More than 250 stores are being prepared for shutdown across the state, not because customers stopped shopping, but because the math no longer works. What follows isn't just lost jobs — it's grocery deserts, longer drives, higher prices, collapsing local tax bases, and communities hollowed out in real time.

In this investigation, Megan Wright exposes how California's wage mandates, labor enforcement regime, and regulatory pressure pushed the nation's largest retailer to retreat — and why the people who suffer most are the very workers these policies claimed to protect.