The Brief

For Tré Willingham, pursuing a doctorate degree at UC Irvine has felt isolating at times. Often the only Black student in his science classes, he recalls being the last one to be chosen when activities required a lab partner. He also has never had a Black professor.

“It’s very disheartening to never see anyone that looks like you,” said Willingham, who studies applied physics. “It makes it hard to believe that you can get there, and especially get there and actually be yourself.”

For Willingham and students like him, the state-funded Cal-Bridge program is helping them pursue their dreams of landing a doctorate in the sciences and joining the next generation of STEM professors. The program provides financial support, research opportunities and diverse mentors of similar backgrounds.

Such mentors make “it much easier to start to navigate these spaces and also believe that you can get to the other end,” Willingham said.

Cal-Bridge was founded in 2014 to help undergraduates at Cal State campuses pursue a doctorate in STEM in partnership with the University of California, helping to close the diversity gap in science fields. About 70% of the program’s 406 students have been admitted to doctorate programs. Three quarters of the program’s students are of color, almost half are women, and nearly two-thirds are first generation.

Studies have noted that the climate of STEM higher education programs is often unwelcoming for some minority populations. Women make up over half of the undergraduate student population at Cal State campuses, yet account for only 36% of the system’s STEM students. At UC campuses, only 24% of STEM undergraduates are Latino or Hispanic, 4% are African American and 1% are American Indian.

From Cal-Bridge’s first cohort of five undergraduate students, the program has grown to support about 60 each year. It has expanded from astronomy and physics to now include computer science and math. Students in the program can receive stipends, tuition assistance, mentorship and professional development.

But the journey to diversifying the STEM teaching field is very long.

So far, 15 Cal-Bridge participants have earned a doctorate. It takes students about eight years after joining Cal-Bridge, usually done during their junior year, to complete a doctorate — two years as an undergraduate and six years to complete their doctorate education.

“It’s only been 12 years since we started, so only this small group is getting their Ph.D. right now,” said Dr. Alexander Rudolph, Cal-Bridge’s executive director and founder. “But eventually we expect there to be more like 30 to 40 to 50 a year getting their Ph.Ds.”

The state Legislature has given $14 million over recent years to the program, which also has a sliver left over from an older National Science Foundation grant.

The program might also get a helpful boost in the Legislature as California pushes back against federal efforts targeting university equity initiatives.

Democratic Assemblymember David Alvarez of Chula Vista introduced Assembly Bill 2660 in April to codify Cal-Bridge as a coordinated partnership between community colleges, Cal State universities and University of California campuses. Rudolph hopes that will help secure annual or multi-year funding for Cal-Bridge in lieu of making requests each year.

Alvarez told CalMatters that as the federal administration cut back on student loans and grants for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, California should do more to support its students.

“The lack of representation from first-generation students in the Ph.D. level of education speaks for itself,” said Alvarez. “We need to do something in California to demonstrate that we still believe that we have strength in diversity of our Ph.Ds, of our academia, and this [Assembly bill] is one way to try.”

Financial assistance allows students to prioritize academics 

Willingham, the UC Irvine student, hadn’t considered pursuing a doctorate earlier in his life. Now 31, the first-generation scholar is pursuing his doctorate with the goal of one day becoming a professor.

“No one around me was a doctor of anything,” said Willingham about his family and friends growing up.

Willingham grew up in Littleton, Colorado where he attended Columbine High School. After high school, his father, who had served in the Air Force, and Willingham moved to Atlanta. In 2017, he moved to California where he began his higher education journey. He is now the father of two children, ages 12 and two, balancing family time with his studies.

Today, Willingham’s research focuses on creating new quantum materials and exploring how they could be used in future sensors and electronic devices.

Cal-Bridge has four programs: undergraduate, summer research, doctoral and postdoctoral. The undergraduate program is open to STEM students at Cal State campuses and community college students who plan to transfer to a Cal State. It receives up to 100 applications per year; about 60 students were accepted this past year.

Willingham attended El Camino College and Compton College simultaneously to finish his associate degree quickly, then joined Cal-Bridge’s undergraduate program after transferring to Cal Poly Pomona. There, the program gave him $10,000 during each of his junior and senior years, which helped him get a car to commute to school from Los Angeles and stay focused by working fewer hours as a tutor.

“I was able to just sort of focus my attention a little better, not having to always think about how I’m going to pay the next bill,” said Willingham.

Later in Cal-Bridge’s doctoral program, Willingham received $40,000 in financial support for his first year of graduate school at UC Irvine. He used $16,000 to pay his tuition and the rest for living expenses.

Mentorship helps students find their place in STEM 

It took Dr. Katy Rodriguez Wimberly, a Cal-Bridge alum, 13 years to become a research faculty member. She is now an astrophysics assistant professor at Cal State San Bernardino.

Wimberly researches near-field cosmology, studying neighboring galaxies that may be some of the first ever formed.

“It’s almost like galactic archaeology, like I’m looking at these little almost-fossil galaxies to learn more about the early universe and where everything came from,” said Wimberly.

She is also now the director of mentorship for Cal-Bridge. During her junior year as an undergraduate, she joined Cal-Bridge’s first cohort, helping her imagine what being an astronomer would be like.

The mentors and the program’s monthly workshops showed her that while she didn’t see many Latina women like her teaching STEM on her campus, she could do it. When she was an undergraduate at Cal State Long Beach, she said, there were only two women professors from about 20 faculty in her department, and none of them Black or Latino.

Cal-Bridge provided Latino mentors she wasn’t finding anywhere else.

“It wasn’t like they were teaching me in a classroom, but they did kind of provide that cultural and kind of identity support,” said Wimberly.

Wimberly had applied to 11 doctorate programs as a senior undergraduate and was denied by all of them. Next, she applied and was accepted to Cal State Long Beach to pursue a master’s in physics. There, she raised her GPA, reapplied to doctorate programs and was accepted to UC Irvine. She graduated in 2021 with her doctorate in physics.

At UC Irvine, Wimberly created a peer mentorship program for Cal-Bridge students as a way for alumni and graduate students of the program to support the undergraduate students. Mentors and mentees meet in small groups once a month, as well as have one-on-one meetings.

“I structured it in a way to be more like, this is just your older cousin that’s telling you how to get through things,” Wimberly said.

After she finished her doctorate, she had a three-year, full-time fellowship with the National Science Foundation. She served at UC Riverside with her former mentor, Laura Sales, an astronomer from Argentina and associate professor at the university.

Learning from Sales made her feel more comfortable embracing her identity as a Latina. Sales taught her that she didn’t have to be an expert in all areas of astronomy, but that she would work alongside experts in different areas.

Now as a professor herself for the last three years at Cal State San Bernardino, Wimberly offers the same mentorship to her students. Anytime she sees a Latina student who doesn’t have support from someone with a similar background, she tries to provide that support.

“Just because I know it can be so difficult,” said Wimberly.

Claire Rogers, a student at UC Irvine pursuing a doctorate in physics, knew she wanted to attend graduate school, but she didn’t realize how isolating the experience would be as the only woman in the room. She is a Cal-Bridge doctorate scholar researching observational astrophysics, looking for planets outside of the solar system to determine if there is life on those planets. She also focuses on how stellar astrophysics affects measurements when looking for planets.

Rogers was an undergraduate at Cal Poly Humboldt and joined Cal-Bridge during the first year the program expanded to her campus.

“Cal-Bridge was really helpful for providing a network of students at the same phase of their career at different CSU campuses but still working towards similar goals,” said Rogers.

She said that since the department on her campus was small, Cal-Bridge allowed her to connect with students at other campuses who were in similar positions.

The program provided her two mentors, a professor at her campus and a professor at UC Berkeley. The program also offered her guidance in applying for graduate school.

“I’m sure it made a huge difference in my grad school essays, getting that feedback,” Rogers said.

Rogers participated in an undergraduate summer research program at the University of Wyoming through Cal-Bridge, where she dabbled in astrophysics research for the first time. Cal-Bridge’s summer program is open to community college and Cal State undergraduate students and allows students to participate in research projects at partner institutions. Out of around 200 applications, only 50 to 60 students get accepted to the summer program.

“I really like spending time at a telescope … and dealing with all of the problems that come up when you are running a telescope overnight,” she said.

She was usually the only woman in her undergraduate classes, and in graduate school there were only three women in her cohort of 22 students.

“I got very accustomed to being the only woman in a room,” said Rogers.

She mentioned feeling isolated during her first year at UC Irvine, noticing that her classmates rarely showed up when she organized study groups and that the men in her lab would change the conversation when she entered the room.

“I had a really hard time my first year with reconciling that I felt very unwelcome,” said Rogers.

She eventually found a support network outside of her original cohort, getting closer to other doctoral scholars in Cal-Bridge and having monthly movie nights together.

“Cal-Bridge has made a huge difference to my career and my, sort of, finding my space in this field,” said Rogers.

Rogers hopes to one day become a professor and be able to teach while continuing her research in observational astrophysics.

“When I was new to physics it made a big difference for me to have women professors,” said Rogers. “I think it’s important for future students to also have that resource and that support, and I would like to be able to provide that.”

Brittany Oceguera is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

The bell had already rung on a recent morning at Newport Beach’s Ensign Intermediate School. But two of the school’s students hadn’t made it to class. Instead, they were sitting on a sidewalk across from campus, detained by a police officer for parking their e-bikes on the street.

The situation at Ensign has gotten messy since the school district, Newport-Mesa Unified, voted to ban e-bikes from middle and elementary school campuses, citing safety concerns. Many students kept riding their e-bikes to school anyway, parking them in swarms in the surrounding neighborhood.

The neighbors did not like this. Shouting matches ensued between students and homeowners. At least one student returned from class to find her tires deflated.

The city responded to the tension by putting up “No e-bike parking” signs on several streets.

The city of Newport Beach prohibited e-bikes on some streets around Ensign Intermediate School after neighbors complained.

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“I wouldn't want it in my neighborhood either, like, I get it,” said Corey Gulbranson, who got a $100 parking ticket on behalf of his daughter, one of the Ensign students detained for allegedly illegally parking her e-bike. “But at the end of the day, we're just trying to get our kids to school on a legal mode of transportation.”

Crucial teen commuting tools? Or dangerous devices?

E-bikes and significantly more powerful e-motorcycles have become very popular in many Orange County suburbs, where the streets are wide, public transit is spotty, and distances are longer than some are willing to pedal on a regular bike. For teens and tweens, e-bikes provide a taste of independence. They also relieve parents of some of their driving duties. Plus, e-bikes can replace polluting cars.

But their popularity has brought an alarming increase in serious injuries, especially among young riders.

At Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, e-bike crashes are now sending more kids to the ER than any other cause, according to Dr. Tetsuya Takeuchi, the hospital’s trauma medical director. More than 70% of those patients had some level of head injury, from minor concussions to devastating brain damage, he said, often because they were not wearing a helmet.

But even Takeuchi recognizes the nearly irresistible draw of e-bikes.

“If you ride one, you realize how easy it is to go everywhere with it,” he said.  “I am not by any means surprised at how popular this is, especially amongst kids.”

‘Bicycle-shaped devices’

Not all e-bikes are equally fast, or equally dangerous. California uses a three-tier system, developed by the bike industry, to classify e-bikes depending on:

• engine power
• max speed
• whether the bike has pedals 
• whether a cyclist has to use those pedals before the engine kicks in 
  

California law prohibits children under age 16 from riding Class 3 e-bikes with engines capable of reaching 28 miles per hour. In reality, though, many kids are riding e-vehicles that go faster — in some cases, much faster.

“There are lots of what I will call 'bicycle-shaped devices' being ridden,” said Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate at the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. “Some of them are legal e-bikes. Some of them are not.”

Agrawal recently co-authored a 210-page report on e-bike safety. It includes data collected from middle and high schools in Marin and San Mateo counties, which showed that only 12% of students’ e-bikes fit into the legal classification system. The other 88% were more powerful than legally allowed under California law.

A Newport Beach Police officer tickets a middle schooler for parking her e-bike on the street across from Ensign Middle School on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Any bicycle-shaped device that goes faster than 30 miles per hour is technically an e-motorcycle, which requires a special driver’s license and, if ridden on public roads, insurance and registration.

Agrawal said it’s hard for parents, and even police officers, to figure out what’s legal and what’s not.

“Nobody understands this,” she said. “It’s very hard to enforce.”

The crackdown

Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has taken some unusual approaches to addressing the e-bike dilemma. To date, he has pressed criminal charges — including for child endangerment — against four parents after their children were involved in collisions, all of them on e-motorcycles, not e-bikes.

One of those parents, a woman from Aliso Viejo, was charged with three felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after her 14-year-old son allegedly struck and killed an 81-year-old man while doing wheelies in the street in Lake Forest on an e-motorcycle souped up to reach 60 miles per hour.

People with e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos move through the long line at the Orange County District Attorney's buyback event at Angel Stadium, Sept. 13, 2026.

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The DA’s office said it has also sent letters to retailers reminding them of a ban on selling products used to modify e-bikes to go faster than legally allowed.

Spitzer recently tried another novel approach: buybacks. On a recent Sunday, hundreds of people brought their e-bikes, e-scooters and e-motos to an event at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, hoping to turn them in for up to a thousand dollars in gift cards. The county event was paid for with $100,000 in asset forfeiture funds.

One man near the front of the line said he had arrived at 1 a.m. By the time the event started at 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies were turning people away.

“Holy smokes,” Spitzer said from behind a podium mounted in the parking lot. “Look at the participation. … And you can see why, because we have a serious problem here in Orange County and across the nation with individuals who have e-bikes and e-motorcycles.”

Spitzer spoke about the dangers, but also the attractiveness of a high-powered personal vehicle, especially for teen boys.

 “We're not gonna change our internal DNA about who we are as young people and the fact we wanna go places, and we wanna experiment, and quite frankly, we like fast things,” he said. “ But the fact of the matter is when you have a machine, and you don't understand its capabilities, you can find yourself in harm's way very quickly before you can control that mechanism.”

Orange County District Attorney is testing out a range of strategies to crack down on illegal e-bikes and e-motos, including a buyback event at Angel Stadium on Sept. 13, 2026.

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Are unsafe riders ‘ruining it for other people’?

Paul Dumont drove to the buyback event all the way from Chatsworth in hopes of exchanging five e-bikes he had bought for his kids and grandkids.

“They got injured on them when we first got them, so they've been sitting in storage,” he said of the bikes.

Dumont said he wished he had bought less powerful e-bikes. “But I bought them the best ones,” he said. “I thought they'd be better.”

Denise Mills and her 17-year-old son Nathanael came from Torrance to turn in three e-motorcycles that he had been riding to and from his high school last year. He stopped after the school told him it was illegal. A new state law defining e-motorcycles took effect in January.

A student at Ensign Middle School runs to campus after parking his e-bike at a nearby park, Sept. 4, 2026.

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“That was very unfortunate because it's his primary source of transportation,” Mills said. “Now it's his dad and I.”

Nathanael said he had logged several thousand miles without an accident.

“ Partially it's, like, people ruining it for other people,” he said of efforts to tighten the rules for young riders.

Local leaders grapple with the flood of e-bikes

Cities and school districts are testing a variety of approaches to decrease e-bike crashes and injuries, from prohibiting riding on sidewalks to outright bans for young riders. The Brea City Council has even discussed using police drones to follow unsafe youth riders home in order to inform their parents.

In a more typical approach, the Huntington Beach City School District requires all student e-bike commuters to pass a safety course in order to get a permit to park their bike on campus. Newport-Mesa has a similar program for high schoolers.

Marin County limits youth under age 16 to riding Class 1 “pedal-assist” e-bikes, which have motors that kick in only while pedaling, and shut off once the bike reaches 20 miles per hour. The ban on more powerful e-bikes for young riders is part of a pilot program approved by the state legislature that sunsets in 2029.

At the federal level, O.C. Congressman Dave Min, D-Irvine, co-authored a bill earlier this year, the Safe SPEEDS Act, that would develop nationwide safety standards for e-bikes, including minimum age recommendations.

A dilemma for parents

Parents of student e-bike commuters have said they do not oppose regulating the vehicles, and they want authorities to crack down on dangerous and illegal riding. But an outright ban goes too far, they’ve said.

“ I know there are kids that are a little wild,” said Kellie Newcombe, whose 13-year-old daughter is still riding her pedal-assist bike from their home in Costa Mesa to Ensign Intermediate School in Newport Beach.

“That is not my child. That is not her friends. They are so ridiculously safe and by the book,” she said. “It's just super frustrating that they would say every kid cannot ride an e-bike.”

A spokesperson for Newport-Mesa Unified told LAist in an email that the school district’s new e-bike restrictions have gone smoothly and are helping to reinforce safety. But that is not how Gulbranson and Newcombe see it.

“We've had my daughter intimidated by multiple neighbors now,” Gulbranson said. “This whole guise of doing it under safety is totally misguided.”

Newcombe said she worries about her daughter’s safety more now that an increasing number of parents are driving their kids to school.

“They're in a rush because the traffic is insane,” she said. Plus, her daughter now has to cross a busy street to get to campus.

Newcombe said she wishes the school district would work with local leaders and police to enforce e-bike rules and to create safer paths to school for responsible riders.

Vicky Chon started canvassing on a recent Saturday morning in the Glenmoor neighborhood of Fremont, where the 1950s to ‘70s ranch homes line streets evoking names from that era: Mildred, Gertrude, Bonnie, Helen.

“I’m a teacher in Fremont Unified, and I’m here to talk about Prop 3, which is gonna help protect funding for our students in Fremont,” she said. More often than not, she gave her pitch to a Ring video doorbell.

Chon, the president of the Fremont Unified District Teachers Association and a sixth-grade teacher, grew up in Fremont, a city of 230,000 and home of the massive Tesla manufacturing plant in the East Bay. Wearing a bright red T-shirt with the teachers union’s apple logo, she carried her 8-month-old daughter in a snuggie encircling her neck, and a pile of door-hanger flyers in a free hand.

One side read, “Yes on 3. PROPOSITION 3 WILL STOP DEVASTATING CUTS TO SCHOOLS.” Prop. 3, on the November state ballot, would make permanent an existing higher income tax rate on the top 2% of California earners. In effect since 2012, it has brought in billions for schools and community colleges. Without Prop. 3’s passage, the surcharge will expire in 2031.

On the flip side of the leaflet, with a big check mark, is a photo of Richard Barrera, candidate for state superintendent of schools. It reads “RICHARD BARRERA IS THE REAL DEAL”. Barrera, an ally of organized labor, is the president of the San Diego Unified school board and is running for state superintendent of public instruction.

To those at home who opened the door, Chen would continue, “If we don’t pass Prop. 3, we could lose $20 million for our Fremont students.”

“So my baby can, you know, have the funding she needs for school,” she added.

Chon and the 68 other Fremont Unified teachers knocked on 2,533 doors as part of the California Teachers Association’s Sept. 19 day of action for Prop. 3; 1,150 teachers from 69 districts elsewhere in the state knocked on 36,509 doors. Combined, they set a one-day canvassing record, CTA said.

In the Sept. 24 filing to the California Secretary of State, the Yes on 3 campaign had raised $46.8 million, not counting donations under $1,000. The No on 3 campaign has raised $5,500 in total. The Family Business Association of California PAC gave $5,000 of the total.

The Yes campaign has raised $8,509 for every $1 of opposition dollars.

CTA, which led the signature drive to put Prop. 3 on the ballot, contributed $33.3 million – 71% of the total – while the CTA’s parent union, the National Education Association, donated $10 million. The California Federation of Teachers, the smaller of two California teachers unions, gave $1.75 million to go with the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) $1.5 million.

CTA’s elected 700-delegate State Council allocated the money in June, “not taking anything for granted,” said CTA President David Goldberg. CTA was less worried about the opposition than with the sheer number of 14 initiatives on the ballot. It’s been more important to raise awareness of Prop. 3 “above the noise,” he said.

Now, with five weeks to go before the election, he said, “I would assume there is enough for every scenario to win this,” including TV ads. ”It’s definitely an option.”

Two choices: a wealth tax and/or an income tax?

Prop. 3 is one of two tax-raising initiatives on the November ballot. The other, far more contentious one, is Prop. 40, which would create the nation’s first tax on the net worth of the state’s 200-plus billionaires.

The independent, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the one-time, 5% tax on most of the billionaires’ assets would yield tens of billions of dollars. But it also cautioned it could result in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue if the richest of the rich follow the lead of Elon Musk and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and move out of state to cheaper tax states like Florida and Texas.

That’s one reason CTA opposes Prop. 40; the other is that TK-12 and community colleges would receive only 10% of the take from Prop. 40, a smaller ratio than the 40% that they already get annually as their share of the state’s general fund revenue under a constitutional amendment passed in 1988.

Prop. 3 would continue that ratio. The LAO projects that, depending on volatile income and capital tax revenue, Prop. 3 would continue to bring in $5 billion to $15 billion to the general fund with 40% — $2 billion to $6 billion — going to schools and community colleges annually.

A Prop. 3 surcharge of 1% starts with taxable income of $371,000 for single filers and $742,000 for joint filers. It would jump to an additional 3 percentage points for those single filers making more than $743,000 or $1.5 million for joint filers.

More than 50% support in a new voter survey

Conventional thinking of pollsters and veteran political observers is that multiple tax measures on the same ballot, especially complex initiatives like the wealth tax, could hurt the chances of all tax initiatives: Frustrated voters would throw up their hands and vote “no” across their ballots.

But, based on the Sept. 25 voter survey by the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, that doesn’t seem to be happening; voters appear to be heading in opposite directions in support for Prop. 3 and Prop. 40.

Compared with a prior survey in August, support for Prop. 3 rose to 54% in favor, 34% opposed, and 13% undecided.

Support for Prop. 40 had fallen from above 50% in August to 45% in favor, 42% against, and 13% undecided, amid an onslaught of anti-Prop. 40 TV ads.

Although Fremont offers a small sample size — Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in the Alameda County city — canvassing teachers said they heard widespread support for Prop. 3.

Nicole Black, a veteran kindergarten teacher, said someone came to the door in about half of the 50 houses she visited, with 20 of those indicating support, some asking for more information, and no one outright saying no. William Jung, a high school teacher, reported fewer conversations but proportionally higher support.

Vicky Chon encountered only one no — a shirtless man working in his garage who dismissed her with a flip of the hand, saying, “No more taxes.” But a woman who had said through her Ring doorbell video camera that she was driving her father to an appointment later was working in her garden and said she was all in. And an elderly lady with patchy English said, yes, she would vote for it, too.

No one wanted more details of Prop. 3 or asked about the wealth tax, so Chon and colleagues didn’t have to bring it up. They could stay on message: Prop. 3 will continue an existing tax. Voting yes will keep the status quo and prevent future layoffs of teachers.

In the coming weeks, voters can expect to be inundated with tens of millions of dollars worth of ads for, but mainly against, Prop. 40. Opponents have already spent $87 million — 85% of the $219 million total — compared with $32 million by the proponents.

Meanwhile, teachers will be going door to door every weekend, Goldberg said. “We always knew a lot would rest on our shoulders,” he said. “No other organization can match our capacity in every community.”

After a week of fierce competition, Bear 910 and Backpack have emerged as the final contenders to be named the heftiest bear of Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve.

There can only be one winner of Fat Bear Week, and it’s up to the voters to decide Tuesday.

The contest, which is in its 12th year, celebrates the resilience of the 2,200 brown bears that live in the preserve on the Alaska Peninsula, which extends from the state’s southwest corner toward the Aleutian Islands. Fat Bear Week was started in 2014 as an interactive way to inform the public about brown bears, the coastal cousins of grizzlies.

Last year’s winner, Chunk — known officially as Bear 32 — clinched his victory at an estimated 1,200 pounds. He was handily defeated in the first round of competition this year by Bucky, who went on to lose a faceoff against Backpack, known officially as Bear 89.

The event this year featured 16 bears vying for the heavyweight title in a single-elimination, bracket-style tournament. All voting is done online at www.fatbearweek.org, and a winner will be declared Tuesday evening after the final poll closes. The public can watch the bears on explore.org’s livestream cameras before deciding on their favorite.

“Fat bears are successful bears,” the nonprofit says on its website. This group gorges itself on the abundant salmon that return to the Brooks River starting in late June. It’s there that they can stuff themselves to accumulate the fat reserves they’ll need to survive the winter. To be featured in the contest, the bears must frequent the area around the river. Adult male brown bears typically weigh 600 to 900 pounds (about 270 to 410 kilograms) in midsummer. By the time they are ready to hibernate after feasting on migrating and spawning salmon, large males can weigh well over 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms). Females are about one-third smaller. The bears may each eat as many as 30 fish a day this time of year, working hard to eat a year’s worth of food in about six months.

During winter hibernation, the bears do not eat or drink and lose one-third of their body weight.

Fat Bear Week’s contestants also include five bear families, in recognition of the record high number of families and cubs at the river this summer. A mother must feed and protect her cubs while also eating enough calories to sustain herself through hibernation. Cubs often face the risk of attack by other bears due to territorialism or food scarcity.

Bear 132 and her three spring cubs advanced to the semifinals, but lost out to Bear 910.

Bear 132 has become one of the largest and most experienced mother bears at Brooks River, according to the nonprofit’s contestant profiles. In mid-July, one of her cubs became separated from the family for several days, wandering the river corridor alone. They were reunited a few days later.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills Sunday designed to help his mental health court reach more vulnerable Californians.

But two other bills that would have made much bigger, and more controversial, changes to the program died without ever making it to his desk.

Newsom’s CARE Court launched in 2023 with the intention of getting the sickest Californians off the streets and into mental health care. Family members, first responders, mental health professionals and others can refer people suffering from psychosis into the court-based program, where a judge then sets up a treatment plan through the county.

But the program has struggled with lower-than-expected utilization since its launch, and every year legislators attempt to fix that by passing new bills that change the program in different ways. This year, Newsom signed bills by Senators Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas, and Steven Choi, a Republican from Irvine, which make it make it easier for first responders to get people into CARE Court, and for the loved ones of a CARE Court participant to provide information to their care team that might be relevant to their treatment.

Blakespear called it “incremental improvement.”

“I don't want to make it seem like these things are accomplishing more than they are,” she said. “But they are doing something. We are improving the system for people who need help the most.”

The bills that would have made bigger changes to CARE Court ended up left on the cutting room floor:

• Senate bill 1016, also by Blakespear, would have created a path for people who are too sick for CARE Court, which is a voluntary program, to potentially be referred to a conservatorship, which is an involuntary program. 
• SB 28, by Orange County Democrat Sen. Tom Umberg and Blakespear, also would have strengthened the link between CARE Court and conservatorships. 

The idea was to prevent people from falling out of treatment entirely if they are too sick to accept voluntary care.

Both died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee in August. It was a relief for their long lists of opponents, including Disability Rights California, who argued that the bills would have made CARE Court more coercive, and that forcing treatment is harmful and ineffective. But the bills’ deaths were a letdown for some families of people with severe mental illness, who are fed up with their loved ones languishing on the streets because they are too sick to consent to care.

In addition, SB 1242 – one of the two CARE Court bills Newsom signed into law – was watered down at the behest of activists before it hit his desk.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland and chair of the Appropriations Committee, blamed the price tag of the two bills that died for their failure. She also said the Legislature didn’t have enough details yet on what is and is not working about CARE Court.

"Those bills were very expensive and I think a little bit premature, because we don't know exactly what the challenge or issue is,” she told reporters in August. CalMatters has reported extensively about the challenges facing CARE Court, its participants, and affected families, for over a year.

Blakespear said the issue is a belief that people can’t be helped until they are ready to accept help: something she’s trying to chip away at. She’ll try again next year to strengthen the connection between CARE Court and conservatorships, she said.

“Just because of the way Sacramento works,” she said, “these philosophical shifts can be hard to accomplish.”

The California Public Defenders Association disagreed that CARE Court should be linked to coercive treatment, and opposed SB 28.

“Our experience has taught us that CARE works best when people have buy-in and choose to participate,” Stephanie Regular, assistant public defender for Alameda County and chair of the CPDA mental health and civil commitment committee, said in an emailed statement. “That voluntary engagement is not a weakness; it is part of why CARE works. Efforts like SB 28 that impose harsh consequences for inadequate participation risk undermining that success.”

How the new laws change CARE Court

A CalMatters investigation of CARE Court found the program has reached far fewer people than Newsom’s administration initially anticipated. After the program was watered down to remove its ability to compel people into treatment, many family members of people in the program are disappointed by its limited ability to help their loved ones. The latest state data, which goes through June 2025, found that of 2,216 petitions filed, 517 resulted in CARE agreements or plans, while another 984 were dismissed.

One of the new laws attempts to bring more people into the program by allowing firefighters, ETMs and other first responders to ask their county to refer someone into CARE Court. The idea is that first responders often encounter people who have a serious mental illness and need help, but they rarely have the time to go through the complicated, time-consuming process of filing a CARE Court petition themselves. Instead, they now can refer that person to the county, which then has 30 days to decide whether to file a CARE Court petition.

The other new law addresses a common concern from families of people in CARE Court: Once they refer their loved one into the program, they often are cut out of the loop, unable to give or receive information about their family member’s care. The original bill would have allowed whoever files a CARE Court petition to have more involvement in the process as treatment progresses. But it was amended after concerns about patient privacy.

Now, the law allows for one-way communication only – the petitioner can submit information about their family member’s location, condition, status or anything else that might aid in their treatment, but they can’t receive any information about their family member without that person’s consent.

That’s important, because someone with a severe mental illness participating in CARE Court might not be able to articulate in that moment how they are doing, said Suzanne Fidler, a delegate for the Conference of California Bar Associations, which sponsored the bill. But the person who filed the CARE Court petition, such as a family member, likely has close access to them and can give their treatment team important information, she said.

Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, which opposed the bill, disagrees.

“Families can say whatever they want to say and it will be taken in court as if it’s a diagnostic assessment,” he said. “And that’s dangerous.”

Another new law doesn’t directly relate to CARE Court, but instead seeks to improve the state’s conservatorship process. Also by Blakespear, SB 16 requires counties to develop procedures to train the people (such as clinicians or law enforcement) who place patients on involuntary mental health holds.

This year’s death of Umberg’s CARE Court clean-up bill — SB 28 — signals a shift in the tide, said Samuel Jain, a senior attorney with Disability Rights California, which opposed the bill. Umberg has introduced a follow-up bill to expand or change the law annually since he initially authored the CARE Court legislation in 2022. In past years, those bills have generally sailed through the legislature with near unanimous support.

Last year, Umberg expanded who qualifies for CARE Court by adding people who experience psychosis as a result of bipolar disorder.

At times, his CARE Court bills have been significantly changed late in the session, in a process known as “gut and amend.”

A legislative analysis submitted to the Assembly Judiciary Committee this summer said that the opponents of this year’s bill, SB 28, complained it had been substantially amended in June “after advancing through much of the legislative process as a different bill.” It continued: “This late-stage gut-and-amend approach continues a troubling pattern of advancing major CARE Court expansions without adequate opportunity for public input.”

“The Legislature is starting to do more of their own analysis of this and starting to stand on their own two feet and not just defer to the governor,” Jain said.

June Dudas, who has first-hand experience with CARE Court, said SB 28 and SB 1016 would have been game-changers if they had passed. Dudas helped her 85-year-old aunt submit CARE Court petitions in San Diego County for Dudas’ cousin, who was homeless and became violent when in the grip of psychosis.

Her cousin doesn’t realize he’s sick – a common symptom of schizophrenia known as anosognosia. That means he’ll never consent to treatment, Dudas said. As a result, his CARE Court case was officially dismissed twice. He was offered a place in CARE Court a third time, but turned it down and instead opted to go to jail for violating a restraining order against his mother.

“And it’s not just that his case is dismissed, he is dismissed as a human being,” Dudas said. “There are no other services offered to him if he doesn’t volunteer.”

Dudas’ cousin finally entered into a conservatorship in May — almost a year after his family first tried to get him into CARE Court.

Jocelyn Wiener and Yue Stella Yu contributed to this reporting.

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