So as the shooting unfolded, I mean, I was heartbroken and devastated when I learned that many of the victims were Asian women.

I was just glued to the news with, you know, the sense of dread.

I'm an Asian American woman. I'm also a law enforcement reporter.

So I knew that this situation was going to get very complicated.

And I could immediately feel the fear and the uncertainty coming from texts I was getting from family members, from friends.

You know, every Asian American I've talked to has just been feeling under such attack the past few months.

And this is just the latest thing to heighten people's anxiety right now about even doing the most basic thing like walking outside.

You know, the attack raised all sorts of difficult questions that I was looking into myself as a reporter.

I was looking at attacks against Asian Americans in New York City to explore this question of what is a hate crime?

What legally qualifies as an anti Asian hate crime?

And why have they been so hard to prove for prosecutors?

And where did that reporting start for you?

It really started for me when I heard about this stabbing in Manhattan's Chinatown last month.

There was a Chinese man who was walking home one evening.

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