The Brief

When oil giant Chevron said over the summer that it would be moving its corporate headquarters to Houston from San Ramon, the headlines were dire. “Chevron Dumps California for Texas After 145 Years,” read one. Another called the move a “Snub to California.” A third noted that the departure came “as Regulations Mount in Golden State.”

The gloomy headlines illustrate how the press and corporate leaders often oversimplify big-company departures from California, leading citizens and state officials to under-examine the factors that lessen the impact of corporate departures and overstate their importance. The same type of doomsaying has played out with other big companies whose headquarters are leaving or have left the state, including Tesla, Oracle and SpaceX.

In Chevron’s case, discussions of the exit tended to miss or downplay a few key points. Despite talk tying the move to regulations and climate-change litigation in California, CEO Mike Wirth said repeatedly that the relocation was about moving to “the energy capital of the world,” not policy differences with state officials. Also, Chevron already had three times as many workers in Texas as in California at the time it decided to move. And few observers bothered to note the major operations Chevron would retain in the state, including refineries and oil fields.

With other exits, pundits often don’t examine the true effects on state tax revenue. Or take into account the fact that some companies leave key people in California or eventually return. And expansions by companies or startups that pop up here don’t get as much attention, either, the governor and some economists say.

“This is a long narrative in California — about businesses moving out,” said Ted Egan, chief economist for San Francisco. “At the same time, you need to talk about businesses starting up.”

Understanding the nuances of corporate exits is important because the departures can influence state policy and affect confidence among consumers and businesses. For example, the prospect of tech companies fleeing the state was raised this year by opponents of a California bill, eventually vetoed by the governor, that would have made tech companies test for critical harms from large artificial intelligence systems. Similarly, when Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee of San Jose proposed a wealth tax last year, the California Chamber of Commerce said in a letter to him that the tax would likely contribute to “California’s business and resident exodus.” It did not pass. The Chamber used identical language in 2022 when successfully opposing various tax increases to fund a single-payer state health care program.

Despite complaints about high taxes, expensive housing and burdensome regulations — grousing that has been going on for decades — the state remains the national leader both for tech startups and for its share of big companies.

“I agree California is a more onerous place to do business,” said David Neumark, a UC Irvine economics professor who has studied relocations. “But it’s not like we’re some basket case.”

When leaving looks like staying

Some companies that recently made high-profile headquarters exits from the state have also either added more California employees or kept the lion’s share of workers here. Any remaining employees in California will continue to pay the state’s personal income tax.

Take Oracle, for example. The tech company announced in 2020 that it was moving its headquarters to Austin from Redwood City, leading to headlines like “Oracle Moves Headquarters to Texas, Joining Valley Exodus” and worries over “California’s higher operational costs and hefty taxes,” not to mention “steeper cost of living,” according to a couple of articles about the news. And yet Oracle as of this past spring still had almost triple the office workers in California than it has in Texas, 6,900 vs. 2,500, Bloomberg reported. A company spokesperson did not return a request for comment. But Redwood City’s data showed the company was still its biggest employer as of 2023. Though Oracle eliminated about 3,000 jobs in Redwood City over the past decade, it retains about 3,757 workers there, or more than 7% of the city’s workforce.

Oracle continues to pay taxes in California, though because tax records are confidential, it’s hard to know exactly how much. That includes not just sales taxes but corporate income taxes too; moving a headquarters does not necessarily mean a company escapes those.

“Corporations’ tax has very little to do with where their headquarters or employees are located,” said Brian Uhler, deputy legislative analyst with the state. “For a multinational business, they earn profit in California and outside California. California attributes profits to the state based on what share of a company’s national sales occur here.”

The state taxes corporations based on their sales, property and investments. So if a company earns revenue from sales or transactions in California, the company will pay taxes here regardless of where its headquarters is based. Companies also have to pay employment taxes for their workers based here. And certain types of companies, such as banks and other financial institutions, pay higher or additional taxes.

Another tech company that continues to contribute tax revenue to the state: Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which announced it was relocating its headquarters to Texas in 2020. Even so, company spokesperson Adam Bauer said last month that the company has about 3,700 employees in Texas and about 3,600 in California. And on the company’s website, there were recently more job openings in California (45) than in Texas (34), including a few sales positions, a Northwest account executive and a “supplier relationship owner” for Nvidia, which is based in California.

A third company that “left” California without really leaving is Tesla, which has actually grown in the state since its departure. The electric car maker moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2021. CEO Elon Musk told shareholders that the company’s factory in Fremont was “jammed” and that housing costs in the state were high, making it tough for workers to live near the facility. Musk had also clashed with local health officials about COVID-related shutdowns. The New York Times framed the relocation as a “Blow to California.”

But three years later it doesn’t seem like a particularly severe blow. In 2022, the year after the move, the company “grew to 47,000 employees” in California, it said in a blog post, and ”our production footprint continued to increase.” Then, the next year, Tesla announced it would put its engineering and AI headquarters in Palo Alto, reportedly expecting to locate 1,400 employees in Hewlett-Packard’s former headquarters there.

California’s Tesla experience makes it hard not to wonder how impactful two other recently announced Musk-related relocations will be. In July, the billionaire said he was moving the headquarters of social media company X and rocket builder SpaceX to Texas from California. Musk cited a law recently signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that bans the state’s school districts from requiring parents to be notified of a change in their child’s gender identification. Musk has a transgender daughter and has been publicly critical of transgender people’s rights to choose preferred pronouns. He called the law “the final straw” on top of “many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies.”

It’s not clear how many California X and SpaceX employees will actually end up in Texas. A source told the Washington Post that the 120 employees at X headquarters in San Francisco will move to Musk-linked offices in San Jose and Palo Alto, but since then the company has reportedly said in legal filings that it will move X’s headquarters to Bastrop, Texas. LAist quoted experts saying that moving SpaceX to Starbase, Texas, will be complicated and time-consuming since the company’s headquarters in Hawthorne is a huge aerospace facility. X and SpaceX did not respond to requests for additional information.

Similarly, Chevron spokesperson Randy Stuart said the company has not yet decided which of its positions in San Ramon will relocate to Texas. The relocation is not effective until Jan. 1 and the company expects it will take five years to migrate most corporate functions to Texas. Some 2,000 Chevron employees work in California versus 7,000 in Texas but that includes people outside of headquarters working on Chevron’s operations in this state, including crude oil fields, technical facilities and two refineries, which range from the San Joaquin Valley to Richmond to El Segundo.

Growth can be hard to notice

While big departures like Musk’s get a lot of attention, expansions and new businesses within California tend not to.

In a recent Instagram post, Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to combat what he labeled “misinformation” about California’s economy by touting in-state expansions by well-known companies such as Visa, Ford Motor, Nintendo and Disneyland. He added that “the world’s leading AI companies are expanding right here in California.”

The governor may have a point about those expansions. There weren’t very many headlines — if any — about Visa recently opening a big new office in San Francisco; Ford’s plans to roll out a new electric-vehicle development center in Long Beach early next year; Nintendo’s intention to open a store in San Francisco next year; and Disneyland’s multibillion-dollar expansion over the next decade that promises jobs and community benefits for the city of Anaheim.

Statewide, about 291,000 new business entities have registered in California this year, according to the secretary of state’s office, compared with 215,000 a decade ago. And that number does not include sole proprietorships, which do not register with the state.

Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist, noted that new AI companies are taking office space in San Francisco, helping the city’s slow recovery from the pandemic-induced boom in remote work. PitchBook, which keeps track of capital markets, recently ranked San Francisco the top city in the world for startups. New York and Beijing were second and third. And a report from PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association showed that the Bay Area and Los Angeles combined had a total of 746 venture capital deals in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared with 402 deals in New York, the runner-up.

In addition, for the first time since 2014, California as of June has the highest number of Fortune 500 companies, 57, while Texas and New York have 52 each. Newcomers to Fortune magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s biggest companies based on their revenue included California-based companies DoorDash, Workday, Prologis and Clorox.

Sarah Bohn, labor economist at the Public Policy Institute of California, said the headquarters moves “warrant attention, at a minimum. These moves make headlines, and that’s an important force for how people are feeling about doing business in California.”

Bohn said she is currently doing research to quantify the effects of corporate departures, but that it’s important to remember that there are always businesses moving out of, starting up in, or dying in the state.

Neumark, the UC Irvine professor, is working with Bohn on that research. He also co-authored a couple of research papers that examined the issue in 2004 and 2007, so he knows the concern about businesses leaving the state is not new. Neumark saw the same worries back then, during the Arnold Schwarzenegger era. There was a lot of talk about companies moving out of California and some “crazy political stuff,” he said. That included the actor-turned-governor showing up at a Las Vegas business with a van marked “Arnold’s Moving Co.” to symbolically help that company move back to California.

Neumark and his fellow researchers found in 2007 that California did not lose a significant number of workers due to business relocations, only about 11,000 jobs a year out of more than 18 million jobs from 1992 to 2004. In the same period, total employment in the state rose by around 106,000 jobs per year, driven by the creation and expansion of new businesses, according to data presented in the paper. The researchers found no evidence of a mass business exodus, saying that the net losses in the number of businesses that left and jobs lost as a result were negligible: 0.05% of businesses in California moved to other states during each of the two worst years, 1993 and 1994; and 0.1% of jobs were lost to relocation during each of the two worst years, 1997 and 1998. He mentioned that a substantial portion of California’s economy is service-oriented, “and restaurants and hospitals don’t move to other states.”

Complaints from departing corporations

There is no denying that some business executives are fed up with the state.

After Chevron’s exit last month, the president of moderate business group Bay Area Council, Jim Wunderman, said in a written statement: “It’s an embarrassment for California that we’ve lost so many global companies because of misguided policies that make it incredibly difficult to do business here.”

In an interview with CalMatters, Wunderman said it’s time for a “reckoning.” He said lawmakers and officials need to rethink policies that make it hard to build housing, or drive up the cost of energy. “I understand we’re going through an energy transition. Do we have to do it in a way that we exacerbate economic problems in the state?”

He pointed to a bill, recently signed into law by the governor, that aims to curtail traffic and air pollution from warehouses. “We’re constantly regulating things to make it more difficult for businesses. (The warehouse bill) particularly affects the Inland Empire, whose economy is built around that industry.” By possibly reducing the number of job opportunities at warehouses, Winderman said the new law could hurt the very people it’s trying to protect.

California’s flat corporate income tax rate of 8.84% of a company’s net income is the sixth highest in the country, according to the right-leaning think tank Tax Foundation. Conservative legislators also criticized a recent decision by the governor and Legislature to suspend certain business tax deductions and limit tax credits for three years to close the budget deficit, saying such suspensions have become too common.

On the other hand, the state’s corporate tax rate has actually declined over the past few decades, with state lawmakers slashing it from 9.6% to 9.3% in 1987, then to its current rate in 1997. The California Budget & Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank, said in a 2022 analysis of state data that corporate tax breaks have lessened the tax burden on California businesses over the years.

Ahmad Thomas, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which advocates for big tech companies, said, “The challenge we have is the cost of doing business and operating in California continues to increase. How do we mitigate that?”

Thomas said California’s “competitive advantage continues to be chipped away at year after year by competition” that is global. He mentioned that there needs to be “more innovative solutions… around our cost structure connected to our tax policy,” as well as more affordable housing.

He wants industry and policymakers to work together to drive down the cost of living here, while trying to minimize additional taxes to businesses.

Still, business leaders get something in exchange for grappling with those challenges: access to capital, a skilled workforce, world-class universities and more.

“Full stop, I believe there is no better place to locate, grow and scale a company than in California,” Thomas said.

And not all state policies and laws drive business away. They help create them.

Bohn of the Public Policy Institute of California said the state continues to have policy levers, such as tax credits, that it can use to target businesses it wants to keep in the state.

Case in point: Newsom boasted last year during a press conference with Musk about Tesla’s partial homecoming that California legislation and policies on clean vehicles helped spur the company’s rise to electric-vehicle dominance. It is the most valuable automaker in the world and responsible for the bulk of Musk’s wealth, which reportedly will soon stretch beyond $1 trillion. Tesla’s success wouldn’t have happened without California, where the company has received at least $3.2 billion in direct and indirect subsidies from the state, with the bulk of those being tax credits for zero-emissions vehicles, according to estimates from Newsom’s office reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

At the press conference, Musk stood stiffly by as Newsom bragged about the state’s pivotal role. But then the billionaire also made an admission that might startle those who think California businesses are beset by red tape and entitled workers: Tesla’s Fremont factory is the most productive automotive plant in North America.

“It will probably be about 600,000 or more cars this year,” Musk said. “California is a tremendous manufacturer as well as a place of engineering innovation.”

That’s a point, Newsom added, “which is, again, often so lost.”

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.