Dolores Huerta had spent decades advocating for labor rights and marginalized people when she went to a central California college and met a group of farmworkers’ descendants — many of them students who choked back tears over the then-94-year-old taking the time to listen to them. That was the effect Huerta had on young people, said Ana Padilla, executive director of the Community and Labor Center at the University of California, Merced, which had hosted Huerta for the event. “It was I a...

Democrats, election officials and voting rights groups have long wondered whether President Donald Trump, upon his return to the Oval Office, would again attempt to overturn an election when his party is trailing. It's no longer hypothetical. Late last week, the president directed the Department of Justice to preemptively contest a potential Republican loss in the Alaska U. S. Senate race. The department is demanding a court hold up certification of a possible Democratic win until it's whether...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — At the height of the Los Angeles fires in 2025, millions of residents were exposed in a 24-hour period to toxic lead levels from smoke that were 80 times higher than the typical background level, according to a new study. Researchers from the California Institute of Technology compared the chemical composition of smoke from the Eaton Fire with that of a wildfire and found that the urban plume had more lead, arsenic and halogens (which include chlorine and bromine) linked a...