The Brief

On a Saturday afternoon at Milk Jar Cookies in Mid-Wilshire, Courtney Cowan tells customer after customer the same thing. She’s completely sold out.

“We opened at 10, so they started lining up around 9:15 or 9:30," she says. "We’re certainly serving everything we’ve got, trying to keep up with the beautiful demand."

Customers new and old have flocked to the shop to get one last taste of her delicious, signature dough. They’ve all heard the news: After 10 years, Cowan is reluctantly closing Milk Jar Cookies on Jan. 15.

Milk Jar Cookies has been inundated with orders since they announced their upcoming closure in late December.

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“It’s been bittersweet, because a lot of old faces have come,” she says. “My hope when I opened was to be like the Cheers of cookies, where we know everybody’s name. We’ve done that.”

Milk Jar Cookies is a true labor of love. Back in 2012, Cowan left her job in television to pursue her cookie dream full time. She opened a second Encino location in 2022. But in December, she announced both shops will close due to untenable financial hurdles.

“We’ve been fighting for our life for about six months,” she says through tears. “Unfortunately, it just became a mountain too high for us to climb.”

Cowan’s experience echoes that of many L.A. restaurateurs in 2023. Between steep food and labor costs, lingering pandemic effects, and six months of Hollywood strikes, it's been a devastating year for the food business. A long list of establishments were forced to reduce their operations or close their doors permanently.

Courtney Cowan opened Milk Jar Cookies in 2012, after leaving her job in television to pursue her cookie business dream full time.

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“When we’re busier than ever and we’re still overdue on bills … it just wasn’t enough,” Cowan says. “We’re just being squeezed from all sides.”

Pandemic pressure

Nearly four years ago, the world’s introduction to COVID-19 irreversibly changed the restaurant industry. Without the option of on-site dining, consumers moved toward carry out and delivery — shuttering countless restaurants.

Many of those that stayed afloat did so with the help of government relief programs that have now dried up, like Paycheck Protection Program loans and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.

Walter Manzke's Petty Cash Taqueria closed on Oct. 20 after 10 years serving tacos and cocktails.

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Those were crucial for seasoned chefs Walter Manzke and Margarita Manzke to keep their signature restaurant, République, open throughout the pandemic.

Unfortunately, the opposite happened at two of their other businesses: Petty Cash Taqueria shut its doors in October, and Sari Sari Store followed in December.

“Financially, they just couldn’t take the hit. There was just not enough volume going in there where it made sense to continue on,” Walter Manzke says.

James Beard award-winning chef Margarita Manzke ran Sari Sari Store at Grand Central Market for nearly seven years until it announced its closure in mid-December.

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Sari Sari Store — which built its home in Grand Central Market — relied on the steady flow of downtown L.A. office workers. Manzke says that’s completely changed with hybrid work. Offices just aren’t as bustling as they were in 2019.

Almost 75% of restaurant traffic today remains “off premises,” according to the National Restaurant Association. Before March 2020, it was closer to 61% — meaning people are more reliant on their takeout options than they were pre-pandemic.

On top of that, Southern California consumers are far less brand loyal compared to previous decades, according to San Diego-based restaurant consultant Ben Brown.

“People are always looking at that shiny next object, and it’s very difficult for a restaurant to keep up with that,” he says.

He also points to a boom in competition right after pandemic closures were lifted, which may have backfired for the industry.

“A lot of groups wanted to bring a new dining experience to the world once the world reopened. It seems that the market wasn’t really there to support all those new concepts.”

Rising costs

Los Angeles is expensive. Running a restaurant here isn’t cheap — or easy. Food service is a notoriously low-margin business within a competitive market, says Brown.

The traditional restaurant model splits things 30/30/30/10: 30% of revenue toward labor, 30% toward food and beverage, 30% toward fixed costs like rent and utilities, and 10% (at best) left over in profit.

Nowadays, rising costs of rent, food, and labor are distorting that breakdown.

“What you’re seeing is restaurants getting squeezed on all levels for that 10% to dissipate, and for a restaurant to be lucky to turn a profit whatsoever,” says Brown.

The rising cost of food is a top concern for operators nationwide. In Los Angeles, 65% of restauranteurs reported that all or most of their vendors increased prices in the past year, according to data by restaurant management system TouchBistro.

Labor is also pricey. California offered one of the highest minimum wages in 2024, at $16 — up from $15.50 last year. Under Assembly Bill 1228, hourly wages at large fast food chains will increase to $20 starting in April. Small business owners hiring from the same pool of workers say they can’t compete.

“Of course, people need to have a living wage. There's no question about it. The problem is: how do you operate a business successfully in order to accommodate the rising cost of labor, when your customer is not willing to pay the price premium that comes with that?”

Silver Lake Spanish restaurant Bar Moruno closed in early November.

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Bar Moruno

In November, chef Chris Feldmeier made the painful decision to close his beloved Bar Moruno, an upscale Spanish restaurant in Silver Lake.

“Even if you’re running the best restaurant … your labor is up to 40%. It’s really hard, there’s not a lot of profit or anything left over,” he says.

As a “kitchen guy,” Feldmeier is all for higher wages. But he says the restaurant industry as a whole hasn't been able to keep up. “We ran a fantastic food cost to try to mitigate some of these hourly wages and stuff, and we still had a tough go at it.”

Restaurateurs like Feldmeier haven't been going down without a fight. Cost-saving measures like mandatory service charges and smaller menus are more common. "Many of these operations have had to fundamentally re-engineer how they conduct business," says Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.

Menu prices are 10-25% higher than they were in 2022, according to the James Beard Foundation.

Empty shelves within Milk Jar Cookies' industrial refrigerator are common as orders pour in during their final weeks in business.

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Over the years, Cowan raised her cookie prices from $3 to $4, and began selling supplemental items like snackable dough, ice cream, and merchandise. She still couldn’t keep up with steep rent increases and a utility bill now 50% higher each month, while still paying her staff a competitive wage.

“Every single facet of owning a business has become more expensive and more difficult,” she says.

Hollywood strikes

In this company town, small businesses struggled through last year’s dual strikes by writers and actors — even while supporting them.

Cowan offered discounts for both guilds, and passed out cookies on several picket lines. However, she says the stall hit some small business owners even harder than COVID.

“When all of the orders from that whole industry cease and evaporate for almost eight months, that makes a massive impact,” she says.

The California economy lost up to $7 billion from the strikes, according to estimates by Todd Holmes, professor of entertainment industry management at California State University, Northridge. He says restaurants saw a 20-40% loss in revenue.

“Normally, they might have three different deliveries they’re doing in a day to studio sets, and it went from three a day to maybe, one or two a week,” he says.

Milk Jar Cookies was among the places that counted on set deliveries and gifts for agents and managers, in addition to events that were canceled during the strikes. “Our whole town depends on that industry, whether it’s toy stores or doggy daycares or bakeries or restaurants,” says Cowan.

Bar Moruno’s business also suffered from the loss of industry clientele in Silver Lake. Chef Feldmeier likens the entertainment industry to Los Angeles’ “steel mill" — if it shuts down, everything shuts down.

“I think that was a death blow to a lot of restaurants, including mine."

Winter blues

December was especially flooded with closure announcements, from classic gems like Marco’s Italian Restaurant to The Federal Bar in North Hollywood.

That’s probably not a coincidence; winter is a notoriously difficult time for restaurant operators, according to restaurant consultant Brown. 

“It’s colder out, and people dine out less. That said, if a restaurant is going to stay open during the winter, they’re typically going to want to stay open through the holidays.” 

Many places depend on that holiday bump to get them through the rest of winter. January and February is when they’ll assess whether it was enough. That means more closures are likely over the next few months.

For Cowan’s Milk Jar Cookies, even the holiday rush — which they can usually count on — didn’t cut it this year. They didn’t get a single order from an entertainment industry company.  

“It just wasn’t enough,” Cowan says. “With all the other steps we had taken, I was really hopeful that we could get on the road to recovery. It just became very obvious that it was a hill too steep.”

Closing up shop

In its final weeks, the energy inside Milk Jar Cookies resembles its bustling, pre-pandemic self, filled with “beautiful, blissful chaos,” as Cowan puts it.

Orders spit out of a kitchen printer as she greets dedicated customers with teary eyes and hugs, thanking them for years of patronage and heartfelt words. They jot notes in a guest book before saying goodbye.

Between taking orders, Cowan says goodbye to long-time customers and friends who pass through Milk Jar Cookies.

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Sallie Patrick — screenwriter and former co-worker from Cowan’s television days — walks into the shop, two kids in tow. Cowan gets emotional at the sight of her friend, who encouraged her to pursue her cookie dream in the first place.

“I’m so proud of her. It was so cool to show my kids an example of this woman who just decided to start this business, and was so successful at it,” Patrick says.

For Cowan, it’s always been bigger than cookies. The outpouring of community support has reminded her that she’s not alone in that sentiment.

She's not sure what's next, but she's sure how she'll remember Milk Jar Cookies: “On the best of days or the worst of days, you could come in and leave feeling a little better than when you came in.”

As this year’s legislative session speeds to a close, a handful of bills focused on the state’s homelessness crisis have made the cut so far.

Though homelessness improved slightly last year, there are still an estimated 182,000 Californians with nowhere to call home. The issue is top of mind for many lawmakers in Sacramento, who are pushing a range of laws that would do everything from free up state funds for sober housing, dispose of RVs on city streets and create a plan for homelessness prevention.

Here are a few of the bills to watch as they approach their final votes and await a potential signature from the governor:

State-funded sober homeless housing

Gov. Gavin Newsom hit Assemblymember Matt Haney with a surprise veto last year, blocking his bill that would have allowed state funding to pay for sober homeless housing.

Haney is back with a similar bill, which he says will give people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction the choice to live in an environment free from dangerous temptations.

“A lot of people who are on the street right now or exiting shelter programs would prefer drug-free housing options,” the San Francisco Democrat said. “And right now there are few options, if any, for them.”

Last year, Assembly Bill 255 would have allowed cities and counties to spend up to 10% of their state funding on “recovery housing” where people are required to stay sober. That was a tweak to California’s “housing first” strategy, which emphasizes a no-strings-attached approach to housing and generally frowns on barriers that require people to stay clean or participate in treatment.

In his veto message, Newsom said the state already allows the state to fund sober housing. His office pointed to a new set of guidelines on the subject, published online the day after Newsom’s veto.

But Haney says that guidance is unclear, and housing providers still believe state funds are off-limits for sober housing. The proof: Haney said that as far as he knows, no one has used state funds to pay for sober housing since the governor’s veto last year.

His new bill, Assembly bill 1556, lays out the rules a sober housing provider must follow to be eligible for state funding. Each provider must have a policy to handle relapses, which is supposed to help the resident get sober again, but also can include evicting them if they continue to use alcohol or drugs and do not follow the policy. That worries critics, including Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, who fears it could put people back on the streets.

Unlike last year’s bill, AB 1556 doesn’t limit the amount of state money that could go to sober housing. The bill comes with no additional funding, meaning the more money that goes to sober housing, the less will be left for the low-barrier housing needed for people who aren’t ready to overcome their addiction, Rapport said. That’s even more worrying because the Trump administration also is prioritizing sober housing for federal funds – creating an even bigger gap in low-barrier housing, she said.

“We don’t really want to see Trump policy implemented in California at the state level,” she said.

This year, Haney is expecting a more positive reaction from Newsom.

“The governor’s office has been very collaborative and responsive from the beginning this time around,” he said.

Solutions to homelessness

Most people in California agree that homelessness is a problem. But exactly how much would it cost to solve it? And how could California get there?

It turns out, the state has never actually done that math publicly. Assembly Bill 1165 would force the state to do just that. The bill by Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Gardena Democrat, would require the California Department of Housing and Community Development to create a financial plan to solve homelessness, as well as performance metrics for success, by January 2028. That would include determining how much money the state would need to meet the housing needs of everyone who is homeless now or expected to become homeless in the future, and how the state could achieve that goal.

The state has estimated California must plan for 2.5 million homes over the next eight years to meet demand and ease the state’s affordable housing shortage. AB 1165 would require the state to go into more detail about what resources are needed, and lay out a plan to meet that goal.

The Corporation for Supportive Housing estimates it would take $8.1 billion a year for 12 years to solve homelessness. The budget the legislature proposed this month includes $900 million for Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention funds – the state’s main source of homeless funding.

If it passes, AB 1165 could help hold legislators and the next governor accountable and push the state to spend its homelessness funds more wisely, Rapport said. A 2024 audit found the state failed to track its homelessness spending or measure results.

The bill doesn’t come with new resources to fight homelessness, meaning implementing a plan to end homelessness could be tough in the current tight budget environment.

Another measure, Assembly Bill 1924, would require the California Interagency Council on Homelessness to establish a statewide strategy to prevent homelessness before it happens. If passed, the plan would need to be in place by July 2027.

Prevention has become an increasingly popular way to tackle homelessness, as it’s much easier and cheaper to help someone hold onto their housing than it is to re-house them once they wind up on the streets. Organizations already using this strategy have found that giving someone several thousand dollars can allow them to avoid homelessness.

Like AB 1165, the prevention bill also comes with no new funding.

Forcing cities to report homelessness and housing data

How much data on homelessness should California cities that aren’t getting state funds be required to report to the state? That’s the question behind a bill by Senator Catherine Blakespear, which has received pushback from some of her colleagues.

Counties, continuums of care (regional groups that coordinate homelessness services) and the 14 largest cities are eligible for money from the state’s Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program. In exchange for the funds, those entities must report certain data about their homeless populations, the services they offer, and the progress they’ve made getting people off the streets.

Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, wants the rest of California’s cities, even if they get no funding, to report that data, too.

“Homelessness is a regional problem that does not stop at city or county boundaries,” she said during a recent Senate floor hearing.

Senate Bill 866 alarmed some city leaders, who complained they don’t have the staff or money to compile that extensive amount of data. Dozens of cities oppose the bill, as does the League of California Cities.

As a concession, Blakespear agreed to exempt all cities with 50,000 or fewer people – eliminating about half of California’s cities.

But that wasn’t enough to appease some of her colleagues, including Republican Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil from Modesto, who called the bill an un-funded mandate for cities.

“I have to ask,” she said, “if we have this level of opposition, not just from rural communities, not just from Republican-represented communities, but from cities across the state, why do we have a half-cooked bill on this Legislature's floor?”

No arrest warrants for people who miss court dates

Assembly Bill 2122 doesn’t specifically mention unhoused Californians, but advocates say it would have big implications for people who sleep outside.

Cities around California are cracking down on street homelessness, leading to increasing numbers of arrests and citations in some places. People are ticketed for unauthorized camping, but they can also be cited for other offenses such as loitering, trespassing, public urination, violating park rules, and more. Typically, the police hand them a paper citation that says when they are supposed to show up in court.

It’s common for unhoused people to miss those court dates – they may lack transportation, be unable to leave their belongings or pets unattended, or simply lose track of the date amid the unpredictability of life on the street. When that happens, the court issues a bench warrant for their arrest. The next time they encounter the police, they could go to jail.

Not only does that cost the city money, but it also could make it harder for the person to get housing, Rapport said.

Assembly Bill 2122, by Assemblymembers Ash Kalra and Josh Lowenthal, would change that. If someone is cited for an infraction (which could include loitering or other minor offenses) and then misses their court date, they could not be jailed as a result. It would also prohibit courts from issuing arrest warrants for people who fail to pay traffic tickets.

The bill applies only to infractions. Different cities classify crimes differently – in some places, an offense such as loitering might be an infraction, while in other places it could be a misdemeanor.

The California State Sheriffs’ Association is opposed to the bill, and says it sends the message that it’s acceptable to fail to appear in court.

RVs on city streets

As unhoused Californians increasingly turn to vehicles for shelter, multiple legislators have turned their attention to addressing the resulting rows of RVs, trailers and lived-in cars lining streets up and down the state.

Last year, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, a Los Angeles Democrat, pushed through a bill intended to make it easier for local governments to dispose of inoperable RVs parked on their streets. The goal was to address vehicles that create blight in neighborhoods and are breeding grounds for bad behavior, he said.

He ended up amending the bill to apply only in Los Angeles and Alameda counties. But by making that change, Gonzalez inadvertently made the law basically unusable. While the counties of Alameda and Los Angeles themselves could use the law to dispose of RVs, the cities within them could not. The Los Angeles City Council found that out the hard way, when it voted to establish an RV disposal program, only to have it shot down in court.

Assembly Bill 647 fixes that oversight by allowing cities within those two counties to destroy RVs valued at $4,000 or less. Opponents worry the bill will lead local governments to seize more lived-in RVs, forcing people out of the relative safety of a vehicle and onto the street.

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

President Donald Trump blew up what could have been a win for his party — and he did it to force lawmakers to pass an elections overhaul bill that has been all but doomed in the Senate.
On Wednesday, Trump abruptly canceled a scheduled signing of bipartisan legislation aimed at bringing down housing costs, saying he would only sign it after Congress approved the SAVE America Act.
This move wasn't entirely surprising because Trump has been saying for months that he won't sign any bill until the SAVE America Act is passed.
His obsession with the SAVE America Act has already scuttled the reauthorization of a surveillance tool and nearly ruined GOP efforts to increase immigration enforcement spending.
The SAVE America Act currently doesn't have the needed 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster – and Republican leaders are reluctant to get rid of the filibuster to pass the bill, as Trump has suggested.

A big reason Trump has been obsessed with getting the SAVE America Act sent to his desk for signature ahead of what could be a pretty bruising midterms for the GOP, is that he believes it would ensure that Republicans never lose another election for at least 50 years.
Much of this belief is based on false claims that Democrats only win elections because of noncitizen participation in elections, which according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, and many experts, is extremely rare.
But the president's case for the SAVE America Act is rooted in this misinformation. Here's what's in it:

1. It requires proof of citizenship to register to vote

The SAVE America Act specifically prohibits states from accepting and processing voter registration applications in a federal election "unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship."

Citizenship is already required to register to vote in the U.S. and states have a system to make sure that noncitizens do not make it on to the voter rolls. And when the system fails, it fails in a very limited number of cases.
And the list of what is acceptable to prove citizenship under the SAVE America Act is fairly limited. It includes U.S. passports and birth certificates, as well as some state and tribal IDs. This documentation is prohibitive in some cases: 1 in 10 eligible voters, or 21.3 million people, said in a national survey conducted by a voting rights organization that they either "do not have or could not quickly find" proof of citizenship records.
Trump has tried to require proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote via executive order, but that effort was permanently blocked by a federal court on Wednesday.

2. It requires photo ID to cast a ballot

The bill requires that voters show one of these valid forms of identification to cast a ballot in person. Notably, it also requires that people voting by mail provide "a copy of a valid photo identification" with their ballot.
If they can't do that, they have to provide the last four digits of their Social Security number and sign an affidavit from state officials that says they were unable to get an ID "after making reasonable efforts to obtain such a copy." Voter ID requirements are largely popular among voters. And most states require some form of ID to vote, already. However, voters aren't as supportive of a sweeping overhaul that would change various aspects of American elections.

3. It requires that state officials remove noncitizens from their voter rolls

States routinely check their voter registration list for people who shouldn't be there – whether it's people who passed away or who lost their voting rights due to legal trouble.
And that also includes those who were improperly registered. However, when states have tried to identify and purge alleged noncitizens from their rolls, their efforts have gone wrong in some cases.

4. It requires that states submit their complete voter rolls to the Trump administration

States would have to turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists to the Department of Homeland Security through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

These voter lists contain sensitive voter data like driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, which is why many states have refused to turn over this information when the Trump administration began asking for them last year.

The Department of Justice has since been suing states across the country to obtain these lists, but the courts have consistently blocked those efforts. A federal court also recently ruled that the Trump administration's expanded SAVE system is unlawful and cannot be used in its current form.

5. It creates new penalties against election officials

Lastly, the SAVE America Act creates a private right of action against an election official who registers someone who didn't provide proof of citizenship. It also establishes new criminal penalties against officials who register people without citizenship documents.

Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

A fire at the Lineage cold storage facility in Boyle Heights was knocked down​ Wednesday evening, a week after solar panels on its roof ignited and blanketed the region in harmful smoke.

The Los Angeles Fire Department announced the fire was extinguished at 5:58 p.m., and said there were no active flames and no threat of fire spread.

“While the fire has been knocked down, debris within the structure continues to smolder as crews transition into the overhaul phase of operations,” LAFD posted on Instagram.

“The chief’s goal was to have us put this out today,” Milo Cope, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Fire Department, told Boyle Heights Beat on Wednesday morning.

“They’ll manage tearing this building apart and we can stand by for any small smoldering fires that need to be addressed,” Cope said. 

Firefighters will now begin handing over operations to the owners of the building. 

The fire at the cold storage facility began burning last Wednesday on a solar panel farm on the warehouse’s roof that later burned through the rubber insulation around the building. It reignited on Friday, with the city of Los Angeles and the governor’s office declaring an emergency the following day. 

Since the fire broke out, residents living closest to the facility have endured smoky conditions that they say have disrupted daily life, affected their health and limited their ability to work as firefighters continued battling the blaze.

Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday said a mandatory evacuation “is not necessary;” state guidelines tie evacuation orders to immediate threats to life or property. For those who wish to voluntarily leave, “we have the facilities for you,” she said, pointing to the smoke relief shelter available. 

She and LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore have repeatedly advised residents sensitive to smoke or who have respiratory concerns to stay indoors, close their windows, wear masks when they do need to go outside and head to established shelters if they need more relief.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado on Monday called for the public release of air quality and environmental testing results in English and Spanish and for a full report detailing the materials that burned at the facility. Boyle Heights residents, Jurado said, “deserve the very basic right to know what is in the air.” 

On Tuesday, Supervisor Hilda Solis urged agencies to be diligent in the cleanup process. “Some of our communities have become particularly alarmed about being the dumping ground for hazardous or toxic material…,” Solis said.

Poor air quality on Sunday led several schools hosting summer programs to announce they would move classes elsewhere on Monday as a precaution. The school relocation will last until Friday, said officials from LAUSD’s Region East.

Students from Dena Elementary and Dacotah Early Education Center were relocated to Sunrise Elementary, Eastman Early Education Center students moved to Humphreys Elementary, and Stevenson Middle School students were moved to Belvedere Middle School, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District.