By ED WHITE

The removal of 21 children from the custody of a Los Angeles-area couple has put a spotlight on the practice of using surrogates to build a family. Surrogacy has no federal regulation, leaving it up to states to set the rules if they choose to allow it.

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The kids — 15 at the couple’s mansion and six more living elsewhere — were taken by an LA County child welfare agency in May after the parents were accused of failing to intervene in the abuse of a baby by a nanny, police in Arcadia said.

The children range in age from 2 months to 13 years, with most between 1 and 3, police said. The FBI won’t comment but agents are investigating. Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, have not responded to emails seeking comment.

Police believe Zhang gave birth to one or two of the children while the rest were born by surrogate. Some women who were paid surrogates for the couple now say they were unaware that the couple was accumulating a supersize family, raising questions about their intentions.

“What were they going to do with these children?” said Deborah Wald, a lawyer in San Francisco whose expertise includes surrogacy law.

What is surrogacy?

Surrogacy is an agreement between parties to have a woman become pregnant, typically through an embryo transfer, and deliver a baby. The intended parent or parents might struggle with infertility. They also could be same-sex couples.

There’s no limit on how many children someone can have through surrogates or any other method, said Wald, who is not involved in the Arcadia case.

The home of Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan is seen on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Arcadia, Calif., where a number of children were removed from the couple’s home after a child abuse allegation in May, according to Arcadia police. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

She acknowledged that California is considered a “surrogacy-friendly state” because it has clear laws around the process.

Both sides are required to have lawyers, and there must be a written, notarized contract before an embryo transfer, Wald said.

“The legitimate surrogacy community in California is very distressed when things like this happen,” Wald said of surrogates feeling deceived. ”We’ve worked very hard on legal and ethical standards. It hurts everyone when something like this happens.”

Matchmaker role

There are businesses that act as matchmakers, connecting surrogates to people who want to have children. State business records show a company called Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC had been registered at the Arcadia address of Zhang and Xuan.

It’s not clear if Zhang and Xuan set up the business solely to find surrogates for themselves. State records show the company terminated its business license in June.

An aerial view shows the home of Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Arcadia, Calif., where a number of children were removed from the couple’s home after a child abuse allegation in May, according to Arcadia police. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Wald said there are no special licensing requirements in California for businesses that match surrogates with intended parents.

Many questions remain

Wald said there should have been plenty of checks and balances in the process, noting the role of fertility clinics in handling embryos.

“The first place typically is the matching program that matches the surrogate with an intended parent. But in this situation the intended parents were the matching program,” Wald said. “I am not familiar with any other prior case where that was true.”

Arcadia police said the six children who were not at the couple’s home were found with family friends. The couple’s house was “set up for a school environment,” Lt. Kollin Cieadlo said.

Zhang and Xuan were accused of neglect and arrested in May. Charges were not formally pursued at that time in order for an abuse investigation to continue, and detectives now believe there were other instances of abuse, Cieadlo said.

A 2-month-old infant with a traumatic head injury, allegedly at the hands of a nanny, remains in a hospital in stable condition, he said.

Local public media outlets are bracing for a potential $1.1 billion cut over two years for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has earmarked more than $17 million for 16 Minnesota organizations, both large and small.

The St. Paul-based Minnesota Public Radio anticipates the cuts, which have already passed in the Senate, will earn enough votes in the House and dismantle the public media system as we know it, said Megan Ryan, communications director for MPR and its parent company American Public Media.

“We are looking at how we balance our strategic priorities and investments in the face of these cuts,” Ryan said. “Between state and federal funding sources, MPR is facing a loss of more than $6 million this fiscal year, about 6.5 percent of our budget. We have already begun a comprehensive review of our expense structure to find cost-saving solutions.”

The White House has said the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The package also cancels nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

Along with concerns for the programs targeted, opponents warned against allowing the executive branch to direct a party-line cancellation of investments that had been approved on a bipartisan basis, the Associated Press reported.

Big hit for community radio

Minneapolis jazz station KBEM, aka JAZZ88, was granted more than $122,000 from CPB in fiscal year 2024. Station manager Johnny Lee Walker said that’s about a tenth of the organization’s budget.

“Doesn’t sound like much, but it really is,” Walker said. “It would affect news (and) programming, in addition to the delivery and technical services for those programs and others. This would not shut down KBEM, but at a time of limited funding from other sources, this would make it very difficult to continue running KBEM at its current level as one of the strongest voices for jazz in the United States.”

The volunteer-based community radio station KFAI shared a similar outlook.

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“KFAI is a living expression of the Twin Cities — building bridges, deepening understanding and uplifting people across cultures, neighborhoods and generations,” said general manager and executive director Nora Doherty. “More than once in KFAI’s history, CPB support meant the ability to do this work. Now, CPB funding makes up just eight percent of KFAI’s budget, but its impact is catalytic. It allows us to leverage state and local dollars, helping community radio remain what it was intended to be: local, independent and representative of the interests of the people, not shareholders.”

Twin Cities Public Television, based in St. Paul, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The Senate narrowly approved a $9 billion rescission bill that includes the CPB cuts early Thursday. The bill is now back at the House, which approved an earlier version. Lawmakers have a midnight Friday deadline to pass the bill.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ

Attorneys representing migrant children who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent asked a federal court on Thursday to restore their deportation protections after the Trump administration ended them.

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The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of New York, was filed on behalf of nine young people and their legal advocates who want a judge to keep the protections for up to nearly 150,000 beneficiaries.

“These young people have survived abuse, abandonment, and neglect only to be retraumatized now by the constant threat of detention and deportation from the same agencies that vowed to keep them safe,” said Rachel Davidson, plaintiff attorney with the National Immigration Project.

The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services were both named in the lawsuit. USCIS Spokesman Matthew J. Tragesser said, “As a matter of practice, USCIS does not comment on pending litigation.” DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Migrant children who suffered parental abuse, neglect or abandonment are designated through state courts and the federal government with Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, which was created by Congress in 1990 with bipartisan support.

SIJS, as it is known, does not grant legal status. But it lets qualifying young people apply for a visa to become legal permanent residents and obtain a work permit. It can take years for a visa to become available due to annual caps. In 2022, the Biden administration allowed children to be shielded from deportation while waiting for a visa.

In June, the Trump administration ended deportation protection for SIJS beneficiaries. Without it, they can still wait in the U.S. for a visa but cannot receive work authorization. And if they are deported while they are waiting, they will no longer be eligible to become legal permanent residents.

Though overshadowed by higher-profile moves to end birthright citizenship and halt asylum at the border, the policy shift is part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration system overhaul intended to make it more difficult for people to legally remain in the U.S.

A Guatemalan teen who is living in New York and living with her older brother is one of the plaintiffs. She said through attorneys, who omit using the names of minors, that her dreams of becoming an astronaut one day may be cut short if she’s unable to continue high school for fear of deportation.

“I felt that I was finally in a safe environment, but if I had to return to (Guatemala), I would be very afraid of the violence and abuse from my mother and father,” she said in a statement shared by the attorneys without her name.

The policy shift may shut down a legal pathway to possible citizenship for nearly 150,000 migrants who attorneys estimate have received this classification and are stuck in the visa backlog.

It could keep them from obtaining Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, medical treatment, health insurance, higher education, bank accounts, and, for older youth, legal and safe employment opportunities.

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

The debate over whether Coca-Cola should use high-fructose corn syrup or cane sugar in its signature soda obscures an important fact: Consumers are increasingly looking for Coke with no sugar at all.

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Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, which was introduced in 2017, uses both the artificial sweetener aspartame and the natural sweetener stevia in its recipe. It’s one of Coke’s fastest-growing products, with global case volumes up 14% in the first quarter of the year. By comparison, the company’s total case volumes were up 2%.

PepsiCo also noted Thursday that 60% of its sales volumes in major markets in the second quarter came from low- or no-sugar drinks.

“When you look at colas, the percentage of growth coming from zero sugar is significant,” said Duane Stanford, the editor and publisher of Beverage Digest.

Coca-Cola Co. hasn’t confirmed a presidential pronouncement

The scrutiny over Coke’s sweeteners began Wednesday, when President Donald Trump announced that Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. had agreed to switch to using cane sugar in the regular version of its beverage manufactured in the U.S.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

FILE – Former President Donald Trump drinks a Diet Coke during the ProAm of the LIV Golf Team Championship at Trump National Doral Golf Club, Oct. 27, 2022, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

Coca-Cola didn’t confirm the change. In a statement, the company said it appreciated Trump’s enthusiasm and would share details on new offerings soon.

Stanford said he doubts Coca-Cola will fully shift away from high fructose corn syrup, which has sweetened Coke in the U.S. since the 1980s. There would be tremendous supply chain and logistics headaches, he said, and the U.S. doesn’t make enough sugar for Coke’s needs.

He expects the Atlanta-based company will offer a cane sugar-sweetened version in the U.S. just like its rival Pepsi has been doing since 2009. He noted that Coke has indulged U.S. fans by importing Mexican Coke, which is made with cane sugar, since 2005. Coke positions Mexican Coke as an upscale alternative and sells it in glass bottles.

A rush to defend high fructose corn syrup

The corn industry wasn’t happy with the speculation. In a statement Wednesday, Corn Refiners Association President and CEO John Bode said replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar makes no sense and would cost thousands of American manufacturing jobs.

Shares in ADM, a maker of high fructose corn syrup, dipped nearly 2% Thursday after Trump’s announcement.

In a message on X, Coca-Cola defended high fructose corn syrup, saying it’s no more likely to contribute to obesity than table sugar or other full-calorie sweeteners.

“It’s safe; it has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body,” the company said. “Please be assured that Coca-Cola brand soft drinks do not contain any harmful substances.”

The Food and Drug Administration also says there is no evidence of any difference in safety among foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and those that sugar, honey or other traditional sweeteners.

US consumers are seeking more options

Soft drink preferences are highly subjective, as anyone who has been in a Pepsi vs. Coke or 7-Up vs. Sprite debate knows. But recent trends indicate that Coke and other drink makers need to focus on the kinds of low- and no-sugar drinks that a growing number of consumers are seeking, according to Stanford.

He said his data shows original Coke was the top seller by volume in the U.S. last year, with 19% market share, while Coke Zero Sugar was seventh and had a 4% market share. But Coke Zero Sugar’s share grew 10%, while original Coke’s share was flat.

Paige Leyden, the associate director of food service, flavors and ingredients reports at the market research company Mintel, said drinks with a health halo like Olipop — which has 1 gram of sugars compared to original Coke’s 65 grams — are also pressuring legacy soda makers. Mintel expects full-sugar sodas will see a 3.4% rise in U.S. sales this year, while diet sodas will see 11.8% growth.

Still, nutritionists suggest avoiding added sugars, no matter the form, since they provide empty calories with no nutrients. The 2020 U.S. dietary guidelines advise people to limit foods and beverages higher in added sugars, and say children under 2 should not be fed them at all.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, whose nutrition views often diverge from mainstream nutrition science, has spoken out against sugar. His agency is expected to release updated nutrition guidelines later this year.

“There’s things we’ll never be able to eliminate, like sugar,” Kennedy said at an April news conference. “And sugar is poison, and Americans need to know that.”

Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are also named as a concern in a government report Kennedy issued in May.

AP Health and Science Editor Jonathan Poet contributed from Philadelphia.