AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton has claimed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, pulling off victories in California, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. Clinton is set to become the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination. With only one primary to go in the District of Columbia, Clinton has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates over her challenger, Bernie Sanders. But Clinton’s pledged delegate count falls short of the 2,383 needed, meaning she will need to rely on the support of unelected superdelegates to officially secure the nomination at next month’s convention in Philadelphia. On Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton held a victory rally at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

HILLARY CLINTON: Thanks to you, we have reached a milestone: the first time—the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States. Tonight’s—tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible. In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848, when a small but determined group of women and men came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights. And they set it forth in something called the Declaration of Sentiments, and it was the first time in human history that that kind of declaration occurred. So we all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you.

AMY GOODMAN: Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Brooklyn Navy Yard last night. On Tuesday, Bernie Sanders recorded two victories, in Montana and North Dakota, but fell far short in California, where he had heavily campaigned for weeks. With 94 percent of the votes counted, Clinton is leading by a margin of 56 to 43 percent in California. It’s unclear how Tuesday’s results were impacted by the Monday announcement from the AP and NBC that Clinton had already secured enough support of superdelegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee. Speaking in Santa Monica after the California polls closed, Senator Sanders vowed to continue his fight all the way to next month’s Democratic convention.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Next Tuesday, we continue the fight in the last primary in Washington, D.C. We are going—we are going—we are going to fight hard. We are going to fight hard to win the primary in Washington, D.C. And then we take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am—I am pretty good in arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight, but we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders is laying off more than half of his staff and will meet with President Obama in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

We go now to California, where we are joined by two guests. Dolores Huerta, civil rights activist, co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez, president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation for community organizing, she’s endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. And we’re joined by Norman Solomon, a Bernie Sanders delegate to the Democratic National Convention and co-founder of RootsAction.org, the author of many books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s go to Dolores Huerta first. Your response to the—Hillary Clinton’s victory last night? The headline in The New York Times: “Clinton Claims the Democratic Nomination.”

DOLORES HUERTA: Well, I think it’s very historic, as Hillary Clinton said herself, that this is a historic moment that we have a woman who is going to be the nominee, a Democratic nominee, for the presidency of the United States of America. And I believe that when Hillary gets elected, she will lift the tide for all women throughout the United States, and not only women, but also children, because in her career Hillary has done very much for children, starting when she passed the first healthcare act for children, which covered 8 million children. So, I am very hopeful. I do believe that she also has the capacity to run against Donald Trump, and it will be a very interesting race to see Mr. Super Macho, Mr. Donald Trump, run against a feminist, Hillary Clinton, with very different values. And I do believe that Hillary Clinton has the values of the majority of the people of the United States of America, and that she will be successful and will gain the presidency of the United States of America.