The Brief

In a region packed with doughnut shops, Moonbridge Doughnut Studio in Long Beach stands out from the crowd with its eclectic designs, including edible berry crumb Labubus and a series inspired by author Roald Dahl.

I’ve had my eye on Moonbridge, which is on the corner of East Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue, for more than six months — ever since images of its doughnuts inspired by the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender popped up on my Instagram feed in February.

So I headed to the shop early Thursday morning to satisfy my hunger — and curiosity — and to see if the treats are worth the hype.

Co-owner Anabelle Brown told LAist the look and feel of Moonbridge are as if famed director Wes Anderson had a quirky little sister who went to art school and then opened up a doughnut shop.

For Roald Dahl week, the James and the Giant Peach doughnut featured a tiny peach plopped in the center and chocolate insect-shaped decorations to represent the main characters.

An “Ube Wan Cannoli” doughnut, with a chocolate-covered pretzel that looks like a lightsaber, combined tributes to the Star Wars movies and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

And in an homage to Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, the “Soots in Cahoots” doughnuts were covered in colorful stars and three soot sprites from his movie Spirited Away.

“We tried to not only be, like, aesthetically pleasing but really try to communicate our story,” Brown said, adding that the story of the shop is “very heartfelt for us.”

She noted that she and co-owner Kim Gros were intentional about opening the shop in Long Beach “because our stories connect so much in this area,” including other shops owned by Brown’s family.

Anabelle Brown, co-owner of Moonbridge Doughnut Studio in Long Beach.

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How Moonbridge came to be

Brown was approached by Gros a few years ago with her concept of opening an artisanal doughnut shop with quality coffee that could bring a lot of joy to customers, in part, by incorporating pop culture into the fare.

Brown, who has a background in baking and art, said she felt confident exploring ideas for new designs and flavors, but doughnuts were a new medium.

Brown, who is Cambodian American, comes from a long line of doughnut shop owners. Five of her relatives run shops in California and Arizona, including the Long Beach bakery Simone’s Donuts. The business’ namesake is Brown’s grandmother.

Co-owner Anabelle Brown grabs doughnuts for a pair of customers at Moonbridge Doughnut Studio in Long Beach.

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Doughnuts are a big part of the L.A. County landscape, which can be traced back to one man who came to California from Cambodia in 1975 and later bought a doughnut shop. He wound up sponsoring many Cambodians who came to the U.S. during a refugee wave in the late 1970s, and he taught them the doughnut biz.

Brown didn’t grow up working in her relatives’ shops. Her father took a different path. He became an architect.

But the “doughnut shop world,” as she put it, wasn’t completely foreign to her.

“This idea and this concept felt very accessible for me,” she said. “And it was just like, ‘OK, I just need to learn the way of, like, the doughnut shop.’”

Brown studied her family’s shops, something she called a “personal doughnut pilgrimage,” learning how to make the pastries all on her own.

Brown’s grandfather died while she and Gros were developing the concept of the shop, and Moonbridge became even more meaningful, she said.

Moonbridge, which officially opened in April 2024, is a “love letter” to the people who’ve come before, she said, while “trying to create a place that feels celebratory and joyful.”

Quirky creations

Moonbridge is best known for its creative pop culture themes, including a series of six doughnuts inspired by Mean Girls that launched Thursday. Some of the doughnuts are named after well-known quotes from the 2004 movie.

The “It’s October 3rd” doughnut is coated in malted strawberry milkshake icing, as is the “Get in Loser” option, which is also topped off with a tiny pink car.

As one Instagram user — @phoebe_eats — wrote in a comment: It's the collab "millennials all need to heal our heart."

I had to grab the “Burn Book” doughnut, a reference to a key plot point in the movie, made with salted malted vanilla icing and black-and-white letters that looked freshly affixed by Regina George, the queen mean girl herself.

The dough felt light and fluffy under all the icing, but it also wasn’t too sweet to discourage me from taking another bite.

“We still try to have certain flavors and items that feel nostalgic or classic, but just having our own Moonbridge twist to things,” Brown said.

Brown has taken songs or scenes from movies and TV shows and transformed them into doughnuts, including “Speed Demon” by Justin Bieber with a tiny car and the chocolate cake confession with Miss Trunchbull from the movie Matilda, which was coated in ganache.

Brown has a spreadsheet titled “reckless abandon mode” that includes all of Moonbridge’s new flavors, recipes and lineups, which she said helps keep her creative juices flowing.

How to taste it for yourself

Moonbridge Doughnut Studio

Where: 6344 E. Spring St., Long Beach

When: Seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Please note: The themed doughnuts are available on the counter starting at 9 a.m., but you can also pre-order to make sure you don’t miss out.

The shop shares its upcoming lineup on Instagram, including a KPop Demon Hunters theme in about two weeks and Twilight at the end of October, as well as The Grinch and Nightmare Before Christmas in December.

Moonbridge's "Coffee & Cigarettes" doughnut includes java chip icing and an Italian breadstick with "ash" made of Oreo cookie crumbs.

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Makenna Sievertson

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LAist

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The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

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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