The Brief

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation this month that delays a rule meant to tighten ethylene oxide emissions at companies that use the gas to sterilize medical equipment.

The decision grants two-year exemptions to several facilities, including two in Vernon, a city in southeast L.A. County. These facilities are currently embroiled in a lawsuit with local residents.

The proclamation targets a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2024, which imposes new emissions-control requirements on commercial sterilization facilities.

What is ethylene oxide? And what harm can it cause?

Ethylene oxide is a flammable, colorless gas used to sterilize a broad range of medical devices — everything from syringes to heart valves. The gas is also classified as a carcinogen. According to the EPA and the National Cancer Institute, sustained exposure to ethylene oxide increases the risk of lymphoma, leukemia and stomach and breast cancer.

In the short-term, inhaling high amounts of ethylene oxide can cause headaches, fatigue, respiratory issues, nausea and other kinds of gastrointestinal distress.

Why was a rule put in place to limit it? And why undo it?

The rule was the product of years of community advocacy across the United States. Advocates say it’s designed to reduce the risk of exposure to ethylene oxide for people who live, work and go to school near these facilities.

According to the president, the exemptions are needed to ensure "that our Nation provides its sick and injured with the best outcomes possible.”

But to advocates like Darya Minovi, senior analyst the Union of Concerned Scientists, Trump’s decision “flies in the face of public health.”

Companies that use the gas to sterilize medical equipment can be found throughout the country. Minovi was the lead author on “Invisible Threat, Inequitable Impact," a 2023 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists that found more than 14 million people live within 5 miles of commercial sterilizers who emit ethylene oxide. And the people who live around these facilities are disproportionately people of color.

In his proclamation, Trump said the technology to implement the ethylene oxide rule “does not exist in a commercially viable form.”

The rule, he added, “will likely force existing sterilization facilities to close down, seriously disrupting the supply of medical equipment.”

Minovi told LAist that the potential health effects of ethylene oxide have been known for decades. And last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of hydrogen peroxide for medical sterilization.

Communities across the country advocated for this rule to protect their families and neighbors, she added.

“It is immensely frustrating to spend years going through public participation processes — writing technical comments, writing research, gathering stories, testifying to EPA staff, joining community meetings that EPA held — just [to see the president] announce that, suddenly, [companies] can avoid compliance for another two years,” she said.

What the exemptions could mean for Southeast L.A. residents

In his list of exemptions, the president includes two facilities that belong to commercial sterilizer Sterigenics U.S. LLC.

These Sterigenics facilities are located in Vernon, a small, industrial city located 5 miles southeast of Downtown Los Angeles. The plaintiffs who’ve sued the company are current and former residents of Maywood, an adjoining city that’s predominantly Latino and working class. The plaintiffs also include long-term Maywood residents who’ve lost a parent or spouse.

Court documents show that the plaintiffs seek compensation for past and future medical expenses, along with funeral costs, lost wages, and the fear and “mental anguish” of being sick or watching a family member die.

Most of the plaintiffs have been diagnosed with breast cancer. The others — including a toddler and a man who fell ill while he was in high school — have been diagnosed with leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, stomach cancer, or precancerous conditions. The Vernon Sterigenics facilities are blocks away from where the Maywood plaintiffs reside. There are also four elementary schools within a 1.5-mile radius.

In an email, a spokesperson previously told LAist that the company “empathizes with anyone battling cancer,” but that it’s “confident that it is not responsible for causing the illnesses.”

“We will vigorously defend our essential and safe operations against these claims,” the spokesperson added.

The residents’ ongoing lawsuit against Sterigenics doesn’t dispute the importance of maintaining a steady supply of sterilized medical equipment, but it argues that this work shouldn’t be done at their expense.

Jay Parepally, a federal climate justice legal fellow at Communities for a Better Environment, a nonprofit that’s helped Southeast L.A. fight a host of pollution issues, echoed this point.

The community is overburdened, he said. Among other issues, it continues to grapple with contamination from Exide, a now-shuttered battery recycler that spewed lead and arsenic into Bell, Boyle Heights, Commerce, East L.A. Huntington Park and Maywood for decades.

Delaying regulation at a federal level could, in turn, preempt state and local regulation, which “further endangers our communities,” Parepally added. In his view, the health of Southeast L.A. residents “should not be further jeopardized," particularly at a time when it’s become “extremely vulnerable to arbitrary immigration detentions and civil rights violations."

How will Sterigenics be regulated now?

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is charged with monitoring the air and enforcing regulations in L.A., Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. In an email, a spokesperson said it cannot comment on Trump’s proclamation.

When asked if the Sterigenics facilities in Vernon are currently in compliance with its rules, regulations and permit requirements, the agency said: “South Coast AQMD regulates [ethylene oxide] emissions from sterilization facilities under Rule 1405 and works to ensure compliance with our rules and permit requirements."

In some aspects, the spokesperson added in a follow up email, the 2024 EPA rule is "more stringent" than what's currently in place at the state and local level.

In recent years, Sterigenics and its parent company, Sotera Health, have been hit with hundreds of lawsuits throughout the U.S. In 2023, for instance, Sterigenics and Sotera paid $408 million to settle 870 additional lawsuits in Illinois for exposure to elevated levels of ethylene oxide. In a statement, the companies denied liability or that emissions from its facilities posed any safety hazard to surrounding communities.

In addition to commercial sterilizers in Vernon, Trump’s proclamation exempts seven other Sterigenics facilities. Most are in other states and Puerto Rico, but one is located in Ontario, a city in southwestern San Bernardino County.

William Boyd, faculty co-director of UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, said no other president has made use of the authority Trump tapped into to issue his proclamation, which he expects environmental justice advocates to challenge.

“What it'll come down to is the president's claim that the technology is unavailable and that this is in the national security interest, is that an accurate and valid claim, [and] does he have sufficient reasons to support that?” he said.

“If you read EPA's rule on ethylene oxide, they say very clearly that the control technology and the limitations that they are including in this new rule [are] available and out there in the world,” he added. “Just because it might be more expensive, doesn't mean it's not available.”

“As a general matter,” Boyd told LAist, the public “thinks this is sort of abstract. [But] there are real people living real lives in real places that are going to end up getting cancer because of what the president is doing.”

Just last week California’s secretary of state officially certified that nearly two-thirds of Californians voted to pass Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to temporarily gerrymander the state’s congressional maps in favor of Democrats.

Nevertheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are hopeful a federal district court panel meeting in Los Angeles this week will intervene to bar the state from using the new maps next year.

California Republicans, who sued Newsom and Secretary of State Shirley Weber the day after the election, are staking their challenge on the argument that California’s primary mapmaker illegally used race as a factor in drawing district lines, giving Latino and Hispanic voters outsize influence at the expense of other racial and ethnic groups, including white voters.

This, the Republicans argue, means the maps amount to an illegal racial gerrymander and a violation of the 14th and 15th amendments. Although Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act allows for race-conscious redistricting, they add, case law and judicial precedent have set a strict standard that requires a minority group to prove they have been systematically outvoted by a majority that consistently votes together to deny the minority their chosen candidate.

But the Prop. 50 opponents’ odds look slim, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently blessed Texas’ new maps, overturning a lower court’s finding that Republicans there had engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

“It is indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple,” wrote conservative Justice Samuel Alito in a concurring opinion supported by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas.

And then there’s the looming possibility that the Supreme Court, in a separate case, could outlaw entirely the use of race in the redistricting process, which could render California’s new maps — as well as the previous ones drawn by the independent citizens commission — unconstitutional. That would also give Republicans a major advantage in Southern states, where several districts drawn to increase Black Americans’ voting power currently are represented by Democrats.

Despite the long odds, the ailing California GOP has run out of other options for resistance. The passage of Prop. 50 is likely to mark the beginning of the end for several of California’s Republican House members, who have been forced to decide whether to run in their current, now less favorable Republican districts, switch to new seats or drop out entirely.

One of them, Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents parts of San Diego County, even considered relocating to Texas and running for a Dallas-area seat that would be more friendly to Republicans, but the president reportedly refused to endorse him for the already contested Texas seat, so he decided to stay.

The legal challenge claims the Prop. 50 maps cause “stigmatic and representational injury” by placing certain candidates, such as Republican Assemblymember David Tangipa of Fresno, who is Polynesian, into districts drawn with a specific racial or ethnic minority group in mind.

Case is in Los Angeles court this week

The challengers, who include Tangipa, the California Republican Party, several Republican voters and the Trump White House, are asking a three-judge panel for the Central District of California to grant a preliminary injunction on the maps before Dec. 19, the date when candidates can start collecting signatures to get their names on the 2026 primary ballot. A preliminary injunction would temporarily prevent the maps from being used in an election.

On Monday in court, the Republican challengers presented their case, arguing that since supporters of Prop. 50 publicly touted that the maps increased representation for Latino voters, state lawmakers and consultant Paul Mitchell, who was hired to draw the maps, took race into account. Therefore, they must justify how their new districts meet the standard for permissible racial gerrymanders, attorneys argued.

“It is legal to race-based redistrict under the Voter Rights Act. Section 2 protects it. But it also gives you guidelines,” Tangipa told CalMatters in an interview after testifying in court on Monday in Los Angeles. “In Sacramento, they did not follow those guidelines.”

Tangipa asserted that even though Democratic lawmakers intended primarily to increase their party’s ranks based on political ideology, “They used race to justify that end goal.”

The plaintiffs sought to have Mitchell testify, but the court denied a request to force him to take the stand to explain whether he intentionally tried to increase the voting power of specific racial and ethnic groups. Since Mitchell lives more than 100 miles away from the court, he was out of the reach of a subpoena. Still, the judges questioned his blanket use of “legislative privilege” to resist producing documents the plaintiffs requested.

At one point, as a redistricting expert testified, the plaintiffs focused on a line from Democratic former Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire’s public statement after the Legislature passed the package of bills paving the way for the Nov. 4 special election.

“The new map makes no changes to historic Black districts in Oakland and the Los Angeles area, and retains and expands Voting Rights Act districts that empower Latino voters to elect their candidates of choice,” McGuire’s statement said.

McGuire announced last month that he will challenge Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa in one of the newly configured Prop. 50 seats.

But proponents of the new maps argue they intended purely to create a partisan advantage for Democrats, and any increase in voting power for certain ethnic or racial groups was incidental.

Ultimately, 'it was endorsed by the voters'

Also complicating the GOP’s challenge is that California voters overwhelmingly approved the maps.

“Even if we assume that the Legislature improperly considered race, ultimately it went into effect because it was endorsed by the voters,” Emily Rong Zhang, an assistant professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, previously told CalMatters. “They would have to show that the voters had the intent to create districts that disproportionately favor the voting power of a racial group over another.”

One unknown is how the Supreme Court will rule on a case that questions whether it’s constitutional to even consider race as a factor when redistricting.

The justices are weighing in another ongoing case, Louisiana v. Callais, whether to strike down a part of the federal Voting Rights Act that requires the creation of districts in which racial and ethnic minorities have a chance to elect their preferred candidate. If the ruling is retroactive, a decision to strike it down could invalidate both California’s old and new maps.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, other states have jumped into the redistricting effort or are contemplating entering the fray. In addition to Texas and California, four other states have already implemented new congressional maps, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Virginia, Maryland and Florida have also taken some steps toward redistricting.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

FIFA said on Tuesday it plans to sell $60 tickets for each of the 104 games of the 2026 World Cup — an announcement that comes after an outcry over prices for the tournament that will be held next summer across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

"Fans of the national teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will benefit from a dedicated ticket pricing tier, which has been designed to make following their teams on football's greatest stage more affordable," FIFA said in a statement.

But these tickets — called "supporter entry tier tickets" by FIFA — will be available only to supporters of qualified teams and are limited in quantity.

Only 10% of the total number of tickets provided to each qualified team would be available at $60 per game, including the final. Given that each team gets 8% of the available tickets per game, the effective number of tickets available at that price would be only 0.8% of the stadium capacity for that game, or 1.6% for both teams combined.

But the actual number of $60 tickets could vary. Each country would determine which of its fans qualify for the cheaper tickets. In the statement, FIFA requested that countries "ensure that these tickets are specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams."

Some fans had called prices 'a betrayal'

FIFA's announcement comes after many fans reacted with outrage at the prices for the World Cup next year, which range from $140 for a handful of initial-round games to as much as $2,735 for the U.S. opening match against Paraguay that will be held in Los Angeles next year.

Prices for knockout rounds surge even more, with FIFA charging charging $4,185 for the cheapest ticket for the final that will be held in July next year in New Jersey — and $8,680 for the most expensive seats.

That's much higher than previous World Cups. For example, the most expensive ticket for the 2022 final at the last tournament held in Qatar was about $1,600.

Unlike previous World Cups, FIFA has yet to publish a list of prices, instead adjusting them across different sales windows without an announcement. Fans found out about the price changes after FIFA opened its latest lottery window last week, which allows fans to apply for tickets until Jan. 13.

And many fans were upset. The Football Supporters Europe, a group that represent fans across the region, called ticket prices "a betrayal to the most dedicated fans." On Tuesday, the group said on X it welcomes FIFA's latest announcement, but added it was not enough.

"Based on the allocations publicly available, this would mean that at best a few hundred fans per match and team would be lucky enough to take advantage of the 60 USD prices, while the vast majority would still have to pay extortionate prices, way higher than at any tournament before," Football Supporters Europe said.

Demand appears high, however

FIFA has defended its pricing policy, saying it's adapting to prices in the North American market. It has also consistently responded by saying it's a non-profit organization that steers the majority of its revenues from the World Cup "to fuel the growth of men's, women's and youth football throughout the 211 FIFA Member Associations."

Despite the outrage over its prices, FIFA is seeing strong demand for next year's World Cup. On Tuesday, FIFA added it had already received 20 million ticket requests during this current sales window, with weeks still to go before the lottery window closes.

But for supporters, following a team throughout the tournament could be prohibitively expensive in 2026 — and not only because of high ticket prices.

The cost of travel across the three countries has also surged, including hotel prices, making it likely that next year's tournament will be among the most expensive World Cups ever staged for fans.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Huntington Beach appears to be running out of options in its effort to stave off state housing mandates after a recent California Supreme Court decision.

California requires cities to plan and zone for housing to meet the needs of the population at all income levels. In the most recent planning cycle, Huntington Beach was told it had to plan for 13,368 new homes.

The city balked, and the state sued Huntington Beach in 2023 for failing to comply.

The city’s argument, in a nutshell

The city has argued it doesn’t have to comply because it’s a charter city, which gives it more autonomy in some areas of governance than non-charter cities.

Huntington Beach also has said that planning for such a large number of units would force it to violate state environmental laws. A state appeals court in a September ruling didn’t buy either argument.

What’s next?

A San Diego court now must determine penalties against Huntington Beach, even as the city has vowed to keep fighting the housing mandate. An appeals court has ordered the lower court to give the city 120 days to approve a housing plan.

Other remedies the court will consider include:

• Suspending the city’s ability to approve building permits — essentially bringing all development in the city to a halt; or, on the opposite end of the spectrum,

• Forcing Huntington Beach to approve any and all applications to build homes — in other words, completely removing the city’s discretion to plan for development. 

The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Jan. 16.

More animals are being run over on Los Angeles streets than ever before, and the lingering effects of the pandemic may be partly to blame.  

Through November of this year, the city’s MyLA311 service has fielded 31,093 requests for “dead animal removal,” an increase of more than a thousand from the same time last year. It marks a 37% increase from five years prior, and is the fifth straight year of increases.  

Fraser Shilling of the Road Ecology Center at the University of California, Davis, studies the impact of transportation on animal populations. While one of the drivers of the increase is the continual loss of habitat from urban development, Shilling says the after effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are also playing a role. The protracted lockdown sparked a boom in pet adoptions, which he says has now transformed into an increase in animals being let go by their owners.  

“Basically, pandemic pets are being abandoned,” Shilling said. “Before they get picked up by animal control, they’re out on the street getting hit.” 

Cats made up nearly a third of animals picked up last year, according to the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation. Dogs accounted for 17%. Raccoons and opossums were the third- and fourth-most common. The vast majority of pickup requests are for animals that have been struck by vehicles. Others include requests to collect pets that have died at their owner’s home.

Want to know the number of requests in your neighborhood? Sign up for the Crosstown Neighborhood Newsletter and get stats about crime, traffic, housing and more for where you live.

Overstuffed animal shelters

Los Angeles has a massive feral cat population, estimated to be close to one million.

In 2020, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Citywide Cat Program aimed at trapping and spaying or neutering stray cats to prevent unwanted litters. But the program’s progress is facing constraints due to local funding challenges, as well as a nationwide veterinarian shortage. 

In August, the City Council unanimously approved a motion increasing the dollar amount pet owners are reimbursed by the city for spaying and neutering their pets, for an estimated cost of $9 million. A proposal from the city administrative officer recommended giving the higher reimbursement rates to shelter-based programs like the Citywide Cat Program, which would have cost an estimated $21 million over three years. That plan was not adopted.  

At the same time, the city’s shelters are overflowing with intakes. Through October of this year, Los Angeles Animal Service shelters took in 36,330 cats and dogs, per the department’s Woof Stat reports, a 6% increase from the same time last year and a 46% increase from the entire year of 2020. Its dog shelter program currently is operating at 123% capacity.  

San Pedro, Los Angeles’ southernmost neighborhood, had the highest number of dead animal removal requests in the city this year, with 922 as of Nov. 30, a 15% increase over the same period in 2024. 

As of Dec. 9, the animal shelter in San Pedro also had the highest dog occupancy rate of any of the six shelters in the city at 159% capacity. 

“Like many shelters across the country, LA Animal Services continues to experience overcrowding and operates at overcapacity, despite the department’s ongoing efforts to promote spaying and neutering, encourage pet adoptions and fostering, and working with rescues to help place animals,” Animal Services said in a statement. 

Where the city meets the wild 

The highest rates of wild animal collisions occur in dense urban areas surrounded by natural vegetation. Van Nuys and Northridge — ringed by the Santa Susana, Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains — were the neighborhoods with the second- and third-most dead animal reports. While cats were still the most common animals being picked up in Northridge zip codes, according to data from the Department of Sanitation, the region had numbers of opossums, squirrels, coyotes and deer that were higher than the citywide average 

Requests for removals in 2024, the most recent year for which the animal breakdown is available, included 366 coyotes, 191 chickens, 27 turtles and four turkeys. 

The number of dead deer last year was 63, around half of what it was in 2020. While that sounds like an improvement, it actually indicates a dire trend.  

“The population of deer in California is going down by 10% a year, and the population killed by traffic is about 8% or 9% per year, suggesting that the decline in deer in California is directly tied to roadkill,” said Shilling of the Road Ecology Center.  

Habitat loss from urban development is typically accompanied by an increase in traffic, according to the Road Ecology Center’s annual roadkill report. The city has been fast-tracking new development under Mayor Karen Bass’s directive focused on affordable housing, and over 5,600 units have been approved in the San Fernando Valley since 2023, according to the city planning website.  

The best solution to curb wildlife roadkill, Shilling said, is for people to drive more slowly. The second best is fencing along major roads and highways that have become hotspots. He said wildlife crossings — like the slated Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Agoura Hills — are ineffective at stopping roadkill unless accompanied by deliberate fencing.  

How we did it: We examined more than eight years of reports from the city’s MyLA311 service data. In addition, we broke down the requests by neighborhood. We also analyzed data from the Department of Sanitation and the city’s Animal Services Department. Have questions about our data or want to ask a question? Write to us as askus@xtown.la.