The Brief

Emiliano Slesaransky, 17, joined Santa Monica High School's football team as a freshman and — at the urging of coaches and teammates— started hitting the gym whenever possible: in the morning, after school and on the weekends. The people he met there would share their strategies for bulking up.

"They would take protein powders, other supplements like some people I know take ashwagandha, and maybe creatine," he says, citing popular energy and exercise-enhancing supplements. Emiliano started taking some of them, too.

But his dad, Eduardo Slesaransky, wanted to make sure his son's diet — and attitude — remained balanced: "My concern was the influence that social media has on these supplements and these kinds of things and the culture of bodybuilding and the gyms."

Protein supplements are big on social media, where influencers are helping drive sales of protein bars, shakes and powders. A poll of parents by the Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan last fall found 40% of teens consumed some type of protein supplement in the past year.

"Teen boys were more likely — twice as likely — to consume protein every day," says Sarah Clark, a research scientist and co-director of the poll.

Girls, she says, more often relied on supplements as meal replacements, and the inspiration to consume protein shakes, bars or powders often came from coaches, peers, or influencers on social media. But Clark says parents were also among those promoting protein to their children.

"I wonder if, as parents, we are recognizing how much messaging we have taken in about protein being good," she says. "We have absorbed this messaging: That's the key to being healthy," she says, when in fact it is only one factor in a balanced, healthy diet.

The vast majority of teens already get enough protein in their diet without supplements, pediatric dietitian Abriana Cain says.

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How much is enough?

There is also such a thing as too much protein, says Abriana Cain, a pediatric dietitian with Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. As a general rule, Cain tells teens and parents to gauge protein intake based on size — benchmarked at roughly 1 gram of protein a day per kilogram of body weight. (For a 150-pound teen, that amounts to about 68 grams of protein per day — or the rough equivalent of a cup of cooked chicken, a cup of yogurt and a cup of black beans.)

"It might even increase from there, based on their physical activity needs," she says.

Cain says more than 100 grams a day can damage the kidneys and liver in the longer term. It can also cause stomach pain, as it did for one of her patients. "They were eating protein supplements with all of their meals and also with all of their snacks, and they were having a lot of abdominal pain."

The vast majority of teens, Cain says, already get enough protein in their diet without supplements.

There are also concerns about the marketing of supplements.

There is no quality control for these products, notes pediatrician and eating disorder expert Dr. Jason Nagata, at the University of California San Francisco. Supplements, including protein bars and powders, are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in the same way as drugs — so they're not tested before going on the market, and their ingredients aren't verified before they are sold. Manufacturers are responsible for evaluating the safety and labelling of their products. The FDA does have the authority to take action against any adulterated or misbranded dietary supplement product after it reaches the market.

"I think it's important for teens and parents to know that there isn't that kind of rigorous quality control, especially when you're getting mixtures of muscle-building supplements and products," he says. "I would just be very cautious."

Nagata advises researching, reading ingredient labels and buying directly from known companies. Some products have been found to have contaminants such as heavy metals, bacteria, or chemicals or adulterants not listed on the label.

Eating disorders are up

Separately, Nagata is concerned that the protein craze is contributing to the alarming increase in eating disorders among boys over the past two decades worldwide. He observes that over that time period, action figures like Batman and Superman are sold with bigger muscles, and pressures on ordinary teenagers to post attractive photos of themselves to be popular online have increased.

"The masculine body ideal has become increasingly large and muscular, and so more and more boys are trying to become muscular now than they have ever before," he says.

Emiliano Slesaransky stopped using protein powders about a year ago, he says, largely because he started forgetting to take it.

His father, Eduardo, says his son still looks very strong and fit, but is no longer fixated with bulking up for sports. "He's focusing on getting into college."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Unions representing private security guards would gain a new advantage in organizing under California legislation that would compel companies to reach labor contracts if the firms want to provide use-of-force training.

State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas’ Senate Bill 1203 also seeks to raise pay for security guards and it would require their companies to offer more rigorous training.

Smallwood-Cuevas, a Democrat from Los Angeles, said guards on average make around $44,000 a year, the state poverty line, despite their companies generating an estimated $34 billion in revenue. She said guards also are being asked to take on increasingly dangerous roles without enough training.

“This bill asks us to stand up with these officers to strengthen and improve these working conditions and to ensure that across California that we are not only improving safety, but we're also helping to build a safety pathway for workers in this sector,” Smallwood-Cuevas told the Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee last week.

The committee voted to advance her bill to the Senate Public Safety Committee which is scheduled to discuss the measure Tuesday.

Security companies say the measure would add at least $1 billion to their costs each year and lead to fewer guards protecting the public.

“California has led the nation in training requirements, and we applaud that,” Dean Grafilo, a lobbyist for private security firm Allied Universal told the committee. “However, this bill goes much further than is necessary or reasonable, and we simply cannot ignore the staggering financial burden this bill will impose on our industry and, by extension, California.”

There are an estimated 330,000 private security personnel in California, making the industry one of the state’s largest workforces, Smallwood-Cuevas said. California businesses and local governments are increasingly hiring guards to protect them from smash-and-grab robberies and other crimes. Security firms also will be called upon at this year’s World Cup games in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, the 2027 Super Bowl in Inglewood and the 2028 Olympics in California.

The measure, according to the business committee’s analysis, would expand training standards, increase annual training for security guards and require companies to compensate guards for time spent training.

It would only allow companies to provide “power to arrest” and use-of-force training if agreed to in union contracts. Those agreements would require workers to earn at least 30% above California’s $16.90 minimum wage and get overtime.

The bill also would require state regulators to review and set minimum wages for security guards by 2028. Security industry officials say even a $1-an-hour raise for security workers would add $750 million to their costs each year.

“SB 1203 will eliminate jobs making companies that seek to automate security functions more competitive thereby displacing the very people the bill intends to help,” David Chandler, president of the California Association of Licensed Security Agencies, Guards & Associates, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

Labor is a powerful Capitol force

The bill is the latest effort by labor unions to use the Legislature to pressure companies to allow unionization. The most notable recent effort was a multi-year legislative push that successfully got ride-share companies to back legislation that allowed their drivers to unionize.

About 20% of private security guards are unionized, according to the industry, slightly higher than the rest of the state’s workforce, in which about 15% of workers are unionized.

Unions have tremendous clout in the Legislature, due in large part to the money they spend on the political campaigns of Democratic lawmakers. Unions also deploy their networks of organizers to advocate for their chosen candidates.

Service Employees International Union, the bill’s sponsor, is arguably the most influential labor organization in the state. The union and its affiliates have donated at least $21.4 million to lawmakers’ campaigns since 2015, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.

Meanwhile, 33 of the 120 members of the Legislature are current or former union members, according to a California Labor Federation tally.

Some, like Smallwood-Cuevas, used to work for the unions that would benefit from their legislation.

Before entering politics, Smallwood-Cuevas once worked as an organizer for a local affiliate of SEIU that unionized security officers. Her campaigns have received at least $119,100 from SEIU and its affiliates since 2021, according to Digital Democracy.

Committee backs union bill

The union’s political clout as well as lawmakers’ sympathies for underpaid workers doing a dangerous job was on display last week at the business and professions committee. No committee members voted against the bill.

Sen. Bob Archuleta, a Democrat representing Norwalk, asked Smallwood-Cuevas if he could be added to the bill as a symbolic co-author.

“We use the term ‘first responders,’” he told the committee. “Sometimes it is these individuals and individuals like them that are first responders.”

Archuleta, a former reserve officer at the Montebello Police Department, said he used to arrive at crime scenes and “sure enough, there was a security officer there,” telling police “I got your back.”

Archuleta’s campaign has received at least $79,600 from SEIU and its affiliates, according to Digital Democracy.

One Democrat on the business committee expressed concerns.

Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat representing the Van Nuys area, said she didn’t have a problem with the bill’s intent to raise wages for guards. After all, she said she worked for five years as a security guard.

But she said she felt the bill’s training requirements were duplicative or would override a law that the Legislature had passed last year on security personnel standards and training.

She said she also had concerns the requirements in the bill could end up preventing companies from hiring qualified training consultants due to restrictions limiting who’s authorized to do that work.

“Right now, there are certain retired police officers that are turned to by security companies to provide that training,” she said. “And they’re no longer going to be given that option.”

Despite her concerns, she did not vote on the bill instead of casting a formal “no” vote.

As CalMatters has reported, legislators regularly dodge tough votes instead of voting “no” to avoid angering influential lobbying organizations.

Menjivar’s campaign has received at least $16,900 from SEIU, according to secretary of state filings.

“There were provisions within SB 1203 that she liked and a hard ‘no’ vote would send the signal that there is nothing the author or sponsors can do to move her to an ‘aye’ vote down the line,” Menjivar’s spokesperson, Teodora Reyes, said in an email.

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

Eight months since it was supposed to open, Long Beach’s new youth homeless shelter is still empty, plagued by plumbing problems and a long-running legal conflict that’s just now being made public. The nonprofit originally selected to run the shelter says it’s on the verge of suing the city for pulling the plug on its contract and withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments that have left it on the brink of collapse.

It’s a dispute that has been unfolding for nearly a year, between the city and the nonprofit April Parker Foundation. But at the shelter’s premature grand opening in August, all seemed well.

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson cut the ceremonial ribbon in front of a small crowd, including about 30 foundation employees.

The foundation, by this point, had been a local city contractor for years, doing youth intervention and homelessness work. It was poised to run the new shelter under a $500,000 contract the City Council unanimously approved in May.

The shelter had a dozen beds, meant for young adults at transitional age, who had recently exited the foster care system or juvenile justice and needed special help, like counseling, financial management, a schedule and a place to sleep. But that work never started.

In late October, the city says, it notified the April Parker Foundation that it wouldn’t be signing with them because of concerns about how the foundation billed for some of its prior work.

Since 2023, Long Beach had contracted the foundation to provide rapid rehousing services for homeless people. Then last summer, it stopped paying them. Officials later explained that invoices were coming in late, inadequately filled out or missing required documentation to justify the expense.

“We’re not making any accusations of fraud or even breach of contract,” Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero said, but the timing of the invoices “was not consistent with their contractual requirements, and the supporting documentation wasn’t provided to substantiate all the amounts on the invoices.”

Masero said the city has sought to resolve the issue with the April Parker Foundation, but added that “we’re not obligated under the contract to make payment until they’ve provided all the necessary information and documentation.”

April Parker, founder of the April Parker Foundation, alleges the city is manufacturing an excuse not to pay her. She said she has sent over hundreds of documents and receipts detailing every transaction tied to the program.

“We delivered binders to them, binders that contain 100% documentation on every invoice, every transaction, everything,” she said.

After providing those, Parker said communication with the city largely stopped, save for some correspondence through her attorneys. She remains unsure of what the city thinks her staff did wrong.

It’s the second time recently that Long Beach has cut off a homelessness contractor over billing concerns, as a long-running audit of the city’s homelessness programs inches closer to being finished. Parker said she was informed about the audit, but — despite her repeated texts and calls to city health officials — was never told if it found any problems within her organization.

Parker said she was blindsided by the city withholding payments across all its contracts with her, some as early as March 2025, as she was ramping up to run the new youth shelter.

The shelter is in West Long Beach, near the city’s Multi-Service Center in a warehouse district west of the Los Angeles River.

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“I do not know what is wrong with anything I’ve ever submitted because they’ve never told me what’s actually wrong, nothing,” Parker said. “So how can I fix something that I don’t even know what’s wrong? I gave them everything, and they’ve never come back and said, ‘Well, this is wrong, or that is wrong.’”

On the city’s assurance that she would be running the shelter, she said, she hired staff, rewrote policies, updated insurance and hosted an open house at the facility. The foundation was even invited to the ribbon ceremony.

Then, in a reversal, she said, the city told her they planned to “take the shelter in-house.” Without any written notice or further explanation, city officials, she said, assumed control of the shelter and denied access to her staff.

Parker has since filed multiple legal claims against the city, alleging they improperly withheld payments for her nonprofit’s work on the youth shelter, rapid rehousing and gun violence intervention. They say the city owes Parker more than $1 million.

She said those costs have crippled her nonprofit, forcing it to cut its youth shelter staff, reduce its administrative team and close its 36-bed transitional shelter. Parker said she had to take out a line of credit and stop paying herself a salary to save her organization.

Her next step may be to sue. The city has denied the legal claims and sought to reopen the youth shelter with a new operator.

At a City Council meeting this week, Homeless Services Bureau Manager Paul Duncan blamed the delayed opening on faulty plumbing. In December, months after the decision to kick out the April Parker Foundation, crews discovered cracked, clogged and faulty underground pipes that were causing toilets to back up.

Renovations, which are under warranty, Duncan said, are expected to conclude soon. When the shelter opens next month, it will be run by Jovenes, Inc., an LA-based nonprofit. The City Council approved a one-year contract with the organization at its meeting Tuesday.

“Glad to hear we have a real opening date in early May, and I look forward to moving forward,” Mayor Rex Richardson said after the vote.

The April Parker Foundation’s name was not mentioned.

Roughly three years after above-average rainfall fueled a devastating landslide in Rancho Palos Verdes, the landscape has become almost unrecognizable. Homes, ripped apart by the land movement, have been wiped away, creating swaths of unusable open space. Trying to slow the landslide has pushed the city to the financial brink.

But also caught in the landslide’s crosshairs is a beloved seaside network of trails that continues to be pulled apart and will never be the same.

The area was once green rolling hills offering spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island. Now, much of the land is riddled with 20-foot chasms, some of which span 12 feet.

For decades, land movement was minimal. But above-average rainfall in 2022 and 2023 rapidly accelerated — up to 1 foot per week in some places — prompting Southern California Edison and SoCalGas to shut off utilities for hundreds of residents.

Landslide damage has closed dozens of trails in the Portuguese Bend area of Rancho Palos Verdes on April 4.

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Landslide damage has closed dozens of trails in the Portuguese Bend community area of Rancho Palos Verdes on April 4.

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Land movement has since slowed to about 1.6 inches a week, thanks in part to wells the city installed that suck water out of the ground, but damage to the around 16 miles of trails remains and will likely never be abated.

"We don't traverse those areas on a regular basis. We occasionally use drones to look at the damage,” said Ara Mihranian, Rancho Palos Verdes’ city manager. “You can't get across certain trails, so if we even went down into a certain area, we wouldn't be able to continue because of the open fissures in the ground.”

William Lavoie of the Palos Verdes South Bay group of the Sierra Club has hiked trails in the 1,500 acre-Palos Verdes Nature Reserve once a week for about 25 years. Before the city closed off the area, he said he saw a telephone pole “ tipping at about a 30-degree angle.”

Landslides resulted in a home being severely damaged in Rancho Palos Verdes on April 4.

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“ I understand why they closed the trails because there were some pretty good-sized fissures,” he said. “It would be very sad if somebody broke a leg or twisted an ankle or broke an ankle.”

The effects on nature

But the destruction hasn’t been a total loss.

The California gnatcatcher, a small songbird that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls “threatened” and the endangered Palos Verdes blue butterfly rely on certain host plants within the preserve.

“ The habitat that supports the wildlife has been fragmented, has been damaged with fissures opening up in the ground, splitting apart. Coastal sage scrub has actually been sucked in by the fissures,” Mihranian said. “That impacts the corridors and the wildlife patterns that you see out in the preserve.”

But Cris Sarabia, conservation director for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, said the species can also benefit from less human activity.

“ Both of those endangered species have wings so they could essentially fly,” he said. “So the fissures on the trails or the cracks in the ground don't necessarily cause big impacts to them because they're able to move around.”

Sarabia said his organization is also tracking the cactus wren bird that resides in a cactus found within the landslide area.

“ We have been working closely with the different entities doing the [mitigation] work to avoid as much habitat as possible, but unfortunately some of these areas overlap,” he said.

Meanwhile, the conservancy is trying to salvage the cactus and preparing for restoration of the sites, collecting native seeds and growing new plants.

But the true extent of the damage and the effects to wildlife are unclear, Mihranian said, because city officials haven’t been able to go in to do a full assessment — the area is too unsafe.

 ”It's going to be a herculean effort and a very costly one as well,” Mihranian said of repairing the damage.

A colossal financial drain 

When the current fiscal year ends in June, Rancho Palos Verdes will have spent close $65 million on efforts related to the landslide since October 2022. For context, the city’s annual operating budget is around $40 million.

“ The city has taken a huge hit on this emergency response,” Mihranian said.

Rancho Palos Verdes has appealed to state and federal officials for assistance, but with little to no success.

Adding salt to the wounds, the city has also lost out on revenue from parking fees for the preserve. Revenue generated at the Abalone Cove Park lot has dropped from $150,000 each year, to just $11,000, according to the city. Revenue from parking near Del Cerro Park also decreased from around $32,000 in fiscal year 2022-23 to just $4,000.

Not to mention all the homes that have been lost, uprooting the lives of residents who haven’t been able to resell, instead relying on a government-backed buy back program.

Alternative trail routes

Lavoie, the Sierra Club member, said despite the trail closures, the vast open space in the Palos Verdes Peninsula means there are plenty of alternatives.

Here are some of his favorites:

• Lavoie affectionately calls the trail behind Highridge Park “the maze.” It’s an easy one-hour walk and you get to share the trail with horses. 
• Malaga Cove: Pass Neptune fountain, the library and post office to continue along a grassy hill shaded by eucalyptus trees. Use the utility pathway to reach La Venta Inn.
• The Via Buena stairs in Lunada Bay. 
• There are lots of great trails that start at Ernie Howlett Park.   

Anyone can join the Palos Verdes South Bay group of the Sierra Club on their hikes in the peninsula. Check their calendar for meeting spots and times.

Soccer fans who want to celebrate the World Cup at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum will be able to purchase tickets to the FIFA Fan Festival on April 22.

The four-day celebration begins the same day as the tournament, June 11, and goes through June 14, and will include live music, match broadcasts and other entertainment, according to FIFA.

Los Angeles is hosting eight tournament matches at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood this summer, including the match between the U.S. and Paraguay on June 12.

What you need to know

General admission tickets are $10, and reserved club and loge seats are $30. Children younger than 12 years old are free.

Tickets will be sold through Ticketmaster, according to L.A. Memorial Coliseum officials.

If event days are not sold out, fans can also purchase tickets at the Coliseum’s box office at Gate 29.

The venue does enforce strict bag rules. Any bags must be clear, and exceptions can be made for special circumstances, like medical or infant care items.

What games will be broadcast? 

Fans can catch some World Cup matches on big screens. Here’s the schedule:

June 11
Mexico vs. South Africa, noon

June 12 
Canada vs Bosnia and Herzegovina, noon
U.S.A. vs Paraguay, 6 p.m.

June 13 
Brazil vs Morocco, 3 p.m.
Haiti vs Scotland, 6 p.m.

June 14 
Germany vs Curacao, 10 a.m. Netherlands vs Japan, 1 p.m.

How do I get to the Coliseum? 

There’s more than one way to get to the venue. For public transit, the Metro E Line makes two stops near the Coliseum — Expo Park/USC and Expo/Vermont.

There will also be a designated area for rideshare drop-offs and pickups at Vermont Avenue between Exposition Boulevard and Downey Way.

Additional parking will also be available just a short walk from the venue on the USC campus. You can pre-book parking spaces starting at $55, here.

LAist has a fan guide for the 2026 World Cup.