The Brief

Amelia Earhart's love for aviation began in Los Angeles, where she took her first flight and pursued her newfound passion.

Laurie Gwen Shapiro, author of the new book, "The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam and the Marriage that Made an American Icon," joined AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news program, to discuss the pilot's meteoric rise and tragic end and also to share some lesser known details about her life.

Earhart's legacy: Earhart's legacy as a pioneering aviator is well documented. She was the second person ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, achieving the great feat in 1932. She is also the first woman to do it solo.

A hub for aviation: In the early 1900s, L.A. became a hub for aviation enthusiasts. Stunt performers, law enforcement, military, even movie stars — it seemed everyone wanted a pair of wings, and in response, small airport and airfields began springing up. It was around this time that a young Earhart ventured out to L.A. during her summer break while attending Columbia University to visit her father who was living in downtown L.A. at the time.

An undated picture taken in the 1930s of American aviator Amelia Earhart looking trough the cockpit window of her plane.

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First flight: In December 1920, Earhart convinced her father to go with her to a local airport — Rogers Field, which at that time was located off Wilshire Boulevard — and to take a flight. He obliged, and as the story goes, her love for flying was born. Earhart took up flight lessons with a woman named Neta Snook.

"She actually became a bit of a local celebrity," Shapiro said.

Amelia in LA: Earhart was hooked. While pursuing her flying license, she held other careers like photography, truck driving, and stenography. While women like Earhart may have had the desire and skillset to fly, men had many more hours under their belt, having just returned from World War I.

"There was no path for a woman to make money except for stunt flying," Shapiro said.

A star is born: After her summer in L.A., Earhart went back east, but California would continue to play a role in her career. She began breaking records, stunning the world, and her celebrity and status reached meteoric levels. Eventually, in 1932, she followed her husband, who worked at Paramount Pictures, back to Southern California, where he had bought a house in Toluca Lake. Shapiro explained the reaction when Earhart visited him on a lot at Paramount.

"All the movie stars were just flabbergasted. 'Amelia Earhart is in the cafeteria!?'" Shapiro said.

Five year's later, in 1937, roughly 17 years after her first flight in L.A., Earhart set out on what would be her last flight in an attempt to become the first woman to circumnavigate the world.

You can listen to author Laurie Gwen Shapiro's full conversation about her new book "The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam and the Marriage that Made an American Icon" here:

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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