Join in to tell state officials Fresno must not be a dumping ground for waste
On March 20, the state Board of Environmental Safety will meet in Fresno to evaluate a proposal from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control that would allow more hazardous waste to be dumped in landfills across California, including here in the Valley.
This means more exposure to toxic chemicals, more truck traffic bringing hazardous materials through our communities, and more risks to our health, water and air.
The most disturbing part is that DTSC has not conducted any meaningful environmental review or public health studies to assess the consequences of this plan. The agency also failed to properly inform or engage the communities that will be most impacted.
Opinion
This is unacceptable.
On Tuesday, dozens of residents, farm workers, environmental advocates and community leaders will rally at Fresno City Hall before joining the Environmental Safety hearing. We are coming together to demand one simple thing: stop this reckless plan before it's too late.
For decades, the Central Valley has been treated like California's pollution dumping ground — a sacrificial zone where low-income, rural, and farm worker communities are forced to live with the environmental consequences of industrial pollution, oil and gas operations, and unchecked pesticide use.
Many of these communities, including those in Fresno County, already suffer from sky-high asthma rates, extreme exposure to diesel pollution, and widespread groundwater contamination. We know what happens when regulatory agencies fail to protect us — our health, our children and our future are put at risk.
Now, DTSC wants to expand hazardous waste dumping in landfills that weren't originally designed for it without fully evaluating how this will impact local air and water quality.
This is not a pollution control strategy; it's pollution expansion.
Under California law, DTSC is required to conduct thorough environmental impact assessments, consult with impacted communities, and ensure full transparency before making major hazardous waste policy changes.
But instead of following these basic legal protections, DTSC is rushing forward with this plan without providing a full environmental impact report that evaluates site-specific risks, a public health assessment on how this could increase respiratory illnesses and groundwater contamination, or a real community engagement process that includes accessible materials in Spanish and Indigenous languages and meetings in all impacted regions.
This is a textbook case of environmental injustice.
Sadly, Fresno is no stranger to this treatment, and we have fought back before. Through the Central California Environmental Justice Network, we join with farm workers, community leaders and public health experts to reduce pollution, protect drinking water and demand stronger safeguards for vulnerable communities.
We are at a defining moment for Fresno's leaders, policymakers and residents. If we don't stop this plan now, more hazardous waste could be dumped in our communities for years to come — without proper oversight or accountability.
That's why we are calling on the Board of Environmental Safety to reject this hazardous waste expansion plan until proper studies are completed. DTSC must conduct a full environmental review and hold meaningful public hearings in all affected communities. Local and state leaders must stand with Central Valley residents and demand transparency, environmental protections, and real public engagement.
Fresno residents are coming together to fight back. On March 20 at 10:15 a.m. we will rally at Fresno City Hall before heading inside to the BES hearing at 11 a.m. We call on other Valley residents sick of the status quo to join us.
The Valley deserves clean air, safe water, and a government that listens to the people — not just polluters. It's time for DTSC to listen.
Nayamin Martinez, MPH, is the executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. She has spent her career advocating for clean air, water, and public health protections in the Central Valley.
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Vox
17 minutes ago
- Vox
Trump's immigration raids are now before the Supreme Court
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Last month, a federal judge in Los Angeles handed down a temporary order placing some restrictions on the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in that city. The Trump administration now wants the Supreme Court to lift those restrictions. The contested provisions of Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong's order are fairly narrow. They provide that federal law enforcement may not rely 'solely' on four factors when determining to stop or detain someone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant. Under Frimpong's order, the government may not stop or detain someone solely because of 1) their 'apparent race or ethnicity,' 2) the fact that they either speak Spanish or speak English with an accent, 3) their presence at a location such as an agricultural workplace or day laborer pick-up site, or 4) the type of work that they do. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Frimpong's order prohibits the government from relying exclusively on any one of these factors or on any combination of them, so it could not detain someone solely because they speak Spanish and they are a day laborer, for example. The government may still rely on these four factors to determine whom to stop or detain, however, so long as it has other reasons for targeting a particular individual. Thus, for example, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could target someone because that person speaks Spanish, and they work as a day laborer, and they were witnessed getting into a truck owned by a company known for hiring undocumented immigrants, because one of the three factors that ICE considered in this hypothetical stop is not on Frimpong's list. That said, at least according to the Cato Institute's David Bier, Frimpong's order has drastically reduced the number of immigration arrests within Los Angeles. The central issue in this case, known as Noem v. Perdomo, is what courts are practically able to do in order to rein in overzealous tactics by law enforcement. Judge Frimpong's order is modest — again, it does not prevent the Trump administration from targeting anyone, just as long as part of the reason why a particular individual is targeted doesn't appear on Frimpong's list of four — but it is also unlikely to survive contact with a Republican Supreme Court that is extraordinarily solicitous toward Donald Trump. Indeed, the Court has long cautioned lower court judges against issuing broad orders imposing across-the-board restrictions on law enforcement. One of the seminal cases that the Trump administration relied upon in its Perdomo brief was handed down in 1983, well before the Court's recent partisan turn. The Republican justices, in other words, likely will not even need to stretch the law very far if they want to rule in Trump's favor in Perdomo. What is ICE up to in Los Angeles? The Perdomo case arises out of multiple immigration raids in Los Angeles, which have often taken place at job sites and other locations where the Trump administration believes that undocumented immigrants are often present. As Frimpong found, 'car wash workers, farm and agricultural workers, street vendors, recycling center workers, tow yard workers, and packing house workers were targeted.' One early operation 'detained multiple day laborers outside of the Westlake Home Depot.' At least some of these operations appear to violate the Constitution. In some instances, law enforcement appears to have targeted people because of their race. Frimpong, for example, pointed to an incident where 'agents approached and prevented a nonwhite individual from walking away but not those who appeared to be Caucasians.' A Latino car wash worker targeted by one of the raids testified that the federal agents who arrested him ignored two of his light-skinned coworkers, one of whom is Russian and another who is Persian. In other cases, federal agents appear to have targeted individuals despite having no reasonable grounds to believe they are undocumented. Plaintiff Jason Brian Gavidia, for example, is an American who was born in Los Angeles. According to an appeals court that upheld nearly all of Frimpong's order, agents 'forcefully pushed [Gavidia] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm' after he was unable to identify which hospital he was born in. The agents eventually released Gavidia after he produced a Real ID card, a document that is only issued to people who are legally present in the United States, but they took his ID. It is quite difficult to obtain a federal injunction against law enforcement officials It is likely, in other words, that at least some of the people targeted by these Los Angeles raids could individually challenge their arrests or detention in court. But the ability to bring such individual challenges often isn't worth very much. For starters, the Republican justices' decisions in Hernández v. Mesa (2020) and Egbert v. Boule (2022) likely make it impossible to collect money damages from an ICE agent who violates your constitutional rights. In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents (1971), the Supreme Court held that federal law enforcement officers who violate someone's constitutional rights may be personally liable for that violation. But Hernández and Egbert read that decision so narrowly that such suits rarely, if ever, move forward. So, even if someone like Gavidia brings a successful lawsuit, he probably wouldn't win anything more than the right to get his ID back. Someone who is unlawfully detained could potentially obtain a court order demanding their release. But many people targeted by law enforcement lack access to legal counsel or cannot afford to hire a lawyer even if they can find one who will take their case. While indigent criminal defendants have a right to a government-paid lawyer, defendants in immigration proceedings typically do not. And even when immigration defendants do prevail, an occasional court decision declaring some long-past arrest illegal is unlikely to deter future illegal arrests. Yet, the Supreme Court has long discouraged federal judges from issuing injunctions that forbid law enforcement from acting illegally in the future. The key case is City of Los Angeles v. Lyons (1983), which held that Adolph Lyons, a man who was allegedly choked out by police officers without provocation, could not obtain a court order forbidding LA's police from using such chokeholds in the future. 'Past exposure to illegal conduct,' Justice Byron White wrote for the Court in Lyons, does not permit someone to seek an injunction. Rather, 'Lyons' standing to seek the injunction requested depended on whether he was likely to suffer future injury from the use of the chokeholds by police officers.' Indeed, White's decision placed nearly impossible barriers before most plaintiffs seeking court orders requiring police to modify their behavior. To obtain such an injunction, White wrote, Lyons 'would have had not only to allege that he would have another encounter with the police, but also to make the incredible assertion either (1) that all police officers in Los Angeles always choke any citizen with whom they happen to have an encounter, whether for the purpose of arrest, issuing a citation, or for questioning, or (2) that the City ordered or authorized police officers to act in such manner.' At least some of the plaintiffs in Perdomo present an unusually strong case that they are likely to be caught up in an immigration raid again in the future. According to the appeals court which heard this case, 'at least one individual with lawful status was stopped twice by roving patrols in just 10 days.' So a court could quite reasonably conclude that this individual is 'likely to suffer' the 'future injury' that Lyons demands. But Lyons also places such a high bar in front of plaintiffs seeking an injunction against law enforcement that it would not be difficult for the Republican justices to write an opinion relying on Lyons to toss out Judge Frimpong's order, assuming that they even bother to explain their decision in the first place — something that the Court's Republican majority often refuses to do. In addition to arguing that Lyons requires the Supreme Court to block Frimpong's decision, Trump's lawyers also point to the Court's recent decision in Trump v. CASA (2025), which held that federal courts typically should not issue injunctions that extend beyond the individual parties to a lawsuit. So, even if the one plaintiff who was stopped twice may obtain an injunction, that court order might have to be so narrow that it protects him and him alone against future illegal stops. Trump's CASA argument is hardly airtight. Though CASA did hold that broad injunctions are generally discouraged, it did permit them when necessary to give a victorious plaintiff 'complete relief.' Frimpong argued that a broad injunction is warranted in Perdomo, because law enforcement officers cannot reasonably be expected to know which suspects are protected by a court order. 'It would be a fantasy to expect that law enforcement could and would inquire whether a given individual was among the [plaintiffs] before proceeding with a seizure,' she wrote. The only way to stop ICE from targeting the Perdomo plaintiffs is to issue a court order that protects everyone in Los Angeles. Will that argument persuade a majority of the justices? The honest answer is, 'Who knows?' CASA is a brand new decision, handed down less than two months ago, and the Court has yet to apply its new rule to the facts of any specific case — including the CASA case itself. And the fact remains that it is exceedingly difficult to obtain any injunction against law enforcement, much less the broadly applicable one handed down by Judge Frimpong. The Supreme Court has generally preferred for judges to adjudicate alleged legal violations by law enforcement one at a time, rather than issuing wholesale injunctions halting an illegal practice — even though individual decisions often do little to stop these practices. At least some parts of Frimpong's order are probably overly broad In fairness, there are some good reasons to prefer individual lawsuits over wholesale court orders. Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases typically turn on the very specific facts of a particular case. Police might reasonably suspect, for example, that a person spotted with a large wad of cash in a neighborhood where illegal drugs are often sold is engaged in illegal activity. By contrast, police may not have reasonable grounds to suspect a similar person spotted walking near a business where people often make down payments on their new homes. As a general rule, the Fourth Amendment permits police to briefly stop and search someone if they reasonably suspect that person is engaged in illegal activity — or, in an immigration case, of being illegally present in the United States. To be sure, there are some things that law enforcement may almost never consider when determining whether to stop a particular individual. In Kansas v. Glover (2020), for example, the Court said that police may not target someone based on 'nothing more than a demographic profile' or stop and question someone about their immigration status because of their 'Mexican ancestry.' Frimpong's conclusion that ICE may not target someone solely because of their 'apparent race or ethnicity' is consistent with Glover. But Frimpong's conclusion that law enforcement may never reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented solely based on their presence in a particular location is probably a bit of a stretch. As a federal appeals court explained in a 2014 case, day laborer jobs are 'one of the limited options for workers without documents.' These jobs are often grueling, unreliable, and underpaid. They are unattractive to virtually anyone who is authorized to work in the United States and, thus, have less-demanding and better-paying job options available to them. There are at least some cases, in other words, where a law enforcement officer could reasonably suspect someone of being undocumented if they are consistently seen at a location where undocumented workers seek jobs as day laborers — what Frimpong described as a 'day laborer pick up site.' It is difficult to come up with categorical rules governing which factors law enforcement may consider when deciding whom to stop. Even race may be an acceptable factor in very limited circumstances; if multiple witnesses to a robbery tell police that they saw an East Asian man commit the crime, for example, then police could reasonably limit their search to people who appear to be East Asian. This is one reason why cases like Lyons exist: to prevent judges from handing down categorical rules that prevent police from conducting lawful investigations.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Bolivian voters are hungry for change — and disillusioned by the options ahead of election
LA PAZ, Bolivia — The campaign billboards adorning the streets of Bolivia for Sunday's presidential election make grand promises: A solution to the dire economic crisis within 100 days, an end to fuel shortages and bread lines, unity for a divided nation. One vice presidential candidate pledges to 'Make Bolivia Sexy Again.' In their efforts to draw votes, all eight candidates — two right-wing front-runners, a conservative centrist and splintered factions of Bolivia's long-dominant left-wing — are vowing drastic change, launching searing attacks on the status quo and selling a message of hope. But for many Bolivians, hope has already hardened into cynicism. Promises of quick fixes — like right-wing candidate Samuel Doria Medina's pledge to stabilize the upside-down economy within '100 days, dammit!' — fall flat. Vandals add extra zeroes to his campaign posters, suggesting a million days might be a more realistic goal. Tuto, the nickname of Jorge Quiroga, the other right-wing favorite, turns up on city walls with its first letter swapped to form a Spanish insult. Some signs for left-wing candidate Andrónico Rodríguez, pledging 'unity above all' have been defaced to read 'unity in the face of lines.' And few know what to do with the acronym of the governing party candidate, Eduardo del Castillo: 'We Are a National Option with Authentic Ideas.' (No, It's not any catchier in Spanish). Yet for all their disenchantment with politicians, Bolivians are counting down the days until elections, united in their relief that, no matter what happens, leftist President Luis Arce will leave office after five difficult years. Inflation is soaring. The central bank has burned through its dollar reserves. Imported goods have vanished from shelves. 'I have no faith in any candidate. There's no one new in this race,' Alex Poma Quispe, 25, told The Associated Press from his family's fruit truck, where he slept curled into a ball in the front seat Wednesday for a second straight night, stranded with 50 other trucks in a fuel line en route from farms in the Yungas region to markets in Bolivia's capital of La Paz. 'The only thing we're enthusiastic about is Arce leaving.' A bitter power struggle between Arce and former President Evo Morales has shattered their hegemonic Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, giving the right-wing opposition its best shot at victory in two decades. 'I've seen that socialism has brought nothing good to this country,' said Victor Ticona, 24, a music student, as he left Quiroga's campaign rally Wednesday. 'We have to become more competitive in the world.' Doria Medina, a 66-year-old multimillionaire businessman, and Quiroga, a 65-year-old former vice president who briefly assumed the presidency in 2001 after then-President Hugo Banzer resigned with cancer, are familiar faces in Bolivian politics. Both have run for president three times before. While their calls for economic freedom and foreign investment appeal to voters desperate for change, they have struggled to stir up excitement. Nearly 30% of voters are undecided, according to polls. Doria Medina, a former minister of planning, acknowledged in a recent social media video that 'people say I have no charisma, that I'm too serious.' Quiroga's association with Banzer, a former military dictator who brutally quashed dissent over seven corruption-plagued years before being democratically elected, has turned some voters off. 'It was a bloody era,' recalled 52-year-old taxi driver Juan Carlos Mamani. 'For me, Tuto is the definition of the old guard.' Poma Quispe and his 24-year-old brother Weimar have no idea who'd they vote for — or if they'll vote at all. Voting is compulsory in Bolivia, and about 7.9 million people in the country of 12 million are eligible to cast ballots in Sunday's election. Non-voters face various financial penalties. Over the past year, fuel shortages have brought much of Bolivia to a standstill. Truckers waste days at a time queuing at empty gas stations around Bolivia, just to keep their vehicles moving. The diesel arrives on no set schedule, and the rhythm of life is forced to adapt. If the diesel arrives before Sunday, the Poma Quispe brothers will vote. If not, 'there's no way we're giving up our spot in line for those candidates,' Weimar Poma Quispe said. This year's election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Bolivia's independence. But instead of celebrating, many Bolivians are questioning the validity of their democracy and state-directed economic model. Crowds booed at President Arce during his bicentennial speech earlier this month. His government invited left-wing presidents from across Latin America to attend the event; only the president of Honduras showed. The lack of enthusiasm among ordinary Bolivians and beleaguered officials seems matched by that of the candidates. Authorities allowed televised presidential debates — banned under Morales — for the first time in 20 years. The front-runners turned up to just one of them. Personal attacks overshadowed policy discussions. Doria Medina accused Del Castillo of ties to drug traffickers, while Del Castillo mocked the businessman's record of failed presidential bids. Rodríguez and Quiroga traded barbs over alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings. The median age in Bolivia is 26. For comparison, it is 39 in China and the United States. Having grown up under the government of Morales and his MAS party, many young Bolivians are restive, disillusioned by current prospects as they become more digitally connected than any generation before them. Quiroga in particular has energized young voters with his running mate, JP Velasco, a successful 38-year-old tech entrepreneur with no political experience who vows to reverse a brain drain in Bolivia and create opportunities for youth in exploiting the country's abundant reserves of lithium, the critical metal for electric vehicle batteries, and developing data centers. Young crowds packed Quiroga's Wednesday night campaign rally, even as 20-somethings in goth makeup and tight-stretch dresses expressed more interest in the lively cumbia bands than the political speeches. Others sported red MAGA-style caps with Velasco's slogan, 'Make Bolivia Sexy Again.' Cap-wearers offered varying answers on when Bolivia was last 'sexy,' with some saying never, but agreed it meant attractive to foreign investors. 'It won't just be tech companies coming here, McDonald's might even come,' Velasco told the crowd, eliciting whoops and howls. 'Young people, if you go abroad, let it be for vacation.' Debre and Valdez write for the Associated Press.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Bolivian voters are hungry for change — and disillusioned by the options ahead of election
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The campaign billboards adorning the streets of Bolivia for Sunday's presidential election make grand promises: A solution to the dire economic crisis within 100 days, an end to fuel shortages and bread lines, unity for a divided nation. One vice presidential candidate pledges to 'Make Bolivia Sexy Again.' In their efforts to draw votes, all eight candidates — two right-wing front-runners, a conservative centrist and splintered factions of Bolivia's long-dominant left-wing — are vowing drastic change, launching searing attacks on the status quo and selling a message of hope. Slogans fail to break through Promises of quick fixes — like right-wing candidate Samuel Doria Medina's pledge to stabilize the upside-down economy within '100 days, dammit!' — fall flat. Vandals add extra zeroes to his campaign posters, suggesting a million days might be a more realistic goal. Tuto, the nickname of Jorge Quiroga, the other right-wing favorite, turns up on city walls with its first letter swapped to form a Spanish insult. Some signs for left-wing candidate Andrónico Rodríguez, pledging 'unity above all' have been defaced to read 'unity in the face of lines.' And few know what to do with the acronym of the governing party candidate, Eduardo del Castillo: 'We Are a National Option with Authentic Ideas.' (No, It's not any catchier in Spanish). Yet for all their disenchantment with politicians, Bolivians are counting down the days until elections, united in their relief that, no matter what happens, leftist President Luis Arce will leave office after five difficult years. Inflation is soaring. The central bank has burned through its dollar reserves. Imported goods have vanished from shelves. 'I have no faith in any candidate. There's no one new in this race,' Alex Poma Quispe, 25, told The Associated Press from his family's fruit truck, where he slept curled into a ball in the front seat Wednesday for a second straight night, stranded with 50 other trucks in a fuel line en route from farms in the Yungas region to markets in Bolivia's capital of La Paz. 'The only thing we're enthusiastic about is Arce leaving.' New campaigns, old faces A bitter power struggle between Arce and former President Evo Morales has shattered their hegemonic Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, giving the right-wing opposition its best shot at victory in two decades. 'I've seen that socialism has brought nothing good to this country,' said Victor Ticona, 24, a music student, as he left Quiroga's campaign rally Wednesday. 'We have to become more competitive in the world.' Doria Medina, a 66-year-old multimillionaire businessman, and Quiroga, a 65-year-old former vice president who briefly assumed the presidency in 2001 after then-President Hugo Banzer resigned with cancer, are familiar faces in Bolivian politics. Both have run for president three times before. While their calls for economic freedom and foreign investment appeal to voters desperate for change, they have struggled to stir up excitement. Nearly 30% of voters are undecided, according to polls. Doria Medina, a former minister of planning, acknowledged in a recent social media video that 'people say I have no charisma, that I'm too serious.' Quiroga's association with Banzer, a former military dictator who brutally quashed dissent over seven corruption-plagued years before being democratically elected, has turned some voters off. 'It was a bloody era,' recalled 52-year-old taxi driver Juan Carlos Mamani. 'For me, Tuto is the definition of the old guard.' At the pumps, not the polls Poma Quispe and his 24-year-old brother Weimar have no idea who'd they vote for — or if they'll vote at all. Voting is compulsory in Bolivia, and about 7.9 million people in the country of 12 million are eligible to cast ballots in Sunday's election. Non-voters face various financial penalties. Over the past year, fuel shortages have brought much of Bolivia to a standstill. Truckers waste days at a time queuing at empty gas stations around Bolivia, just to keep their vehicles moving. The diesel arrives on no set schedule, and the rhythm of life is forced to adapt. If the diesel arrives before Sunday, the Poma Quispe brothers will vote. If not, 'there's no way we're giving up our spot in line for those candidates,' Weimar Poma Quispe said. Personal drama over political debate This year's election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Bolivia's independence. But instead of celebrating, many Bolivians are questioning the validity of their democracy and state-directed economic model. Crowds booed at President Arce during his bicentennial speech earlier this month. His government invited left-wing presidents from across Latin America to attend the event; only the president of Honduras showed. The lack of enthusiasm among ordinary Bolivians and beleaguered officials seems matched by that of the candidates. Authorities allowed televised presidential debates — banned under Morales — for the first time in 20 years. The front-runners turned up to just one of them. Personal attacks overshadowed policy discussions. Doria Medina accused Del Castillo of ties to drug traffickers, while Del Castillo mocked the businessman's record of failed presidential bids. Rodríguez and Quiroga traded barbs over alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings. Chasing the youth vote The median age in Bolivia is 26. For comparison, it is 39 in China and the United States. Having grown up under the government of Morales and his MAS party, many young Bolivians are restive, disillusioned by current prospects as they become more digitally connected than any generation before them. Quiroga in particular has energized young voters with his running mate, JP Velasco, a successful 38-year-old tech entrepreneur with no political experience who vows to reverse a brain drain in Bolivia and create opportunities for youth in exploiting the country's abundant reserves of lithium, the critical metal for electric vehicle batteries, and developing data centers. Young crowds packed Quiroga's Wednesday night campaign rally, even as 20-somethings in goth makeup and tight-stretch dresses expressed more interest in the lively cumbia bands than the political speeches. Others sported red MAGA-style caps with Velasco's slogan, 'Make Bolivia Sexy Again.' Cap-wearers offered varying answers on when Bolivia was last 'sexy,' with some saying never, but agreed it meant attractive to foreign investors. 'It won't just be tech companies coming here, McDonald's might even come,' Velasco told the crowd, eliciting whoops and howls. 'Young people, if you go abroad, let it be for vacation.'
