Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political and social issues. Last month, when President-elect Donald Trump named fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder to head the U.S. Department of Labor, many observers were left scratching their heads. Some questioned whether a man who’d argued strongly against government regulation could become the chief enforcer of some of the same overtime and paid sick day laws he’d publicly opposed.

As the chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants, Andrew Puzder employs some 70,000 American workers (including workers at franchised restaurants) at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants, and at corporate offices. Puzder, who is President Donald Trump’s nominee for labor secretary has called his workers the “best of the worst” of the American workforce, and once noted of his store managers, that “you’re lucky if they have a high school diploma.”.

Note: This article has been updated to reflect the latest ICE-inmate figures for the Sacramento County Jail. As the Trump administration ramps up deportations of undocumented immigrants, federal officials say they need more lock-ups in which to hold them, especially near the border with Mexico. But California may refuse to help — with detention or any other aspect of the deportation surge.

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political and social issues. California’s local sanctuary policies vary from city to city, but most seek to prevent undocumented immigrants from being arrested and deported, as well as to ensure that these immigrants feel safe reporting crimes, acting as witnesses and testifying in court.

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. Late last March, Osmar Gonzalez Gadba, a 32-year old Nicaraguan immigrant, was found hanging by a bedsheet at the Immigration and Custom

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. The United States runs the largest immigration detention system in the world and it’s set to grow dramatically due to the Trump administ

Gang intervention workers and cops are working together to curb gang violence in Los Angeles. But the relationship between the two groups isn't always easy.

In July 2004, police lay in wait at an airfield in the far northeastern corner of Nigeria. Gilbert Chagoury , a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet. Nuhu Ribadu, then the country's top anti-corruption prosecutor, says that Chagoury was a kingpin in the corruption that defined Abacha's regime.

Environmentalists fighting to roll back the approval of a controversial pesticide released documents Thursday that they said show regulators put politics before science when they approved methyl iodide for use in California agriculture last December.

A year after environmentalists lost a regulatory battle to keep the controversial pesticide methyl iodide off the California market, they appear to be winning the ground war against the chemical. Only six California growers have used methyl iodide - marketed as MIDAS - to zap soil-borne pests and weeds before planting crops like chili peppers, strawberries and walnut trees.

At a Planned Parenthood clinic near Salinas, farm workers who plan to have children in the near future are learning to protect themselves against pesticide exposure on the job. "This is dangerous work," said Jessica Dieseldorff, a nurse practitioner who's heading up the pilot education program.

Environmentalists say a newly uncovered memo shows how the California Department of Pesticide Regulation gave in to industry pressure when it approved the controversial soil fumigant methyl iodide for use in California agriculture at levels more than 100 times higher than those its own scientists recommended. The Feb.

The federal court docket for today shows that one Steven Grimm is scheduled to answer additional federal charges in connection with alleged mortgage fraud. If convicted, he could face life in prison. A name that's not on the docket is Norma Hayward's.

Hospital cutbacks and lay-offs are on the rise statewide, but at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, a cost-cutting plan that could claim as many as 200 jobs and radically reduce health and pension benefits has workers threatening to walk off their jobs in protest.

For five years, Monterey Institute of Inernational Studies instructor Bill Hillar, purportedly a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Special Forces, packed the university's lecture halls with tales of swashbuckling heroism and gut - wrenching tragedy.

Public radio has embarked on an "American Idol"-like quest to find its next great storyteller, someone to join the ranks of Garrison Keillor and Ira Glass. And one of six people still in the running in the national talent search is 37-year-old Glynn Washington of Oakland, who definitely has stories to tell.