The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Boyle Heights is turning the World Cup into a neighborhood celebration with a free block party next month aimed at supporting local businesses and bringing residents together along the 1st Street corridor.

The celebration will take place from 5 to 10 p.m. June 18  to mark the Mexico vs. South Korea match. 

“There’s a lot of focus on tourism and trying to make LA suitable for people to visit us, but at the end of the day, it’s our business members, our community members, who are here day to day, and they deserve to have a safe space to watch the game,” said Miriam Rodriguez, president of the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce.

What to expect

The block party is expected to close 1st Street between Vicente Fernandez and State streets. A large LED screen will be set up near Eastside Luv. Metro, along with Angel City Football Club, will activate the Mariachi Plaza station as a “welcoming platform” with screens showing highlights of the match, Rodriguez said. 

Many of the businesses along the corridor will be participating, including Espacio 1839, Street Tacos and Grill, Tenampal, Casa Fina, Birrieria Don Boni, SuperNova Thrift and Distrito Catorce. 

Some may offer food and merchandise outdoors or host DJs similar to past CicLAvia events in Boyle Heights.

A music lineup is in the works and other details are still being finalized, Rodriguez said.

Las Fotos Project, JD Sports, Neighborhood Music Schools, and the Angel City Football Club supporter group, known as PodeRosas, are among the participating organizations.

A boost for local businesses

Rodriguez said the event aims to boost local businesses facing economic strain tied to the recent federal immigration raids.

“Soccer brings unity,” Rodriguez said. “We want to … let our community know that even in hard times we’re still here for our businesses.”

“We can all come together and watch and celebrate our culture,” she said.

1st Street Corridor Block Party

When: Thursday, June 18

Time: 5-10 p.m.

Where: 1st Street between Vicente Fernandez and State streets

Information: boylehtschamber@gmail.com or @boyleheights_chamber on Instagram

More World Cup events 

“Kick it in the Park”: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass on Monday announced a series of recreation and parks facilities hosting more than 100 free FIFA World Cup watch parties across the city, including El Sereno Recreation Center, which will be showing 21 matches. 

Find the full schedule, additional celebrations and key information at kickit.lacity.gov.

Casa Mexico Los Angeles 2026: LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown L.A. will host Casa Mexico Los Angeles 2026, a five-week community-centered celebration of soccer and culture. The event will feature free public programs, including live match viewing parties, music, gastronomy, exhibitions and more.

Find the full schedule, additional celebrations and key information at casamexico.netlify.app.

A new art exhibition is breathing life into the mid-century, Googie architecture of Johnie’s Coffee Shop at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue.

Artist Gary Baseman is known for his iconic cat illustrations and whimsical characters that have shown up in the New York Times, Disney animation and plenty of toys.

His L.A. food institution roots go deep: he grew up in the Fairfax district and his mom worked in the bakery at the legendary Canter’s Deli for 35 years.

“Off the Menu: Dining and Drawing in LA” features work drawn directly on menus from 40 different local staples, including Musso and Frank’s and Genghis Cohen, and of course, Canter's.

Gary Baseman's drawing on a Canter's Deli menu.

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“There’s a sense of community and comfort by being in these places,” Baseman told LAist. “This show is all about my love and celebration of L.A. dining culture.”

Baseman said the idea for the exhibition can be traced back to his time traveling around the world. At many of his dining stops around the globe, he would... borrow... menus and begin sketching scenes in his cartoon-like style.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t give them back to the waiter and I would actually start drawing on the menu itself... It was a way of giving them immortality through the body of work,” Baseman said.

Baseman said he loved the idea of opening Johnie’s up again for people to see. He called the location the perfect place for a show like this, which takes visitors on what he calls a “dream reality” tour of L.A.’s food institutions through sketches and drawings.

Designed by the firm Armet and Davis, Johnie’s Coffee Shop occupied the building from 1966 to 2000, when it closed down, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. Johnie’s has also been used for filming locations and shows up in The Big Lebowski, Reservoir Dogs and more.

Johnie’s hasn’t been completely dormant over the past decade though. Under the guidance of the Community Solidarity Project, a mutual aid nonprofit with a longstanding footprint in Mid-Wilshire, the building served as a campaign center for Bernie Sanders, a mutual aid distribution hub, a filming location with student filmmakers and more.

Gary Baseman's menu drawing of Musso and Frank's.

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Now it’ll house Baseman’s first solo show in L.A. since 2013’s “The Door is Always Open” at the Skirball Center. The launch of “Off the Menu” was purposefully timed to coincide with the opening of the first phase of the Metro D Line extension, which includes a Wilshire/Fairfax stop.

“Off the Menu” kicks off at Johnie’s on Friday, May 8, with a Metro D Line celebration from 3 to 6 p.m.

A public opening reception will take place: 6 to 9 p.m., Saturday, May 9

Then, the exhibition will be open noon to 7 p.m., Wednesday to Sunday, until June 14.

A normally sleepy school board race in northeast Long Beach has gotten an unexpected injection of partisan politics and campaign spending this year.

For 14 years, incumbent Long Beach Unified Trustee Diana Craighead has easily held onto the District 5 seat. First appointed to the board in 2012 to fill an empty spot, she has often won re-election without facing a challenger. This year, though, it’s a three-way race among Craighead, grassroots organizer Sara Pol-Lim and charter school teacher Maureen Flaherty. Flaherty’s presence in particular, and her association with a national conservative group Moms for Liberty, has raised the stakes and spurred powerful players in Long Beach education to try to influence the outcome.

Flaherty has advocated for vaccine choice rather than mandates, barring trans girls from girls’ sports and curriculum that “educate[s], not indoctrinate[s].” She also wants parents to have more control over the types of books students have access to in school.

She has collected endorsements from a litany of conservative politicians, including gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco, the current sheriff of Riverside County. Her ties with Moms for Liberty, an organization that has advocated for book censorship and against curriculum on critical race theory and LGBTQ rights, have spurred LBUSD teachers to organize against her.

The Teachers Association of Long Beach, the union that represents thousands of certificated employees in the district, has thrown its weight behind Craighead — some members motivated less by Craighead’s platform than by fear of a win for Flaherty.

Chris Callopy, executive director of TALB, lived and taught in Orange Unified in the 1990s and 2000s when voters elected and later recalled conservative school board candidates, what Callopy called “precursors to the current MAGA and Moms for Liberty movements.”

At a union meeting last month, Callopy warned his membership that a similar school board takeover in Long Beach could threaten their civil rights and protections as teachers — especially for members of the LGBTQ community. “This is crisis mode,” Callopy said, “Pay attention and get involved.”

In response, TALB has endorsed Craighead and so far used about $45,000 in political action committee funding to support her campaign — including through mailers, opposition research, door-knocking and even an attack ad against Flaherty that claims she is “Too MAGA for school board” and “Wrong for our kids.”

Flaherty said TALB is misrepresenting her priorities.

“They’re attacking me without knowing my real positions,” she said, adding, “I’m not one thing. I have multiple beliefs.” She clarified that she wants all students to thrive and feel they belong in school and that she voted for gay rights in the past.

She’s been critical of teachers unions, saying they protect lazy educators. Flaherty said TALB’s campaign against her shows they’re afraid she has a real shot, even with Long Beach’s Democrat-heavy electorate. “They’re obviously worried that I have a chance of winning or they wouldn’t be doing that,” she said.

Craighead and her other challenger, Sara Pol-Lim, espouse more liberal political ideologies.

Craighead has championed a model of governance that aims to boost student performance and close equity gaps — focusing on the performance of Black students in particular. Though outcomes have lagged, Craighead has vowed to “stay the course” in the hopes that more significant improvements are on the horizon. She supports, and voted for, the district’s equity policy and inclusion of the district’s immigrant community.

Pol-Lim, who arrived in California as a Cambodian refugee in 1983, said she jumped into the race relatively late for pragmatic reasons. She decided she couldn’t “afford to just be a bystander anymore” when she learned about the district’s $70 million deficit and declining enrollment. She has advocated for a proactive approach to balancing the district’s budget by seeking alternative funding sources. And she says promoting student and teacher belonging could be keys to boosting both retention and outcomes, she said.

Pol-Lim has raised more than $19,000 for her campaign, primarily small monetary donations from individuals and organizations across the city, she said, as well as a loan to herself and about $3,000 in in-kind donations. Flaherty has raised less than $2,000 in total. And Craighead’s campaign has amassed more than $50,000, mostly in donations and in-kind support from TALB as well as some direct donations. She’s also accumulated endorsements from Long Beach’s largely liberal political establishment, including Mayor Rex Richardson, Rep. Robert Garcia, State Sen. Lena Gonzalez and Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard on Wednesday said safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be provided, under unspecified procedures, after President Trump paused a U.S. military effort to guide merchant vessels through the strategic waterway.

"With the end of the aggressors' threats and in light of new procedures, safe and sustainable transit through the strait will be facilitated," the Revolutionary Guard's navy command said in an online statement. It did not give details about the new terms.

The Strait of Hormuz — an important passageway for oil, fertilizer and other goods — has been effectively closed since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran on Feb. 28, disrupting global energy supplies and pushing up fuel prices. Iran has attacked commercial ships that want to transit the strait without its approval. The U.S. has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports since mid-April.

Moments after the Iranian statement, President Trump wrote online that the war would end once an agreement was reached with Iran, but he warned that U.S. bombing would resume if not.

"Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran," Trump said. "If they don't agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before."

Iran has confirmed receiving a U.S. proposal and said it is under review.

"The American plan and proposal is still being reviewed by Iran, and after summing up its points of view, Iran will convey its views to the Pakistani side," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei told Iran's state ISNA news agency on Wednesday, referring to mediating country Pakistan that has relayed messages and hosted talks between Iran and the U.S. NPR has not confirmed the details of the proposal.

This is a developing story that will be updated.
Copyright 2026 NPR

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Ted Turner — the bullish founder of CNN and a suite of other cable channels, not to mention a bison steakhouse, a non profit designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and an international sports competition — died Wednesday at the age of 87. He had announced just before his 80th birthday that he had Lewy Body Dementia, a degenerative disease that causes dementia and muscle failure.

Turner never seemed at a loss for brass or chutzpah.

"If Alexander the Great could conquer the known world, why couldn't I start CNN?" Turner once told Oprah Winfrey.

He launched the Cable News Network — the nation's first continuous all-news television station — on June 1, 1980, at a converted Jewish country club in Atlanta. The network broadcast news 24/7 from that point on and indeed built a global array of bureaus.

Former CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan says Turner took inspiration from 24-hour radio stations that relayed news headlines, and endless sports highlights on ESPN. Turner remained baffled why the broadcast giants — ABC, NBC and CBS — hadn't launched cable stations.

"To him it was just the most logical thing in the world and he couldn't understand why nobody else was doing it," Jordan says. "So he was going to do it."

Sixteen years later, NBC (in partnership with Microsoft) and Fox would launch sibling cable news channels. Each ultimately found success by embracing strong (though opposing) points of view. Broadcast networks subsequently sought to replicate the original cable ethos with stripped down streaming services.

Turner, a colorful figure with a Southern drawl and rail-thin mustache, had pronounced views himself, often (though not exclusively) of a liberal bent. But he wanted his station to reflect the news, not ideology. He thought human understanding across borders would benefit from reporting on stories and people around the world.

"He was a visionary, a trailblazer, a rabble-rouser, a do-gooder — and he thought there would be a market for it," Jordan says.

Ted Turner sits in his office in October 1986. "He was a visionary, a trailblazer, a rabble-rouser, a do-gooder," says former CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan.

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Jean-Louis Atlan

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Turner often carried a mischievous twinkle in his eye. And his values had been incubated in an earlier era.

Jordan joined CNN in 1982 while he was still in college, working overnights as a desk assistant during his first few years. Back then, Turner often slept in a pull-down Murphy bed in his office above the newsroom. He would come down to the newsroom to grab coffee, Jordan recalls, but did not usually interact with the staff. The first time they met, Jordan says, was because Turner had a guest.

"It was Raquel Welch," Jordan says. "They were both in bathrobes. And Ted was so proud of himself for having such good company that he introduced himself and Raquel Welch to everyone in the newsroom at 4 o'clock in the morning."

"Chicken Noodle News"

CNN has been a mainstay of television journalism for so long it's hard to remember that it was often underestimated in its infancy.

In the 1980s, many people didn't understand what the fuss was about, longtime broadcast journalist Joie Chen recalls.

"Many people didn't even have cable yet. I didn't have cable growing up," says Chen, who joined CNN as an international anchor in 1991. "In those early years, you know, CNN was just considered 'Chicken Noodle News' and Ted Turner was at first just considered a dilettante."

CNN became a training ground for journalists who would be hired by better paying outlets. Chen left CNN in 2001, later working at CBS and Al Jazeera.

"Look, we were young and at times very shoddy, but we were the only game in town and we did some extraordinary things," Jordan says.

Over time, whenever news was happening, CNN was there. CNN broadcasted live when catastrophe struck the space shuttle Challenger and its crew in 1986.

And in 1991, CNN experienced a defining moment — effectively owning television coverage of the first U.S.-led war against Iraq. It was the only U.S. network able to broadcast live from Baghdad as bright flashes from bombs lit the sky.

Anchor Bernard Shaw and Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Peter Arnett were among those CNN journalists who projected calm under fire.

Chen recalls Turner never intended for his journalists to become famous and, she contends, he underpaid his staff.

"We were always told Ted's mantra was, 'You are not the star; the news is the star," she says. She left CNN at the end of 2001.

Competition grows

Even as he struck an exuberant tone, Turner's mood could swing to depression. He also battled again and again with rival media tycoon Rupert Murdoch – and even threatened to do so with his fists in Las Vegas, as The Guardian recounted.

Murdoch's New York Post in turn questioned Turner's sanity. Meanwhile, Turner maintained a friendly rapport with the late Cuban autocrat Fidel Castro.

Ted Turner and his actress wife, Jane Fonda, at their wedding ceremony in 1991.

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In later years, as CNN competed not just with other cable channels but digital news outlets and social media, it lagged behind its TV peers in ratings. Executives turned over prime time to higher-rated opinion panel discussions featuring ideological clashes.

Conservatives and pro-Trump commentators repeatedly accused the network of listing to the left.

But it retained its journalistic DNA to a significant extent, rising to the moment as its reporting teams covered political developments, natural disasters and armed conflicts. That was part of Turner's legacy too.

Turner married and divorced three times; his third marriage was to Hollywood and fitness star Jane Fonda in 1991.

He also took on lots of debt – and investors – to make ambitious deals at a time when his main rivals, including Murdoch, were launching all-news cable stations. Eventually, it became too much.

In 1996, Turner sold CNN and the rest of his company, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., to Time Warner for about $7.34 billion – a move he deeply regretted. A few years later – in 2000 – Time Warner sold itself to AOL, against Turner's wishes. The AOL deal is considered one of the worst mergers in U.S. corporate history. Turner has called it "one of the biggest disasters that have occurred to our country."

In 2001, his marriage to Fonda — a source of strength – ended. And shortly after that, he was completely out at AOL, separating from the company he'd spent a half-century building.

"I lost Jane. I lost my job here," Turner said in a 2012 interview on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight.

He added, earning laughter from Morgan, "I lost my fortune, most of it, got a billion or two left. You can get by on that if you economize,"

Yet he demonstrated resilience. "You carry on. And I found other things to do."

"Other things to do"

Turner had been finding other things to do for years. He was relentlessly competitive and an accomplished yachtsman — he won the America's Cup sailing competition in 1977.

In the 1970s, Turner bought a television station and made it into the national "superchannel" now known as TBS; He also bought the Atlanta Braves to ensure content for it. The Braves became one of the nation's most popular baseball teams during the generation he owned or ran it; the team appeared repeatedly in the World Series in the 1990s and early aughts.

In 1986, Turner launched the Goodwill Games, an international competition meant to bypass the Cold War fights that had broken out over the Olympics. It lasted until 2001.

Turner hoisted the Commissioner's Trophy after his Atlanta Braves won the 1995 World Series against the Cleveland Indians.

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Ronald C. Modra/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

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In 1997, as Turner was being honored by the United Nations, he pledged to donate a billion dollars to it. With that money, he created what's known as The UN Foundation that has helped the international institution endure.

As the years progressed, Turner created the Nuclear Threat Initiative to secure loose nuclear weapons in the former Soviet republics and elsewhere. He also gave widely to conservation and anti-global warming efforts. His philanthropy helped inspire the "Giving Pledge" of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and other billionaires – and he was one of the first signatories to it.

He also founded Ted's Montana Grill with hopes of making bison a popular alternative to beef. Turner had been raising bison on his many ranches, and saw the restaurant chain as a way to reach customers while saving the species from extinction.

"I was 10 years old when I first read about them," he told Bethesda Magazine in 2015. "I said then I was going to work hard, see if I can make some money, and then I'm going to buy some land and raise bison and see if I can get the herd back away from the door of extinction."

In his final years, the flamboyant showman retreated from the public eye. Ever direct, he publicly acknowledged his affliction with Lewy Body Dementia, or LBD, in 2018. He spent much of his later life out of the public eye, whether in Atlanta or riding horses and fishing at his vast properties in Montana.

Copyright 2026 NPR