The Brief

Starbucks customers across hundreds of locations in the United States started their weeks off with a surprise: Their beloved Frappuccinos and iced espresso drinks served in paper cups, not plastic.

The Seattle-based coffee company announced this week that about 580 of its stores had begun replacing its cold drinks cups — typically made out of polypropylene, a type of rigid plastic — with paper versions lined with a thin layer of bioplastic for liquid resistance.

A company spokesperson declined to provide a list of stores affected by the change, but said Starbucks wants to comply with the growing number of local ordinances restricting the distribution of single-use plastics. Some advocacy groups, however, have suggested that the transition away from polypropylene plastic cups is more connected to Starbucks’ own sustainability targets — specifically, a goal the company set last year to make all of its packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030.

The company’s continued use of plastic seemed to hinge on the idea that the cups could technically fall under the recyclable category. Jan Dell, an independent chemical engineer and founder of the nonprofit the Last Beach Cleanup, says they’re not, and that Starbucks is now acknowledging it.

“This is a clear admission that polypropylene cups are not recyclable” — or, at least, that they don’t get recycled in practice, Dell told Grist.

Dell’s conclusion is based, in part, on an effort she spearheaded last year to see what happens to Starbucks’ plastic cups when deposited in the chain’s in-store recycling bins. She and a partner, Susan Keefe — now with the nonprofit Beyond Plastics — placed tracking devices in empty Starbucks cups across Southern California, dropped the cups off in the chain’s recycling bins, and followed their movements after they were picked up by waste trucks. In almost all cases, the trackers went to a landfill or an incinerator rather than a recycling center.

Her investigation was repeated on a larger scale by CBS News, which tracked cups dropped into 57 Starbucks recycling bins across the country. Of the 36 trackers that produced reliable location information, 32 last pinged at locations that appeared to be landfills, incinerators or waste transfer stations. Just four pinged at locations that appeared to be material recovery facilities, the places where used plastics are sorted for recycling.

A Starbucks spokesperson told Grist that the company’s polypropylene cups are “recyclable in many locations where there is local infrastructure.”

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Klaudia Radecka

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A Starbucks spokesperson told Grist that the company’s polypropylene cups are “recyclable in many locations where there is local infrastructure.” But it is unclear where such infrastructure exists.

Last year, CBS News reported that Starbucks was only able to list one facility that turns polypropylene plastic cups into new products, KW Plastics in Alabama. A 2022 Greenpeace report found that this facility has the capacity to recycle only about 1% of the United States’ total polypropylene waste, and may not accept polypropylene waste from states outside the Southeast due to transportation costs. Another limiting factor is the high rate of contamination with other types of plastic, or liquids and food residue. Polypropylene bales from California, for example, have an average contamination rate of 31% — far higher than the 2% contamination rate KW Plastics says it accepts.

KW Plastics did not respond to Grist’s request for comment. (An industry group told Grist there are several more polypropylene recycling facilities in the U.S., but a Grist review of the list it sent found inconsistencies: One facility said it doesn’t accept bales of polypropylene, for instance, and another appeared to not yet be operating.)

Considering all of the 160,000 tons of plastic cups and plates produced in the U.S. in 2018 — the last year for which federal data is available — about 81% was landfilled, and 19% was burned. That leaves roughly 0% for recycling: a “negligible” amount, as the Environmental Protection Agency puts it.

Dell said the high-profile investigations “embarrassed” Starbucks and may have contributed to its move away from polypropylene cups. The company knows its customers “want to feel good about their cold drink or their hot drink cups,” she said. “Consumers do not want to feel guilty.”

Lisa Ramsden, a senior oceans campaigner for Greenpeace, said Starbucks may also be trying to get ahead of anti-plastic regulations in California, which are expected to ban certain types of plastic in the coming years. Already, the state requires the substantiation of recyclability labels like the ubiquitous “chasing arrows” symbol, imprinted on Starbucks’ polypropylene cups and advertised on its in-store recycling bins. Companies that want to label their products as recyclable in the Golden State have to maintain written records explaining why they believe the recycling claim is true, and showing that those products are widely collected and turned into new products within California.

A Starbucks spokesperson said the company’s polypropylene cups are compliant with applicable consumer protection laws and declined to provide additional evidence that the cups are recycled. They said that recycling is “complex and challenging,” and that the company’s goal “is always to reduce the amount of plastic in our waste stream.”

Along with the move toward compostable paper cups, Starbucks, which is navigating a flurry of changes as its new chief executive attempts to improve the company’s image and bottom line, says it is making ceramic mugs available for in-store dining and allowing more customers to order drinks in their own reusable cups. As for Starbucks’ plastic cups, it’s unclear whether and when they will be phased out from the more than 16,000 locations in the U.S. that are still offering them. Last April, the company said it had redesigned its single-use plastic cups to use up to 20% less plastic — a move that would allegedly “keep more than 13.5 million pounds of plastic from landfills each year.”

According to Dell, Starbucks’ move away from plastic cups is a “crack in the wall” of the campaign to promote polypropylene recycling — particularly from the Recycling Partnership, an industry-backed nonprofit that in 2020 launched an initiative called the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition to “ensure the long-term viability of polypropylene plastic.” As of December, the Recycling Partnership said it had distributed $22 million in grants to recycling facilities to improve the collection and sorting of polypropylene. The organization’s chief policy officer, Kate Davenport, told Grist this money has helped bump up the recycling rate for polypropylene packaging. She said polypropylene recycling has “needed a lot of investment,” although her organization also sees a need to reduce plastic production overall.

Starbucks is a founding partner of one of the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition’s steering committee members, the NextGen Consortium, and has donated millions of dollars to this organization to “explore the circularity” of polypropylene, among other objectives. The Starbucks spokesperson said the company would continue to fund these and similar efforts.

Starbucks declined to say whether it would eliminate additional forms of single-use plastic, like snack boxes and prepackaged beverages, or comment on whether the company would expand compostable cups nationwide.

Environmental advocates say Starbucks should eliminate nonrecyclable single-use plastic across the country, although Dell acknowledged that doing so could take some time due to supply chain delays and the vast number of stores — Starbucks is the second-largest restaurant chain in the world, after all. She called on the company to be more transparent about its plans, and to change in-store recycling bin labels to make it clear that only cans or plastic bottles — which are recycled at much higher rates than polypropylene cups — are accepted.

Ramsden said that, while compostable cups are a “step in the right direction,” Starbucks should place its focus on reusable containers whenever possible. “We need to move away from the single-use mindset, whether it’s plastic or aluminum or bioplastic containers, and move toward systems of refill and reuse.”

Happy long weekend! The Late Show with Stephen Colbert plays the funnyman’s swan song tonight, so my calendar is booked to stay up past my bedtime. Closer to home, the Yoko Ono exhibit (which comes to us straight from the Tate Modern in London) opens just in time for Memorial Day weekend, so watch this space for more on that.

There’s music for lovers of every genre this week, according to our friends at Licorice Pizza. On Friday, Yungblud and special guests Warning rock the Greek, and Dethklok plays the Palladium; jazz trumpeter Chris Botti begins his residency at the Blue Note.

Saturday, Bright Eyes performs I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn in their entirety at the Hollywood Bowl with openers the Moldy Peaches; American Football is at the Wiltern; Belgium’s Ultra Sunn plays the Belasco; Italy’s Mina is at the Echoplex; DJ KSHMR plays the Palladium; and then, for a different sort of “Kashmir,” Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening takes over the Greek.

On Sunday, brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack for the millennial dance party of the week at the Forum with Kesha, Chromeo and Sizzy Rocket. There’s also the big Day Trip afternoon concert at L.A. State Historic Park with Joseph Capriati, Toman and Cole Terrazas. For a more mellow Sunday, singer-songwriter Katelyn Tarver is at the Echoplex, R&B singer-songwriter Eric Bellinger plays the Novo, or classic crooner Paul Anka is doing it his way at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can check out four new food halls, wander around a favorite new Sundays-only bookstore, and yes, I’ll remind you again — make your upcoming Election Day picks with the help of our Voter Game Plan.

Events

L.A. Fleet Week

Through Monday, May 25
Pacific Battleship Center
250 S. Harbor Blvd., San Pedro 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy L.A. Fleet Week

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Tour the U.S.S. Iowa and check out the three visiting battleships at San Pedro’s Pacific Battleship Center during L.A.’s annual Memorial Day weekend Fleet Week on the waterfront. Plus, there are exhibits to walk through, food stands to try and music for the whole family. Not to mention those cute sailors in their whites.

Topanga Days

Saturday to Monday, May 23 to 25, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
1440 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga
COST: ADULTS $31.80; MORE INFO

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Fadeout Media

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Topanga Days

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Topanga Days is the easiest way to time-travel back to a simpler time when folk musicians roamed the hills, winning a yodeling contest was the biggest bragging right and you spent all year coming up with your parade costume. Those days are here once a year at Topanga Days, headlined on Saturday by New Orleans icon Cyril Neville and peppered with cherry-seed-spitting and bubble-gum-blowing contests, tons of other music, food, and, of course, the parade.

Exit the King

Through Sunday, May 31
A Noise Within
3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena
COST: FROM $49.75; MORE INFO 

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Craig Schwartz

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Lucy PR

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The name of this Eugène Ionesco classic alone — Exit the King — should give you some sense of where the always-on-point folks at A Noise Within were going when they chose it at this moment. The political satire borders on the absurd, with the L.A. Times likening the vibrant characters to “those in a deck of wild cards designed by Salvador Dalí.”

K-Expo

Saturday and Sunday, May 23 to 24
L.A. Live 
1005 Chick Hearn Court, Downtown L.A.
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Courtesy BLND PR

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K-Pop fans will flock to the K-Expo at L.A. Live, where you can see free exhibitions and events featuring 100 Korean brands and companies across content, beauty, food and technology all weekend long. Stick around Saturday night and grab a ticket (from $47) to the mega K-Pop concert at the Peacock Theater, featuring Jay Park and P1Harmony.

MAINopoly 

Sunday, May 24, 1 p.m. 
Main Street, Santa Monica 
COST: FROM $28.01; MORE INFO

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Courtesy MAINopoly Santa Monica

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Eat your way down Main Street in Santa Monica at the annual Monopoly-themed food festival, which this year will allow drinks while you walk and eat thanks to a new city permit. The popular food-and-bar stretch near the beach is experiencing a little revival with the reopening of dive bar favorite Circle Bar, plus newish hot spots like Triple Beam Pizza and June Shine. I also heard a rumor that something new is finally coming into the old World Cafe space (!!).

Arroyo Secodelic Festival

Friday to Monday, May 22 to 25
Various locations, Highland Park
COST: VARIES; MORE INFO

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Courtesy Arroyo Secodelic

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As LAist's Robert Garrova reports, a new four-day music festival takes over Figueroa Street in Highland Park this weekend. The Arroyo Secodelic Festival will feature 65 bands, with acts hailing from Los Angeles, Mexico and as far as France and Holland. Highlights include Flamin' Groovies, Fear and Adolescents.

Angel City Chorale Spring Concert 

Sunday, May 24, 4 p.m.
Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center 
1935 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Redondo Beach 
COST: FROM $17; MORE INFO 

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Mel Stave Photography

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Angel City Chorale

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Enjoy the healing sounds of Angel City Chorale as they perform a new show with the theme "The Red Thread" as “a tribute to the beloved age-old parable and celebration of the invisible threads that connect as humans, our hopes, joys, resilience in the face of adversity, connection to nature and a shared planet Earth.”

Kevin Morby

Friday, May 22, 8 p.m.
The Wiltern
3790 Wilshire Blvd., Koreatown
COST: $50-$60; MORE INFO 

Kevin Morby plays the Wiltern on Friday.

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Jim Bennett

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The nouveau bard of Kansas City returns to his once-adopted hometown of Los Angeles on the heels of his newest release, Little Wide Open. Morby's latest effort might be his most realized, fully embracing the Technicolor sweep of his indie-Americana sound — striking the sonic equivalent between a Terrence Malick film and Robert Frank's roadside photographs, seen through a passenger car window of a cross-country train. This time, Morby tapped Aaron Dessner of The National to serve as producer — who has most recently done the same for Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams and Sharon Van Etten — alongside a constellation of collaborators, including Justin Vernon, Lucinda Williams, Katie Gavin, Mat Davidson and Meg Duffy. Brooklyn-based Liam Kazar opens. –Gab Chabrán

UCLA JazzReggae Festival

Monday, May 25, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
UCLA Wilson Plaza
COST: $26.14; MORE INFO 

Three little birds told me to get down to the UCLA JazzReggae Festival on Memorial Day. The yearly music fest draws students and neighbors alike for a full day of sunshine, food, music and jammin’. The fest is fully organized and run by student volunteers, and has been since its founding 40 years ago.

Forest Lawn Memorial Day remembrances

Monday, May 25 
Various locations 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

Forest Lawn in Glendale is one of several locations hosting Memorial Day events.

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David McNew

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Getty Images

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Honor veterans across Los Angeles as Forest Lawn hosts Memorial Day remembrances at each of its six Southern California locations: Cathedral City, Covina Hills, Cypress, Glendale, Hollywood Hills and Long Beach. The parkwide events will celebrate the lives of those who served, with patriotic music, wreath layings, presentations and retirings of the flag, keynote addresses, presidential proclamations, invocations, giveaways, coffee and sweet treats. All events will include American Sign Language interpreters.

You could call it a fulfillment of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous promise from the first Terminator movie in 1984: “I’ll be back.”

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the bigger budget, multi-award winning follow-up to that first film is coming back to theaters in Los Angeles starting this weekend, in celebration of the film’s 35th anniversary.

Considered one of the best action films and best sequels of all time, it’s also celebrated among film experts for its groundbreaking use of CGI visual effects — most notably for the T-1000 character, a liquid metal cyborg masquerading as an LAPD officer, played by Robert Patrick.

Where to watch ‘T2’ on the big screen

While the American Cinematheque’s first two 35th anniversary screenings of Terminator 2 are already sold out, as of this article’s publishing time, tickets to screenings on May 29 (at Los Feliz 3) and May 30 (at Aero Theatre in Santa Monica) are still available.

Tickets for screenings on May 22 at The Ojai Playhouse and June 6 and 7 at The Vista in Los Feliz are also still available, and Rialto Pictures also lists screenings on July 2-5 at The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana.

And while the screening at The Academy Museum on May 27 (with the film’s Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren in person) is sold out, we have you covered with some highlights from Muren’s interview with LAist below.

Making the impossible possible with CGI

Terminator 2, director James Cameron’s follow up to his surprise 1984 hit, The Terminator, was the first (and still only) movie in what would become the six-film Terminator franchise to earn an Oscar win or nomination.

Ultimately, the film took home four Oscars — for visual effects (for Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Gene Warren, Jr. and Robert Skotak), makeup, sound, and sound effects editing — and also earned nominations for cinematography and film editing.

The visual effects studio responsible for the T-1000 character’s CGI effects was Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), founded in 1975 by Star Wars creator George Lucas. Dennis Muren headed up their Terminator 2 team, which consisted of about 35 artists.

Muren remembers first being taken with visual effects at the age of 6 or 7, watching The War of the Worlds (1953) in Los Angeles. He made his first film — a “creature feature” called Equinox — the summer between his freshman and sophomore years at Pasadena City College, and would go on to work for ILM on visual effects for movies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and (fittingly) the 2005 version of War of the Worlds.

A scene from 'Terminator 2' (1991).

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ILM and Muren began development on the CGI techniques that would be needed to pull off Terminator 2’s T-1000 character in movies like 1985’s Young Sherlock Holmes and 1989’s The Abyss, which was also directed by James Cameron.

“ILM has been so good at being able to really do the impossible,” Muren said. “And we kind of joke about that, but we've got many different ways of doing things.”

When the opportunity for Terminator 2 came up, Muren had also just returned from a year-long sabbatical he spent studying computer graphics, and said he was confident ILM had the tools needed to make the T-1000 character a reality.

“We were ready to input the film digitally,” Muren explained. “[To] do all the manipulation in a computer instead of with optical film running through printers and going to labs for processing.”

And when ILM got that digital system for “compositing” — combining live-action images, practical and CGI effects — working seamlessly, Muren says, “That was an incredible tool.”

But that didn’t mean that pulling off a shiny, shape-shifting, liquid metal character successfully would be easy.

“It's just complicated,” Muren explained. “You've just got this reflective material [and] how are we supposed to be able to see depth or shape when it's deforming?” But at the same time, Muren said, “that's what was exciting about it.”

Muren says the trickiest scene for the team to figure out is when the T-1000 walks through a cell door made of metal bars. While it happens in a matter of seconds on screen, it amounted to 14 to 16 weeks of work for the visual effects team.

“I always said that shot, even as we were doing it, and we got close to finishing, I said, ‘This is an absolutely impossible shot,’” Muren explained. So when they got it right, he said, “It was like a new world.”

Today, while he says Jurassic Park (1993) is the film he’s now asked about most often, he always reminds people: “T2 was really the breakthrough film.”

Los Angeles won more than $100 million from California in 2022 and 2023 to improve crosswalks, bike infrastructure and general mobility in historically underinvested communities. But it just doesn’t have enough people to implement the three projects in time, city officials have said.

To retain the entirety of the grant funding, the city has requested a six-year time extension on state-mandated deadlines to complete the pre-construction phases of the projects in Boyle Heights, Skid Row and Wilmington. The city is hoping the California Transportation Commission will evaluate its request in June.

City officials previously told LAist that they expected to have a decision on the extension request in May. The California Transportation Commission, which administers the grant program, did not have the time extension request on its agenda for its May meeting last week.

Even if the California Transportation Commission grants the time extension, L.A. officials have said it will need an immediate boost in staffing.

“We just don’t have enough bodies,” Shirley Lau, one of the leaders of the city’s Bureau of Street Services, said in an April meeting to representatives for the L.A. Mayor and other executive offices.

Still, the city said the projects would be valuable.

“The return on investment for the city is substantial, most especially in uncertain financial times,” according to a report accompanying the April meeting.

Earlier this year, Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado and Tim McOsker, whose districts include the three projects, initially moved to cancel the state funding altogether before saying the city would instead pursue an extension.

A spokesperson for Jurado said that remains the plan.

“Councilmember Jurado is fighting to have these positions funded in the next fiscal year budget,” Alejandra Alarcon said in a statement. “Her plan remains to secure the extension, hire the necessary staff, and move these projects forward, not cancel them.”

The extension request

The state’s Active Transportation Program funds capital projects that promote walking, cycling or other non-motorized ways to get around.

The city has several projects that received funding through the program. The three in question would widen sidewalks, improve lighting and add tree shade, among other large-scale capital improvements, to major corridors currently hostile to non-vehicle traffic.

Jurisdictions that win the funds have to adhere to strict timelines to retain the money, which is allocated based on different phases of a capital project.

L.A. is looking for a six-year extension on the environmental review, design and right-of-way clearance phases for the projects, according to Joella Valdez, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Street Services. That means the city is projecting that it could begin soliciting bids from contractors to actually construct the mobility improvements by 2032.

Requests for time extensions are first reviewed by staff in the state’s Department of Transportation, known as Caltrans, according to Justin Behrens, a spokesperson for the California Transportation Commission.

A spokesperson for Caltrans confirmed that it has “received requests for time extension packages for City of LA projects that are currently under review.”

Caltrans staff then provides a recommendation to the Commission, whose 11 voting members get the final say.

Time extension is just the first step

According to the report Lau presented in April, the city would need to immediately hire 25 people across the Bureau of Street Services, other public works bureaus and the city’s Department of Transportation.

In a statement, the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said “this issue is emblematic of the failed and broken systems that Mayor Bass inherited.” Bass’ office said her proposed budget for the next fiscal year “restores funding for project delivery citywide.”

What happens next

If the commission doesn’t take up L.A.’s request for an extension or if the request is denied, the funding allocated for the initial, environmental review phase for the three projects would lapse and the city would have to find another source of funding to complete the work and progress to the next stage.

“ If we don't put ourselves on the [California Transportation Commission] agenda for June … we lose the money for that phase,” Carlos Rios with L.A.'s Department of Transportation said at the April meeting. “It's done. There's no coming back from it.”

Jurisdictions face the threat of being penalized on future grant applications if they don’t deliver on projects that already received funding, according to the April report.

“Failure to meet the deadlines … will have a significant impact on the city’s future ability to secure grant funding from the program,” the report says.

More than 600,000 Californians are at risk of losing CalFresh food benefits after expanded work requirements imposed by the federal government go into effect next month, state and county officials warned Wednesday.

The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law by President Donald Trump last summer, included “multiple significant changes to CalFresh,” the state’s version of SNAP that serves about 5.4 million people, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

They include requirements that some adults work, volunteer or participate in a school or job-training program for 20 hours a week.

People who don’t meet the expanded work requirements will be restricted to three months of CalFresh benefits every three years, according to the state Department of Social Services. CalFresh benefits can be used to buy almost any food, as well as seeds or plants that can grow food.

The new federal rules will now affect people experiencing homelessness, veterans and former foster youth, unless they are excused for other reasons.

About 260,000 people in L.A. County are at risk of losing CalFresh benefits under the new requirements, according to Hilda Solis, chair of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

“These expanded work requirements are going to create more barriers for people who are already struggling to meet ends,” she said at a briefing Wednesday. "It's not about creating opportunity, it's about making it harder for people to keep the benefits that they already qualify for.”

About 108,000 people in L.A. County have already lost their CalFresh benefits since the bill was passed last July, which Solis said is putting more pressure on local food banks and community-based organizations that are already operating at capacity to meet residents’ needs.

What are the changes to CalFresh?

Three main changes to CalFresh are planned for this year: expanded work requirements, disqualification of some people without U.S. citizenship and a new funding model that will pull more money from state and local sources instead of the federal government.

The work-requirement changes go into effect in June and are expected to affect about 665,000 Californians, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The rules will be expanded to include people up to age 64. Previously, it applied to those up to 54 years old, according to officials.

There are some exemptions, including people who would be unable to meet the necessary hours because of a physical or mental illness and those caring for children under 14 years old.

Back in April, eligibility guidelines changed for certain Californians without U.S. citizenship. They disqualified some groups from being eligible for CalFresh, including refugees and victims of trafficking, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

An estimated 72,000 people were expected to lose benefits because of limited eligibility.

In October, the way CalFresh is funded is expected to change, shifting more costs to states and counties. California could face roughly $480 million in new annual costs and $190 million for counties, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

How could it affect LA County?

The roughly 260,000 Angelenos likely to be affected by the expanded work requirements may not lose their benefits immediately. People will be evaluated on the new rules when they apply or recertify to keep their CalFresh benefits, according to Jackie Contreras, director of the county’s Department of Public Social Services.

Contreras said people don’t need to take action today, and the department will notify Angelenos directly before any changes affect their case. She encouraged residents to keep their contact information up to date, carefully review all notices and contact the department for questions or assistance.

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank is preparing to see people lose their benefits in the fall as recertifications roll in, according to CEO Michael Flood. The organization has been shoring up the supply through private donations from farmers and manufacturers, as well as purchasing food with funding from the county.

L.A. County committed $12 million to the Food Bank during the federal government shutdown last fall, which translated into about six million pounds of food, or roughly 5.5 million meals.

Flood said the organization was able to stretch those resources into this year, distributing some of the purchased food now and in the coming months to help offset the loss of CalFresh benefits. But the L.A. Regional Food Bank is already seeing an increased demand for food assistance, which he said has been driven primarily by higher prices and inflation.

“We all see it … shopping in a grocery store, those who, you know, need to fill up the gas tank to get to work,” Flood said. “That is something that's coming through loud and clear and really is causing ... challenges for people's budgets here locally.”

During a recent distribution in Baldwin Park, for example, food provided for about 2,000 households ran out half-an-hour before the event was slated to end, Flood said. He added that it’s likely the surge in demand will continue through the end of this year and into the next, and that the L.A. Regional Food Bank is “doing everything we can to try to increase resources.”

On the state level, $20 million has been deployed to help counties prepare for the expanded work requirements, according to Assemblymember Alex Lee, chair of the Assembly Human Services Committee.

Lee co-authored a bill that aims to exempt former foster youth from the expanded work requirements. The bill is pending in the state Legislature.