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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Wald said there are no special licensing requirements in California for businesses that match surrogates with intended parents.
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.
California law requires child welfare agencies to prioritize placing children who cannot safely be with their parents in homes with extended family, and requires siblings to be kept together unless it would endanger the child to do so, said Leslie Heimov, the executive director of the Children’s Law Center of California.
The Children’s Law Center has worked with some families with 10 to 12 children, Heimov said. A family with 20 children or more is “unusual," she added.
It’s more complicated to find foster homes for larger families that can accommodate all the children’s needs, especially for infants, Heimov said.
In addition to expenses and limited space, it's hard to give infants the proper stimulation and care they need if they are in a home with many other children, she said.
In cases involving many children, the state will sometimes get creative to make sure that siblings can maintain relationships with each other, like placing them in the same neighborhood, or placing them in different but related households, Heimov said.
A case involving over 20 children conceived through surrogacy would “present some legal questions,” said Heimov. “But it would not change our advocacy — we want every child we represent to be in a loving, safe home."
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White reported from Detroit and Riddle from Montgomery, Alabama.
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)
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)
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)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
