By MARY CLARE JALONICK and MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Alex Padilla on Tuesday encouraged Americans to peacefully protest against President Donald Trump’s administration and said it’s “it’s time to wake up” in his first extended remarks in the Senate since he was forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s press conference in Los Angeles last week as he tried to speak up about immigration raids.

In emotional remarks on Tuesday, Padilla, a California Democrat, recounted the altercation, in which security forced him out of the room and onto the ground after he tried to ask Noem a question. Padilla said that even though he was accompanied by a National Guardsman and an FBI agent, “I was pushed and pulled, struggled to maintain my balance” and ended up flat on his chest on the floor.

“I was handcuffed and marched down a hallway repeatedly asking, ‘Why I am being detained?’” Padilla said as several of his colleagues from both major political parties sat in their chairs and listened. “Not once did they tell me why.”

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., makes a brief statement to the media after leaving the Federal Building after he was forcibly removed from a news conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 12, 2025. (David Crane/The Orange County Register via AP)

He said he wondered in the moment if he was being arrested — he wasn’t — and, if he was, what the city and his family would think.

“What will a city already on edge from being militarized think when they see their U.S. senator being handcuffed for just trying to ask a question?” Padilla said.

In a statement afterward, the Department of Homeland Security said that Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater” and that the Secret Service “thought he was an attacker.” The statement claimed erroneously that Padilla did not identify himself — he did, as he was being pushed from the room.

“Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the statement said, adding that officers acted appropriately.

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., speaks to media after leaving the Federal Building after he was forcibly removed from a news conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 12, 2025. (David Crane/The Orange County Register via AP)

Padilla said he attended the press conference amid the immigration raids that have led to protests in California and around the country and as the Republican president sent military troops to his state. He said he spoke up after he heard Noem say that they wanted to “liberate” Los Angeles from Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats.

“Let that fundamentally un-American mission statement sink in,” Padilla said.

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Padilla and his angry Democratic colleagues have framed the episode as intimidation by the Trump administration, especially as it came days after Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a detention center in New Jersey while Newark’s Democratic mayor, Ras Baraka, was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility.

Padilla encouraged Americans to speak out.

“No one is coming to save us but us,” Padilla said. “And we know that the cameras are not in every corner of the country. But if this administration is this afraid of just one senator with a question, colleagues, imagine what the voices of tens of millions of Americans peacefully protesting can do.”

MIAMI (AP) — A hurricane warning was issued Tuesday for a portion of southern Mexico as Tropical Storm Erick gained strength in the Pacific Ocean, forecasters said.

The National Hurricane Center said Erick was expected to rapidly intensify and become a hurricane by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. The cyclone was centered about 265 miles southeast of Puerto Ángel, Mexico, on Tuesday morning.

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The tropical storm had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph, the Miami-based center said. It was moving west-northwest at 9 mph and forecast to approach the coast by late Wednesday.

A hurricane warning was in effect from Puerto Ángel to Punta Maldonado in coastal southern Mexico. The hurricane watch stretches west of Punta Maldonado to Acapulco and east of Puerto Ángel to Bahías de Huatulco. A tropical storm watch was posted east of Puerto Ángel to Salina Cruz.

A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected in the area, and preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion, according to the NHC advisory.

Heavy rainfall up to 20 inches was forecast for parts of Oaxaca and Guerrero with lighter amounts in Chiapas, Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states.

The rainfall may produce flooding and mudslides, the center said, and storm surge could produce coastal flooding.

By Hunter Boyce, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fluoride — it’s in your toothpaste, your drinking water and now the occasional legislative bill. Two U.S. states have already decided to stop adding it to their water supplies — a trend concerning local dental experts.

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Now, a new study has discovered what banning the mineral on a larger scale could mean for children and their parents. The results? Billions in added dental bills and millions of new cavities. It’s one major toothache of a projection.

What would happen if the U.S. banned fluoride?

Researchers out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Dental Medicine have completed a projection of what a nationwide fluoride ban could cost Americans in both dollars and tooth decay. The researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the only nationwide survey to include oral health data from clinical examinations of U.S. adults and children.

Having analyzed survey data featuring 8,484 children, they predicted such a ban would increase dental costs across the U.S. by $9.8 billion within the first five years. According to Lending Tree, it already costs Georgia parents an average $201,058 to raise a single child from an infant to 18 years old. For every cavity that child gets, you can add another average $191 to the equation. And, in this projection, kids will be getting significantly more cavities.

Within the first five years of a nationwide fluoride ban, researchers estimate there would be 25.4 million more cavities reported in children. That represents about a 7.5% uptick in cases. A decade into having fluoride-free drinking water, however, those numbers could increase to $19.4 billion in additional costs and 53.8 million in cavities.

What would happen if fluoridation came to an end in Georgia? A local dentist previously spoke to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April, issuing a grim warning.

“It will be amazing for our business,” said Sandy Springs dentist Cary Goldstein. “We will have so much work on our hands. We’ve almost put ourselves out of business because fluoride keeps decay down.”

According to the expert, it’s a matter of preventing more major oral health issues down the road. “That small cavity in childhood leads to serious dental work in adulthood,” he later said. “It’s like cancer — we are trying to prevent it before it happens.”

It’s been 80 years since Grand Rapids, Michigan, became the first U.S. city to fluoridate its drinking water. By 1980, half the U.S. population was drinking water with fluoride. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls it “a cornerstone strategy for prevention of cavities in the U.S.” that is “a practical, cost-effective, and equitable way for communities to improve their residents’ oral health regardless of age, education, or income.”

It begs the question: Why do some people now want to ban it from drinking water?

Just last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new measure prohibiting the addition of fluoride to the state’s drinking water. He’s not the first governor to do it, either. Utah became the first state to ever ban fluoride in public drinking water, with all statewide water systems having ceased fluoridation on May 7.

“We have other ways where people can get access to fluoride,” DeSantis said at a public event, as reported by The Associated Press. “When you do this in the water supply, you’re taking away a choice of someone who may not want to have overexposure to fluoride.”

Fluoride overexposure has become an increasingly common talking point in government. In April, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who has referred to fluoride as a “dangerous neurotoxin” — announced plans to tell the CDC to stop recommending fluoridation nationwide.

Fluoride overexposure can lead to fluorosis — causing tooth discoloration. A 2019 review of cross-sectional studies concluded that it can potentially become neurotoxic to young children at high doses, leading to worsened cognitive function. Those doses averaged around 1 mg/L.

However, the CDC only recommends a maximum 0.7 mg/L fluoride concentration in drinking water — 30% less than the high doses observed in the study review. A 2020 study of over 38,000 wells across the U.S. determined that roughly 87% of all tested groundwater was below 0.7 mg/L in fluoride concentration. According to the new study, the current fluoride concentration recommendation is a safe one.

“These findings suggest that, despite the potential harms of excessive fluoride exposure, fluoridation at safe levels offers both individual and societal benefits that would be at risk,” the study concluded.

©2025 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Illinois toy company challenged President Donald Trump’s tariffs in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a long shot bid to press the justices to quickly decide whether they are legal.

Learning Resources Inc. filed an appeal asking the Supreme Court to take up the case soon rather than let it continue to play out in lower courts. The company argues the Republican president illegally imposed tariffs under an emergency powers law rather than getting approval from Congress.

While the company won an early victory in a lower court, the order is on hold as an appeals court considers a similar ruling putting a broader block on Trump’s tariffs. The appeals court has allowed Trump to continue collecting tariffs under the emergency powers law ahead of arguments set for late July.

The company argued in court documents the case can’t wait that long, “in light of the tariffs’ massive impact on virtually every business and consumer across the Nation, and the unremitting whiplash caused by the unfettered tariffing power the President claims.”

President Donald Trump walks away following the family photograph during the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, Monday, June 16, 2025. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)

The Supreme Court is typically reluctant to take up cases before appeals courts have decided them, lowering the odds that the justices will agree to hear it as quickly as the company is asking.

Still, Learning Resources CEO Rick Woldenberg said tariffs and uncertainty are taking a major toll now. He’s looking ahead to the back-to-school and holiday seasons, when the company usually makes most of its sales for the year.

“All the people that are raising their prices are doing it with a sense of dread,” Woldenberg told The Associated Press. But, “we do not have a choice. We absolutely do not have a choice.”

The company’s attorneys suggested the court could hear arguments in late summer or early fall.

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The Trump administration has defended the tariffs by arguing that the emergency powers law gives the president the authority to regulate imports during national emergencies and that the country’s longtime trade deficit qualifies as a national emergency.

Trump has framed tariffs as a tool to lure factories back to America, raise money for the Treasury Department and strike more favorable trade agreements with other countries.

Woldenberg said he’s putting “enormous resources” into shifting his company’s supply base but the process is time-consuming and uncertain.

“I think that our case raises uniquely important questions that this administration won’t accept unless the Supreme Court rules on them,” he said.

Based in Vernon Hills, Illinois, the family-owned company’s products include the Pretend & Play Calculator Cash Register for $43.99 and Botley the Coding Robot for $57.99.