The Brief

When I was still in high school, my bus stop was on the corner of Miles and Saturn avenues, in the city of Huntington Park. It was across the street from an elementary school, and a stone’s throw from city hall, the public library, and a very nice little park.

Each weekday morning, I’d stand on that corner to wait for a yellow LAUSD school bus to pick me up and take me to a magnet school in the South Bay. Every so often, a putrid odor would fill the crisp morning air. I’d hold my breath to avoid taking it in. Then, I’d stare down the street, hoping the bus would get there early and whisk me away.

In some ways, that's where the reporting for this series started — back in the early 2000s, back when I was still in high school and experiencing those bad smells that still occur today.

LAist reporter Julia Barajas stands at the corner in Huntington Park, where she waited for the school bus as a child.

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What a 'Toxic Tour' of Southeast L.A. has to do with this investigation

I recently hopped on another bus in Huntington Park — two decades later and now a reporter for LAist. I was with a group of high school students on a “Toxic Tour” of the area where I’d grown up.

The “Toxic Tour” is hosted by Communities for Better Environment (CBE), a nonprofit that’s advocated for clean air, soil, and water since the late 1970s. The tour takes you on a four-hour journey that highlights the impact of industrial polluters on residents’ health and quality of life. It also emphasizes how community members have fought back against environmental ills, this as a means of inspiring the next generation of activists. In September 2022, our tour was specifically designed for residents of Southeast L.A.

That day, the bus took us to:

• Park Avenue Elementary School in the city of Cudahy, which was shut down after parents and teachers raised concerns about the petroleum waste that bubbled up on the playground.
• It also took us to Linda Esperanza Marquez High School in Huntington Park, named for a community member who fought to clean up the site it sits on, once known as La Montaña for debris from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. For years, local residents dealt with the dust that blew from 600,000 tons of concrete ruins from the collapse of the Santa Monica Freeway stored there.
• And we made a stop at Exide Technologies in the city of Vernon.

For decades, this battery recycling plant spewed lead into surrounding neighborhoods. After this came to light, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving it up to California taxpayers to pay for the removal of contaminated soil from schools, parks, and thousands of homes.

Smelling that familiar stench

As we stood outside the battery plant, I recognized a stench: the same one I used to smell while waiting for the bus. A student from South Gate High recognized it, too. She said it was something she often encountered on her campus.

Farmer John's Vernon facility, which closed earlier this year, is covered in murals depicting pastoral scenes with happy pigs.

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Our tour guides told us that Southeast L.A. residents often attribute this dead animal odor to the Farmer John slaughterhouse in Vernon, which is renowned for its hauntingly picturesque pig murals. (Farmer John shut down the facility earlier this year.) On the tour, the guides pointed out that Vernon is also home to facilities that recycle animal remains from slaughterhouses, grocery stores, restaurants, and shelters. Through a process called “rendering,” those remains are turned into materials that can be used for other products.

I thought about the rendering plants on my drive home from work a few days later. While heading south on the 5 Freeway near the city of Commerce, a nauseating smell entered my car. I rushed to roll up the windows, but the stench still left me with a sharp headache.

I looked around to see where it could be coming from, wondering if anyone monitored odor emissions. When I got home, I checked.

What I learned about who was responsible for regulations

Vernon is a primarily industrial city near Downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

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The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) is tasked with monitoring and improving air quality in most of L.A. County. I also learned that community members can file odor complaints. Then, through CBE, I found out that AQMD was in the process of shutting down a rendering plant that the agency said had repeatedly broken the rules.

I mentioned all this to my editor, Mary Plummer, and she encouraged me to file public records requests with AQMD. Our goal was to get a better sense of the odors’ impact on local communities.

One of my first requests called for all air quality complaints from August 2022 to the present filed in Vernon, along with neighboring areas and some non-adjacent cities. I also requested all air quality complaints associated with Baker Commodities, Inc. the rendering plant that I'd heard was being shut down by regulators. In this case, we asked for records dating back to August 2019.

The first batch of public records data was illuminating. In recent years, AQMD has received hundreds of complaints about rendering plant odors. As I read through them, I noticed that some were from local schools, while others were from local businesses. One complainant said “IT SMELLS LIKE ROTTING DEAD BODIES EVERY SINGLE DAY.” Another person said that the “ODOR IS SO BAD THAT EVERYONE HAS LEFT THE OFFICE, AGAIN.”

The complainants also said the stench made it difficult for them to breathe. They said it gave them headaches and made their stomachs churn, that it made their eyes itch and throats burn. Some community members reported smelling it in the evenings, others encountered it while dropping off their kids at school. Many said it was worse on hot days, and that they had to close their windows to avoid it. Some said the stench wouldn’t let them sleep. Some said they’d been smelling it for days in a row. Others were outraged because they’d been smelling it for years.

What was most startling was that all complaints were filed after air quality officials adopted a rule intended to prevent those very odors.

Understanding why regulators shut down Baker Commodities, Inc.

With this in mind, I looked into what was behind the shutdown of Baker’s rendering company. After scouring dozens of court documents, I confirmed that the company has sued AQMD for $200 million in damages. Perhaps more significantly, the lawsuit also aims to bar the agency from shutting down the plant again in the future.

These are the steps I took to fully understand what’s on the line with this lawsuit:

• Reached out to dozens of stakeholders, including rendering plant workers who could potentially lose their jobs. 
• Repeatedly called Baker’s headquarters in Vernon and their lead attorney on the case, and spent many hours researching the company.
• I spoke with environmental justice activists and local officials who’d lodged complaints on behalf of their constituents. 
• Then, to learn more about how rendering helps the environment,  I spoke with two agricultural experts. 
• To better understand how the odors can wreak havoc on community members’ health and quality of life, I spoke with experts in public health. 
• I asked a historian/geographer to delve into Vernon’s long-term relationship with its neighbors.
• I also reached out to an attorney who is well-versed in environmental conflicts to help me navigate court records. 
• I visited every rendering plant repeatedly and noticed that one didn’t have any signage to let passersby know where to report odors, which has been required since late 2017 under AQMD's Rule 415 to minimize the odors. 
• And through this reporting, I realized that two of the rendering plants are within walking distance from Exide. 

Why the area's history was so important

Exide’s proximity to the rendering plants matters to those with ties to the area. Over the course of my reporting, I spoke at length with community members throughout Southeast L.A., as well as Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles. We chatted on the phone, on social media, and in person, often at parks or in front of their homes. In some cases, I left notes in their mailboxes — in English and in Spanish.

Flyers distributed by LAist reporter Julia Barajas during her reporting process.

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Time and again, local residents said they felt their communities had been pummeled by environmental injustice. Some brought up the Delta jet that dumped fuel on a school in Cudahy in 2020. Others brought up the explosion at a scrap metal recycler in Maywood in 2016. Many underscored that Exide was allowed to operate without permits for decades. To ask community members to endure the stench of decaying carcasses while the soil in many homes is still being remediated, they said, is to add insult to injury.

These interviews included Cristina Garcia, a former state Assemblymember who grew up in Bell Gardens and taught math at Huntington Park High.

Garcia said that when she was teaching, she often had to choose between opening the windows and letting in the stench, or keeping them closed and subjecting her students to a hot room without air conditioning. She said it was hard for students to learn in those conditions. And it was hard for her to teach.

Communities like ours “have been treated like dumping grounds,” Garcia said. She’s certain that the ongoing stench of rotting flesh would not be tolerated in more affluent parts of town, so “why is this how we have to live?”

That question has stayed with me.

Warner Bros. Discovery's blockbuster announcement Thursday that it would accept Paramount Skydance's takeover bid shouldn't be thought of simply as seeking to unify two major Hollywood players, two big streaming platforms and two leading TV news divisions under one roof.

It is certainly that. The nearly $111 billion Paramount-Warner marriage would unite their studios — and their back catalogue of shows and movies. It would add such franchises as D.C. Comics, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones to Paramount's Top Gun, Mission Impossible and Star Trek powerhouse. Paramount+ and HBO Max. CBS and CNN.

But there's more to it.

Paramount Skydance Chairman and CEO David Ellison is relying largely on the financial backing of his father, Larry Ellison — the co-founder of software giant Oracle, the lead investor in TikTok US, and one of the richest people on the planet.

The Ellisons have staged what appears to be a lightning-swift ascent through social and legacy media relying heavily on their connection to the Oval Office.

Should the Ellisons receive a green light from regulators to proceed with the deal, the minnow will have swallowed the whale. Warner currently has more than five times the market value of Paramount.

That's on top of acquiring Paramount itself and a major stake in TikTok US — all in less than a year. And that's in addition to Oracle, which runs much of the digital backbone of the nation's commerce and government.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, right, sits next to media mogul Rupert Murdoch as they listen to President Donald Trump speak in the Oval Office.

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"It's tech giants becoming media giants," argues Jon Klein, a former top executive at CNN and CBS News.

But history shows such mega-mergers often end in tears. The movie business is expensive. Cable television is highly profitable but in steep decline as viewers cut the cord. The combined company will be saddled with debt. So why would the Ellisons spend their billions this way?

David Ellison has sought to be a force in Hollywood for years. He helped to produce movies with Tom Cruise at his family's company Skydance Media. But for his father, Larry Ellison, it's about more than just making his son's very expensive dreams come true.

"Beyond any dollars that they can derive — it's the data about consumer habits, down to the specific identity," Klein says.

He says the push into artificial intelligence by Oracle creates a thirst for more insight into how people view news and entertainment and what products they buy online. The streaming channels and social media giant both offer greater and more granular information.

"That's the prism that you've got to look at this Paramount/WBD deal through," says Klein, co-founder of HANG Media, a Gen Z social video engagement platform. "Oracle... wants to be one of the major players in AI. That's what Oracle wants to get out of media."

The deal still hinges on acceptance from antitrust regulators in Washington and Europe, who can seek to block the transaction. California's attorney general made clear Thursday night he would also give the acquisition tough scrutiny.

"If a merger substantially reduces competition in any market, it's illegal. Courts sort of take that literally," says University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner, who held a senior antitrust position in the U.S. Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.

"But in practice, the Justice Department has discretion on whether to challenge these mergers," Posner tells NPR. "And the courts have discretion on whether to block them."

Friendly ties to Trump

President Donald Trump's Justice Department is a wild card. Last year, the department's then antitrust chief, Gail Slater, took an aggressive stance against Google in court. Last month, the Justice Department sued to block Hewlett Packard Enterprise's $14 billion acquisition of a wireless tech competitor. Slater resigned under duress this month, however.

The Federal Communications Commission is unlikely to intervene, as no broadcast licenses would change hands in the Paramount takeover of Warner. But its chair, Brendan Carr, may well advise the Justice Department and he has lauded David Ellison's moves at CBS.

Even before sweetening its offer this week, Paramount proclaimed its "confidence in the speed and certainty of regulatory approval for its transaction."

Publicly, it argues that such consolidation is needed to take on streaming giants, very much including Netflix but also Amazon Prime, Apple, Disney and YouTube.

Behind the scenes — and sometimes in not-so-hidden ways — the Ellisons have become cozy with President Trump. Larry Ellison is a backer and adviser.

On Tuesday night, David Ellison attended Trump's State of the Union address as a guest of the president's ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican. Graham tweeted out a photo of the two men making Trump's signature "thumbs-up" gesture ahead of the speech.

The president cares deeply about TV news. He has publicly said he wants new owners for CNN — which he has blasted repeatedly as "fake news" — and has proven willing to interfere in corporate matters in his return to the White House.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos departs the White House on Wednesday. Sarandos was there to discuss Netflix's bid for Warner Bros. just hours before Warner announced its preference for Paramount.

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Netflix chief Ted Sarandos met Thursday with administration officials at the White House — though notably not with Trump, according to an aide — in a last-gasp effort to salvage his company's competing bid. By the end of the night, Netflix had given up the fight.

The shadow cast over the process by the president has inspired sharp criticism of the path that Paramount and the Ellisons took to land the Warner deal.

"A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in a statement. "With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump's Department of Justice, it'll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law."

"It is not just the seemingly open corruption of this entire process that leaves me shaken," writes Jeffrey Blehar in the conservative National Review. "I am shaken by how little people will care."

Said Seth Stern, head of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, "Ellison will readily throw the First Amendment, CNN's reporters and HBO's filmmakers under the bus if they stand in the way of expanding his corporate empire and fattening his pockets."

CNN's future hangs in the balance

The Ellisons' acquisition of Paramount followed a similar path.

Last summer, the previous owners of Paramount announced the end of late night host Stephen Colbert's CBS show as they sought federal approval to sell the company to David Ellison.

While they cited economics, Colbert's was the top-rated late night show on network television — and he has been a lacerating satirist of the president. Colbert called the cancellation a "big fat bribe."

Ellison subsequently made additional pledges to the FCC's Carr to win support. Among them: he promised the cessation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives throughout Paramount and the addition of an ombudsman to field complaints of ideological bias. He named the former head of a conservative think tank to that role.

Carr blessed the sale. He has since praised the shifts made at CBS News.

The question of what happens to CNN hovers prominently over the Warner sale. The network has undergone rounds of cuts under a series of owners seeking to reduce debt; Paramount would be its fourth corporate parent in under a decade.

Other elements are in play as well.

CBS's new editor in chief is Bari Weiss, founder of the center-right opinion and news site The Free Press. Ellison bought the site and added it to Paramount's portfolio.

Bari Weiss, CBS News' editor in chief, interviews conservative activist Erika Kirk in a CBS town hall event in December.

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Weiss has contended CBS and much of the rest of the media has been too reflexively hostile to conservatives and the president, and she's sought to revamp the newsroom.

CNN's Anderson Cooper, who has also served as a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes for two decades, recently announced that he would leave the show, citing the desire to spend time with his small children. Associates, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose internal network matters, say he was concerned about the approach that Weiss has taken at CBS.

She is considered likely to have a role over CNN as well, should the deal go through.

CNN CEO Mark Thompson urged colleagues to focus on their news coverage. "Despite all the speculation you've read during this process, I'd suggest that you don't jump to conclusions about the future until we know more," he wrote in a memo Thursday.

Perceived value beyond the bottom line

The deal David Ellison struck for Warner is valued at nearly $111 billion. The new company would carry substantial debts and have Saudi and Emirate backing. The profits are currently relatively modest.

Yet Klein contends larger motives are in play. Just look at Google, he says, which owns what many consider the dominant media company, YouTube.

"They want to know what you watch, and where you come from, and what you buy when you watch, and where you go after you buy, and what you post in the comments and what you like and love and all that," Klein says.

"And if you can combine that with your streaming content and your studio decisions and your marketing for all the content product you're creating," he adds, "you're in a very very powerful position."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Serving Spoon has been an Inglewood cornerstone for four decades, dishing up grilled corn bread and fried turkey chops. 

Now, though, the whole country is in on the secret. 

The breakfast and lunch spot on Centinela Avenue was announced Wednesday by the James Beard Foundation as one of six winners of the America’s Classics Award, an honor the foundation says goes to “timeless” local institutions. The foundation is also responsible for the James Beard Award, one of the nation’s top culinary honors. 

The Serving Spoon joins a pantheon of other L.A.-area eateries to win the classics award including Guelaguetza, Langer’s Deli and Philippe the Original. 

Jessica Bane, part of the third generation to run the family-owned restaurant, said the honor is still sinking in, but that it validates decades of work. “It’s being done out of love,” Bane said.

The Serving Spoon has been an Inglewood cornerstone for four decades, dishing up grilled corn bread and fried turkey chops.

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The award announcement hailed The Serving Spoon as an “anchor” of L.A.’s Black community, run by staff who genuinely care for their customers.“The restaurant is cherished for its joyful hospitality and as a place where all can gather and feel at home,” the announcement read. 

The Serving Spoon didn’t exactly need Beard recognition — the diner is often packed and already has  pedigree as Snoop Dogg and Raphael Saadiq’s breakfast spot of choice in the 2000 Lucy Pearl song “You” — but Bane said the award takes the diner’s reputation national.“The recognition is beyond appreciated,” Bane said. 

The Serving Spoon was founded in 1983 by Bane’s grandfather, Harold E. Sparks. He passed the restaurant down to Bane and her brother, Justin Johnson, through their parents. 

The menu looks much the same as it did four decades ago, Bane said, though some of the dishes have been renamed for regulars. 

During the Thursday lunch rush a day after the announcement, The Serving Spoon’s vinyl booths were packed, as usual. Bane oversaw the dining room while Johnson marshaled plates of fried catfish through the kitchen. 

Tina and Kevin Jenkins waited for a table outside. The L.A. natives each have been coming to The Serving Spoon since childhood. They live in Lancaster now, but make sure to come back to the diner whenever they’re in town. 

“It’s the atmosphere, our people, our music,” Tina Jenkins said.

Despite taxes on imports at levels not seen in a century, Long Beach’s seaport had a good year in 2025. And a decent January.

Port officials said Wednesday they started the new year by leading the nation in trade, responsible for moving more than 847,000 shipping containers in January — 51% of the total cargo at the San Pedro Bay Complex, which it shares with neighboring Port of Los Angeles.

In a call with reporters, Port CEO Noel Hacegaba said that despite a “fair share of doom and gloom” at the time, the seaport finished 2025 as its busiest year on record.

This comes days after President Donald Trump signed new, across-the-board tariffs on U.S. trading partners, and later added he would raise the tariffs to 15%. It’s a direct response to a recent Supreme Court decision that found his tariffs announced last April were unconstitutional.

The new tariffs would operate under a law that restricts them to 150 days, unless approved by Congress.

Asked to measure how much this will affect the seaport, traders, logistics companies and consumers, Hacegaba reiterated a word he has evoked heavily in the past 10 months: uncertainty.

“Our strong cargo volumes do not suggest we are not being affected by tariffs,” Hacegaba said, adding the Port saw a 13% decline in imports driven by major reductions in iron, steel, synthetic fibers, salt, sulfur and cement.

Economists are somewhat more confident, saying it would take nothing short of a national economic crisis to reverse the seaport’s fortunes. “Even if the market is affected, our standing at the Port of Long Beach, even compared to other ports, is strong,” said Laura Gonzalez, an economics professor at Cal State Long Beach.

But experts caution that the ruling will heap the most damage on businesses, especially smaller enterprises, as well as the average consumer who already bore the tariff’s costs last year.

Noel Hacegaba, CEO of the Port of Long Beach, held his first State of the Port in Long Beach on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.

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Tariffs added $1,700 in costs to the average U.S. household, as importers raised prices to offset higher import taxes — especially on clothes, shoes and electronics from China and other Southeast Asian nations.

Consumers, Gonzalez said, should budget over the next six months “for essentials.”

Priyaranjan Jha, an economics professor at UC Irvine, said historically trade policies since 2018 have shown that for every dollar of duty imposed, consumer prices rose by about 90 cents.

Even if tariffs are reduced or reversed, and pressure is relieved on importers, consumers shouldn’t expect lower sticker prices right away, he said. “Firms do not always reduce prices as quickly as they raise them, especially if contracts or inventories are involved.”

Richer San, a former banker and business owner in Long Beach, said he’s in regular talks with shops across the city’s historic Cambodia Town that have been crushed by the increased prices of imported ingredients.

“Most of these are family-owned businesses operating on very small profit margins,” he said, adding there is little to no margin to “absorb higher costs.”

Many companies managed to avoid price increases last year in part by stockpiling inventory in the first half of the year to be sold through Christmas and the start of the year. As stock dwindles, many businesses might be less willing to eat the cost of a new set of tariffs.

Marc Sullivan, president of Long Beach-based Global Trade and Customs, said his logistics company saw a brief boom last year in ordered goods, mostly medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

But by June, orders dropped 35%, a trend that continues today. It’s forced him to freeze any new hiring in the past year and at least through the next six months as he waits for federal officials to settle on tariffs that will determine the cost of shipped goods.

“For the companies that I work with that are importing into the state here, it’s just ‘hold on and let’s see what happens,’” he said.

“I’d like to hire a salesperson to go out and chase new business, … but it’s just a bleak outlook,” he added.

In the interim, he’s received a steady flow of calls (that started “within minutes” of the ruling) from importers looking to claim refunds or recoup their tariff expenses. The U.S. Treasury had collected more than $140 billion from tariffs enacted under emergency powers, and the Supreme Court left the decision of how to appropriate the refund proceedings to lower courts.

His response: They might be stuck waiting for a while. “Customs doesn’t pay anything back quickly,” he said. “It could be a year before you ever see anything back to you.”

Sullivan said he knows of companies that spent upwards of $20,000 per shipment for months.

“They’re going to want that money to be able to reinvest it,” Sullivan said.

But some experts say that consumers, as well as small businesses, deserve a share of refunds.

“The importer may receive a refund even though consumers bore much of the cost,” Jha said. “Courts generally refund the statutory payer, not downstream buyers, but that opens the possibility of follow-on litigation. Small businesses that directly imported goods and paid tariffs should qualify for refunds.”

Topline:

A long turtle lineage: Dubbed “Porkchop” by aquarium staff due to her hefty appetite, the young female green sea turtle represents one of seven sea turtle species worldwide (six of which occur in U.S. waters). These animals have called our oceans home since at least the time of the dinosaurs — about 110 million years ago, according to NOAA. All species of sea turtles found in the U.S. are listed as either endangered or threatened and are protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Porkchop’s healing journey: Aquarium vets had to amputate Porkchop’s right front flipper after tangled fishing lines severely cut off her blood flow. She also had a fishing hook removed from her throat. First rescued after being spotted in the San Gabriel River by volunteers with the aquarium’s sea turtle monitoring program last March, her healing journey took nearly a year. She now swims and eats as well as her four-flippered kin and after a final physical exam, blood sample and X-ray, vets determined she was ready to return to her wild roots. She also now has a microchip, so if she ends up stranded again, scientists will know it’s her.

An ambassador for conservation: Porkchop became the aquarium’s first public-facing ambassador for its expanded green sea turtle rescue efforts. A new holding tank, viewable by the public, doubles the aquarium’s capacity to rescue green sea turtles and provides firsthand education about their conservation efforts. The aquarium is currently caring for another larger and older female green sea turtle — she weighs more than 200 pounds — rescued from the San Gabriel River in January. She’ll be in the public viewing tank in the coming months when she’s recovered a bit more.

How to help local green sea turtles: Green sea turtle populations are actually doing quite well in the San Gabriel River, but trash, debris and pollution remains a big threat. If you fish the San Gabriel River, never litter fishing lines or hooks. If you see a stranded sea turtle in the San Gabriel River or elsewhere, call the West Coast Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Stranding Network’s hotline at (562) 506-4315. You can also donate to the aquarium’s rescue program.