California citizens have declared they will defy the federal government to protect the estimated 2.6 million undocumented immigrants woven into the state’s civic, economic and spiritual life. Here the nationwide wave of resistance to President Donald Trump has become a tsunami.

Last fall Valero, the Texas-based petroleum giant, asked a small refinery town in Northern California to approve a huge crude-by-rail project. The city council of Benicia, however, had other ideas.

Torrance Chambers has been calling Andy Puzder for weeks. The Hardee’s restaurant employee says his store issues paychecks only in the form of a prepaid Visa debit card, and that it comes with fees.

Wrongful-termination lawsuits suggest the fast-food CEO’s company found women and veteran managers inconvenient.

In the otherwise dark year of 2016, California doubled down on its faith in people and the future with major victories for labor, the environment and public education. Here are five ways the Golden State left the light on for the rest of the country.

California voters on Tuesday approved state Proposition 56 by an overwhelming 63-37 percent margin to create a new excise tax of $2 per pack on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The margin of victory was a shock: Similar ballot initiatives failed in 2012 and 2006, and tobacco companies spent $71 million to blitz the state with dramatic advertising urging a No vote.

The old-school image of a rock star was a guy smoking a cigarette, and Tris Imboden was that guy. As the drummer for the band Chicago for the past quarter-century, or on the road with Kenny Loggins or Chaka Khan, smokes were just part of what it meant to be a musician. What it meant to be cool.

Eduardo Vargas enrolled at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park during the fall of 2011 looking to help his financially troubled family, but then found he had to wrestle with a problem he had not foreseen: a crippled community college system.

Dean Kuipers on why Sacramento punted on Cap-and-Trade.