Lawmakers, activists and union leaders across the US remember the co-founder of United Farm Workers union
Following the news that Dolores Huerta – the civil rights icon who popularized the rallying cry “Sí, se puede! – had died at the age of 96 on Wednesday, activists, lawmakers and civil rights leaders paid tribute to Hureta’s long and lasting legacy.
In California – where Huerta helped found the United Farm Workers (UFW) union – her death was deeply felt. It was in California’s central valley that she laid the foundations for the United Farm Workers, and helped organize the 1965 Delano grape strike – a national boycott of table grapes that resulted in better wages and working conditions for grape pickers. Several schools in California bear her name, and murals across the state depict her likeness. And in 2018, California declared 10 April – her birthday – Dolores Huerta Day.
Keaton Denlay says agents handed him ‘poorly formatted Excel spreadsheet’ and threatened to criminally prosecute him
A California county elections official is speaking out about the Department of Justice’s campaign against purported “voter fraud”, saying federal officials provided him a disorganized list of names filled with inaccuracies – and threatened to criminally prosecute him if he didn’t take action.
Keaton Denlay, the county clerk-recorder for Butte county, a region north of Sacramento, said a federal agent on Friday hand-delivered what appeared to be a printout of a “poorly formatted Excel spreadsheet with missing and jumbled information”. The DoJ claimed the list was of 47 “likely” noncitizens who were unlawfully registered to vote and demanded the county set aside their ballots. But Denlay said the document was riddled with errors and lacking crucial details, and he declined to act on it.
“We assume that our enemies, like the Chinese or the Iranians, want to undermine our elections,” says investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. “But a lot of the resistance has actually come from some of the states.”
Dolores Huerta, a celebrated 1960s labor union leader and civil rights activist, died on Wednesday in California at the age of 96, her family said.
Huerta was co-founder with Cesar Chavez, another veteran unionist and political activist, of the United Farm Workers union (UFW), which was credited with improving pay and conditions for agricultural workers through a series of strikes, boycotts and protests in the 1960s and 1970s.
Californians facing not one but two wealth-tax initiatives on next week's ballot may well be asking themselves how all these tens of billions of forcibly extracted dollars will be spent.
The answer, based on new studies and weary observation: horribly.
Take the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country's second largest. In July, L.A. County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo designated the LAUSD as a "lack of going concern," due to its ongoing operating deficits, exacerbated by fresh salary increases for unionized workers. The state's longstanding school Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCAMT) then issued a damning report in September, placing the district at a "high risk" for fiscal insolvency. Why? Because payroll was expanding while enrollment was collapsing.
"From 2019-20 through 2024-25," the report found, "noncharter school enrollment declined from 440,365 to 369,830 students, a decrease of approximately 16.0%. Over the same period, total [full-time equivalent jobs] increased from 60,344 to 64,148, or approximately 6.3%. As a result, the number of students per total FTE declined from 7.3 to 5.8."
This incongruent math is a feature, not a bug, of Californian education spending.
"From 2002 to 2023," Reason Foundation Managing Director of Education Reform Aaron Garth Smith and Managing Director of Government Finance Jordan Campbell wrote in a study this June, "California led the nation in K-12 spending growth." And when exactly did K-12 enrollment peak in the LAUSD? 2002!
Between fiscal years 2013 and 2023, Smith and Campbell found, LAUSD enrollment fell by 34.7%, yet "inflation-adjusted expenditure on employee compensation—including salaries, benefits, and other wages—grew by…27%." In a city, county, and state dominated by public sector unions (the California Teachers Association has already spent more than $65.5 million this election cycle), collective bargainers sit across the table from the politicians they helped elect, leaving only taxpayers and public-school families on the outside looking in.
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), one of the most radical teachers unions in the country, reacted to the FCAMT "high risk" report with an innumerate defiance redolent of President Donald Trump.
"This fake independent analysis disparages the school board for rightfully addressing the needs of working people who face some of the worst housing and childcare costs in the country," UTLA Vice President Julie Van Winkle told the Los Angeles Times. The union's website called the report "a so-called 'analysis'" that used "a rigged scoring system with a predetermined outcome."
The UTLA broke with the statewide California Teachers Association in backing Proposition 40, the retroactive 5 percent tax on billionaires' paper wealth that would send 90 percent of the proceeds toward healthcare spending. ("California's schools, hospitals, and clinics need funding. Billionaires do not," Van Winkle explained.) But while the controversial Prop. 40 is looking wobbly at the polls, amid caterwauls over big money in politics, the much less ballyhooed Prop. 3, which makes permanent some wealth taxes that were sold as temporary in 2012, looks set to sail through without much resistance. Literally.
Spending on Prop. 3, L.A. Times education reporter Howard Blume concluded this week, "adds up to more than $81 million for and about $5,500 against." For those keeping score at home, that's a ratio of more than 14,700 to 1, brought to you primarily by teachers unions, who incidentally are lying about the initiative.
"Strict accountability [will] ensure every dollar gets to classrooms, not Sacramento politicians," vows the Yes on 3 website. Nonsense: The higher income-tax brackets, which begin at $371,479 for individuals and $742,958 for couples filing jointly, just feed into California's general fund, of which 40 percent goes to transitional kindergarten through community college.
Californians who routinely support such tax hikes and spending increases may flatter themselves that they're taking the side of children over rapacious billionaires, as well as the odd hundred-thousandaire. But the results produced by these massive money transfers have stubbornly failed to adhere to the alleged beneficiaries.
In 2024–25, the California Policy Center noted in July, "approximately 54 percent of tested LAUSD students did not meet or exceed the state standard in English language arts, 63 percent did not meet it in mathematics, and 73 percent did not meet it in science." With results deflation has come grade inflation, meaning that Los Angeles public schools are increasingly passing students who don't meet grade-level standards.
Far from acting as a bulwark against heartless spending cuts, California's never-ending won't-you-think-of-the-children tax-and-spend cycles are blunting economic growth and creating hollowed-out monuments to the folly of central planning. Just as the LAUSD was beginning its dizzying enrollment descent, the district launched a $20 billion, eminent domain–abusing school-construction program that was routinely characterized as "the largest public works project in the western United States."
More than a thousand homes, plus such landmarks as the Ambassador Hotel and Hollywood Star Lanes (from The Big Lebowski) were plowed over, only to create an overall building stock that now stands half-empty, incurring massive sunk costs.
As Blume detailed this week in the L.A. Times, "A modern, vacant and vandalized $34-million public school sits next to Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters — a campus paid for with taxpayer-financed bond money, but so burdened with debt and damage that it's not clear that anyone can afford to move in. The compact, aesthetically striking campus is marred by widespread graffiti. Vandals have punched holes in floors, walls and ceilings over the last five years. Recent photos of the inside appear to show puddles and stains from water damage and char marks from fire. The district is paying at least $20,000 a month in security and maintenance, and last year calculated having spent more than $1 million to secure and maintain the building."
A federal appeals court refused to order California to set aside roughly 20,000 mail ballots tied to voters the Trump administration says are noncitizens.
That ’70s Show actor was sentenced to 30 years in prison for two counts of rape against two women, who were also Scientologists
Danny Masterson has lost the appeal of his rape conviction, meaning his 30-year prison sentence has been upheld.
The actor, best known for his role on That ’70s Show, was convicted in 2023 of two counts of rape against two women in 2003, while a third charge relating to a third plaintiff, who alleged she was raped by Masterson in 2001, was quashed.
Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
Hazardous storm conditions delayed recovery efforts on mountain that has proved to be a perilous hiking spot
The body of a missing California hiker, blanketed in a layer of snow, was recovered on Mount Whitney on Sunday after a blustery storm delayed retrieval operations for five days.
The Inyo county sheriff’s office extended its condolences to the loved ones and family of the hiker, who has not been publicly identified, in a Monday statement.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly searched a California home tied to its current investigation into former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). The Beverly Hills mansion, owned by a donor of Swalwell’s, was searched as part of the probe into the former lawmaker, CNN reported, citing two people familiar with the investigation. “Early this morning…
'Israel is on the verge of an abyss,' says one of tens of thousands of Israelis who spent thousands of dollars to return to Israel for the election; 'we need to bring back sanity'
By a 2-1 vote, a federal appeals court panel denied the Trump administration’s request that it immediately order the state to set aside 20,000 mail-in ballots.
A federal appeals court panel Monday refused to order California to set aside 20,000 mail ballots that the Trump administration says are likely from noncitizens. In a 2-1 vote, the panel found it has no jurisdiction and the administration needs to wait for the trial judge to rule. He’s set to hold a hearing Tuesday, but…
Texas National Guard members in Illinois (Brian Cassella/TNS/Newscom)
On October 23, in the case of Newsom v. Trump, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Donald Trump's June 2025 federalization of the National Guard in Los Angeles was likely illegal. This decision has little immediate effect, because the National Guard deployment ended months ago, after the Supreme Court ruled against Trump in a related Illinois case. But it has important implications for judicial review of executive invocation of emergency powers to use the military domestically. Among other things, it emphasizes that such actions are reviewable, and the president should get only limited deference. It also adopts a properly restrictive definition of "rebellion" (which is one of the conditions that might justify federalization of the National Guard).
Trump federalized the Guard in response to anti-ICE protests. The district court ruled his action was illegal and issued an injunction blocking it. But the Ninth Circuit lifted the preliminary injunction, in a decision I criticized at the time.
The relevant statute 10 U.S.C. Section 12406, can only be used to federalize state forces in one of the following situations:
1) the United States, or any of the Commonwealths or possessions, is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation;
(2) there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States; or
(3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States
Last year, the Ninth Circuit ruled (incorrectly, I think) that Trump's action might have been permissible under Subsection 3: a situation where "the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States." As the Ninth Circuit acknowledges in their most recent decision, this basis for Trump's actions was undermined by the Supreme Court's December ruling in the related case of Trump v. Illinois, which held that Subsection 3 can only be invoked when the president is authorized to use regular federal military forces to enforce the law, and those forces are inadequate. These circumstances do not apply to the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and Chicago.
No one claims that the situation in Los Angeles amounted to an "invasion" by a "foreign nation." Thus, in its most recent decision the Ninth Circuit considered whether Trump's actions were authorized by Subsection 2, which allows federalization of the guard when "there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States."
The majority opinion by Judge Jennifer Sung holds that the determination that there is a "rebellion" is subject to judicial review and can be invalidated " if it "did not reflect a colorable assessment within a range of honest judgment." I think this is overly deferential. For reasons I outlined in an article published last year, there should be little or no deference when the executive invokes extraordinary emergency powers. Still, the Ninth Circuit standard is far from a blank check, and does allow invalidation of executive actions where the claim of rebellion is blatantly wrong - as it was here.
Following the district court, the Ninth Circuit defined "rebellion" as "a violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole." This differentiates "rebellion" from smaller-scale violence or other violations of law. I think that definition is largely correct. The court summarizes a wide range of historical evidence supporting it.
The Ninth Circuit also concluded that events in Los Angeles did not even come close to meeting that standard. There were some violations of law by protestors, and some small-scale violence. But no systematic effort to overthrow the government or anything close to it. If anything, both this issue and the definition of "rebellion" are easier calls than the court suggests.
Judge Sung, author of the majority opinion, is a liberal Biden appointee. But her opinion was joined by Judge Eric Miller, a conservative Trump appointee and onetime clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. This suggests the issue here cuts across ideological and jurisprudential lines. Judge Mark Bennett, another Trump appointee, dissented, but mostly on procedural grounds.
Judge Bennett did also take issue with the majority's conclusion that if Trump's federalization of the National Guard exceeded his statutory authority, it also violated the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states or to "the people," those "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution." He argues that the power to call forth the National Guard is delegated to Congress by the Calling Forth Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress power "[t]o provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." This is true enough. But in situations where Congress has not exercised that authority, states retain total control over their militia (of which the National Guard is the principal modern example), and that control is protected by the Tenth Amendment. Indeed, such control over state military forces is a central element of state sovereignty. Overriding it without proper constitutional authority qualifies as unconstitutional "commandeering" of state government forces. As the majority explains:
The federal government—whether the President or Congress—violates the Tenth Amendment by commandeering state personnel to enforce or administer federal law. Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 925 (1997) (Under the Tenth Amendment, "the Federal Government may not compel the States to implement, by legislation or executive action, federal regulatory programs."). If, for example, the President commandeered state police to help federal officers enforce federal immigration laws, that would violate the Tenth Amendment….
California National Guard members are state personnel, unless properly federalized… The President purported to convert the Guard into federal personnel by issuing federalization orders. If those federalization orders had been valid, then the President would have deployed federal officers in Los Angeles, and no commandeering of state personnel would have occurred. But because the President lacked authority to federalize the California National Guard, the federalization orders were invalid, and the deployed Guard members remained state personnel….
In other words, because the deployed members of the California National Guard were not properly federalized, they remained the legal equivalent (for Tenth Amendment purposes) of the state police. And because the challenged executive orders compelled those state officers to help federal officers enforce federal law, the orders violated the Tenth Amendment….
The Tenth Amendment protects States against overreach by the "Federal Government," whether "by legislation or executive action." Printz, 521 U.S. at 925, 935. The President cannot command state officials to enforce federal law even if a federal statute would authorize him, under some other circumstances, to call those officials into federal service. If the statute did not authorize the President to federalize the California Guard members here…, then the federalization orders were invalid, the Guard members remained state personnel, and Defendants violated the Tenth Amendment by commandeering those state personnel to administer federal immigration laws.
Exactly so. The majority and dissent consider a number of procedural issues, which I will not try to address. The majority also parses a variety of relevant precedents in detail. I may have more to say about some of them in future writings.
For the moment, this decision has little immediate effect. But it sets an important precedent in favor of judicial review of executive invocation of emergency powers, and on the meaning of "rebellion."
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch are joined by Associate Editor Liz Wolfe to discuss California's proposed 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires, which a Hoover Institution study suggests could ultimately cost the state $39 billion in lost revenue. With wealthy residents already leaving California, the panel examines whether the measure will survive next week's vote, why Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it, and how public sector unions have helped fuel the state's spending problems.
The panelists then look to France, where mounting unrest and economic stagnation raise questions about the long-term consequences of high taxes, expansive welfare programs, and pension obligations that increasingly burden younger generations. Next, they discuss Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returning home after 10 months in exile. Then, with the midterm elections next week, the editors examine whether Trump's tariffs, war with Iran, and mounting allegations of corruption will deliver Democrats control of Congress. Finally, a listener asks whether today's democratic socialist movement will ultimately be remembered like the libertarian and Tea Party movements of the early 2010s.
Matt Welch appears on the left. Liz Wolfe appears on the right. Behind them, an image of Governor Gavin Newsom appears looking concerned in the center. Bold text across the top of the screen reads "TAX THE RICH?"
When Americans cast their ballots in this year's midterm elections, they'll not only be picking who represents them in Congress, but also weighing in on a range of topics that could change their state laws and constitutions.
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