The Brief

The LAist newsroom rose to challenge after challenge throughout 2025:’

• When devastating fires hit Southern California in January, our reporters worked around-the-clock to bring life-saving news to people on our website and airwaves — even as colleagues lost homes and our headquarters was inundated by ash and smoke.
• As people took to the streets to protest ICE raids in L.A., our reporters were there again — to explain what we did and didn’t know.
• Over the course of this year, LAist delivered more accountability investigations than ever before and we invested in stories that explored L.A. and Orange County, to bring you a break from what has felt like a relentless news cycle.

As we look back on another year, I asked editors, reporters, producers and hosts to share the stories that stood out to them — and why. I hope you spot some stories that stuck with you, and have the time to explore others you missed.

I’m enormously proud of my team and their dedication to serving Southern Californians. And for readers who already support our independent nonprofit newsroom with financial contributions: Thank you. None of this would be possible without you.

— Megan Garvey | SVP of News, Editor-in-Chief

The fires and their aftermath

Jan. 9, 2025
This was one of the first stories we published that was off the breaking news, and it was successful for weeks because it was so helpful. Jill Replogle updated this relentlessly. To me, this is a prime LAist story — timely, newsy, helpful, inspiring and connected readers to the community.
— Rene Lynch, editor

Jan. 11, 2025
I was able to get a real estate agent on the record saying she encouraged her client to put her second home up for rent at an elevated price days after the fires because "people are desperate."
— David Wagner

Jan. 21, 2025
This segment gave listeners a more clear and concrete vision for what the next year would be like for those who survived the fires and were on track to rebuild. It provided some hope amongst the chaos that rebuilding was possible.
— Payton Seda

Feb. 7, 2025
When I heard the story of how Cupcake, the class pet, survived the Eaton Fire at Pasadena's Don Benito Elementary School, I needed to know how. The answer is a reflection of how a tight-knit community has weathered one of the region's worst natural disasters and what support students will need as they continue to recover.
— Mariana Dale

Feb. 26, 2025
For months, I have been fascinated by the landslide in my own backyard, watching as some homes literally split in two. This story let me go back in time to understand how development and policies of the past are affecting people's lives today and what that means for the future of some of SoCal's prime real estate.
— Yusra Farzan

Feb. 26, 2025
This was a good get, coupled with Frank Stoltze's skill at explaining complex/esoteric topics in ways that are accessible to a broad audience.
— Dana Littlefield, editor

April 3, 2025
California firefighting agencies regularly drop more fire retardant than water when fighting fires throughout the state. However, Cal Fire, the US Forest Service and Perimeter Solutions all refused to tell LAist whether that retardant also contained heavy metals. So, we went out, gathered some on our own and had it tested by researchers at USC. The results may point to one of the reasons why we so often see elevated levels of heavy metals in runoff when rains fall on a recently burned area.
— Jacob Margolis

May 6, 2025
This was a long booking process, but we got the CEO of Edison on AirTalk right when the company was beginning to align with the likelihood the Eaton Fire was their doing.
— Nic Perez

July 14, 2025
I obtained 911 calls via a records request from the home of two victims of the Eaton Fire to better understand how people with disabilities were left behind. The story has been cited by a state commission and used in trainings for emergency managers since.
— Erin Stone

Oct. 20, 2025
I loved the empathetic portrait of an uninsured family determined to rebuild their lives. And Erin Stone took an excellent photo that we used in the lead and really helped the story travel. The radio feature leaned into the main subject's interesting voice. All around great work.
— Matt Ballinger, editor

Oct. 23, 2025
I did a deep dive into what's changed 10 years after the Aliso Canyon gas leak. My story amplified unreported findings that the facility has continued to leak in recent years and highlighted the voices of survivors who continue to work about the aftermath.
— Erin Stone

Oct. 31, 2025
A great example of pre-planning the social as the story was being reported. Joshua Letona was able to go with Aaron Schrank to film these and have a complementary video package ready to publish the same day as the in-depth story.
— Dana Littlefield, editor

Oct. 16, 2025
A state lawmaker told me her new law, clarifying that landlords must address post-fire smoke damage, was in part driven by my reporting on renters struggling to get their homes cleaned.
— David Wagner

Holding officials to account

March 28, 2025
This video takes what is a numbers-focused story and uses graphics and playful text to guide viewers through the info. It earned 325K+ views.
— Kavish Harjai, Brandon Killman

May 6, 2025
LAist pressed for weeks to get officials to reverse their position on disclosing whistleblower complaints. It worked. The records showed alleged financial mismanagement and hiring of unqualified friends. LAist's unearthing of the documents triggered a county investigation.
— Nick Gerda

May 22, 2025
This story demonstrates how combining several reporting methods, including building strong relationships, searching open records and retrieving court documents, come together to form a strong accountability narrative.
— Kavish Harjai

May 25, 2025
An investigation by LAist revealed that hundreds of thousands of tons of construction and demolition debris were illegally dumped at multiple sites. The practice creates significant environmental hazards, and regulatory gaps allowed those responsible to avoid accountability.
— Jacob Margolis

June 9, 2025
LAist's investigative work unearthed one of Orange County's biggest corruption scandals in decades. In requesting the maximum sentence, prosecutors cited Do's attacks on LAist's reporting as showing he was trying to suppress the truth.
— Nick Gerda

Sept. 2, 2025
This story uncovered behind-the-scenes decisions at Santa Ana City Hall happening without notice to the City Council. As a result, working-class families missed out on a much-needed nearly $7M child-care program.
— Destiny Torres

Sept. 10, 2025
This story is quintessential watchdog reporting. We covered protests against federal immigration action as they happened, then stepped back to provide deep reporting context. Our analysis highlighted key gaps in California's laws regarding police use of force.
— Jared Bennett, editor on work by Kahani Malhotra

Sept. 17, 2025
A strong example of watchdog reporting with a close eye for details. Jordan Rynning spotted this item in a public meeting and followed through. The story had immediate impact: Mayor Karen Bass agreed to convene the relevant departments to work toward a solution.
— Jared Bennett, editor

Nov. 6, 2025
This story lays out the city's unlimited financial exposure as host city for the 2028 Olympic Games and runs through the risks, which are being downplayed by L.A.'s city officials.
— Libby Rainey

Nov. 19, 2025
Sometimes government agencies don't answer questions adequately or outright ignore journalists' requests. This story shows how sometimes the information you're after is hiding in plain sight.
— Kavish Harjai

Dec. 9, 2025
Aaron Schrank's thorough reporting allowed him to tell the tale of what happened step by step. He reviewed about 70 emergency plans from residential care facilities so he could accurately explain where the deficiencies were.
— Dana Littlefield, editor

Navigating life in Southern California

April 1, 2025
Larry Mantle is a legend in L.A. journalism for good reason. For the entire 40 years that he’s had a daily radio show in the nation’s second largest market, his approach has been steadfast. While much of the industry moved to a style where the loudest voice in the room wins the day, Larry has continued to make space for context, nuance and civility on topics ranging from intractable world problems to memories of lost music venues in Southern California.
— Megan Garvey, editor

April 9, 2025
Neighborhood council elections don't have great participation in general, but we were the only local news outlet that seemed to have noticed the steep and continuous 10-year decline in voter participation across these elections.
— Brianna Lee

April 28, 2025
This story was an example of the city's short-sightedness and the challenges working parents face in Los Angeles. It also laid bare the city's priorities when child care centers were cut in the new budget.
— Libby Rainey

April 30, 2025
Parents say the process to choose a public school is bewildering. School Game Plan addresses families' top questions in a series of guides. We forged a new partnership with the LA Public Library to distribute 7,000 print editions.
— Mariana Dale

June 27, 2025
This was an in-depth look at a really intriguing and promising idea for involving residents in solving community problems. It offers readers a glimpse of what a different kind of civic participation can look like.
— Brianna Lee

June 27, 2025
Co-reported with CalMatters, this story coupled public records analysis with shoe-leather reporting to explore enforcement in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Grant’s Pass decision. We reported LAPD made 68% more camping arrests in the second half of 2024 than the first.
— Aaron Schrank

Nov. 11, 2025
The education team spent quality time in the field to reveal what goes on inside TK classrooms, leading to a series of insightful stories and a delightful pinwheel radio feature.
— Julia Barajas, Mariana Dale, Elly Yu

Nov. 24, 2025
City and county officials celebrated homelessness declining overall, but that hasn't been the case for families. After the story aired, several LAist listeners reached out to donate to the family, allowing them to move out of state.
— Elly Yu

Immigration

June 10, 2025
This story really shows the power of collaboration. We partnered with the California Newsroom and NPR to produce a powerful narrative showing the human impacts of federal immigration enforcement action.
— Mark Betancourt, Julia Barajas

June 13, 2025
This summer, families risked racial profiling and separation to attend high school graduations. At Maywood High, the salutatorian said marching in protest of the raids was one of her proudest moments.
— Julia Barajas & Mariana Dale

July 23, 2025
This story features an AI-generated version of a corrido (ballad) and draws parallels between the mass deportation of Mexican descent people in the 1930s and what's happening now.
— Julia Barajas

Aug. 5, 2025
Luis Valentan, founder of a nationally known day laborer radio show, moves back to Mexico with his U.S.-born family. Valentan described the difficult decision-making that led to them leaving their longtime home.
— Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Oct. 3, 2025
We jumped on a tip about an upcoming DHS operation and were one of the first outlets in the nation to verify rumors that the federal government was targeting children in its custody.
— Jordan Rynning

Oct. 9, 2025
It took months to develop sources in order to tell this story. It has since sparked a new policy at county hospitals designed to protect immigrant patients' rights.
— Jill Replogle

Exploring L.A. and beyond

March 13, 2025
Coverage of Ramadan tends to focus on the spiritual aspect. But for a different take, I got to do a fun piece looking at how Muslims come together during the nights to socialize and shop.
— Yusra Farzan

March 21, 2025
It became one of my most meaningful stories of the year. What made it special was the rare chance to write about a home-cooked meal where hospitality and heritage mattered most.
— Gab Chabrán and Yusra Farzan

March 28, 2025
When one of Jackie and Shadow’s chicks died, I wanted to explore how fans were handling the loss. I loved being able to connect with teachers across the country while taking home life lessons about grief.
— Makenna Sievertson

May 18, 2025
One of the first stories where I was able to spend the entire day out in the field on my own. It was a nice road trip and an honor to catch the "lilac legend" Gary Parton at the end of his second career.
— Dañiel Martinez

May 27, 2025
It was a major moment for me, but more importantly, many people told me that it made them appreciate their U.S. citizenship more, something they'd taken for granted before.
— Suzanne Levy

July 24, 2025
Everyone we talked to for this story was so fun and interesting. They are serious about their hobby, and we got some great responses, including a reader who offered "kudos and hurrahs."
— Monica Bushman and Antonia Cereijido

Aug. 30, 2025
I was drawn to telling the mural's story because its message of identity based on working-class solidarity with people of other races and ethnicities is just as relevant now as when it was newly painted.
— Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Nov. 1, 2025
Came out from a callout where people shared memories of their loved ones. The feedback was people thanking us for creating the space for them to do that.
— David Rodriguez and Gillian Morán Pérez

Nov. 14, 2025
It was fun & challenging to write. I wanted to juxtapose my experience first tasting this snack with the (re)discovery of it in the SGV. I think I landed it.
— Fiona Ng

Dec. 4, 2025
In L.A., it can feel like music venues are closing more than they're opening. Sid the Cat's new venue bucks that trend and features lots of nuggets of music and local history.
— Kevin Tidmarsh

The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.

The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.

Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.

The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.

Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.

Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.

More on solitary confinement  

According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:

• “Serious mental or medical illness.”
• Conducting a hunger strike.
• Suicide watch.

The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”

Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.

The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.

How isolation can affect immigrant detainees  

UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.

The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”

In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.

People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — not to serve criminal sentences.

According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.

Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.

For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.

In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”

Huerta called that “laughable.”

“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”

Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.

She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.

It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.

"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."

As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68

The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.

One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.

Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.

LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.

Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.

"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."

For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.

Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.

"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."

This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.

Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.

In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.

The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.

The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.

Epstein died in prison about a month after a 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was convicted on sex-trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans.

The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."

In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.

In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."

On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.

NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.

Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"

Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.

"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."

Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.

The U.K. cases are focused on corruption 

In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.

After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.

Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.

Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases

Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.

McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.

Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.

Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.

Other potential charges are also a difficult path

Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."

But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."

"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."

But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.

Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.

The current evidence lacks context

Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.

Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.

One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.

Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.

"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools published two reports on Wednesday on the state of student homelessness in the county: “Rising Numbers, Fading Resources: Students Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County” and “Hidden in Plain Sight: Fear, Underidentification, and Funding Gaps for Housing-Insecure Students in Los Angeles County.”

Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.

The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.

Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.

As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.

There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:

• Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
• A third of homeless students were in high school
• Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates

While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.

The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.

“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.

School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.

That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.