The Brief

A highly anticipated — and controversial — new program, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will begin in Los Angeles County on Dec. 1. It’s called CARE Court and will allow family members to ask a judge to step in with a treatment plan for loved ones living with severe and untreated mental illness.

The basics of CARE Court: People living with a serious and untreated mental illness, like schizophrenia, could be referred for a court-ordered, voluntary care plan that could last up to two years. The petition could be filed by people including county behavioral health workers, first responders or family members.

“I would have had my petition by the first day,” Mike Estrada said from his home in Berkeley.

A feeling that the process is ‘a constant slap in the face’ 

For years, Estrada struggled to get help for his mother, Josie Estrada, who lived with schizoaffective disorder. The experience exasperated him so much that in 2020 he produced a one-hour documentary on her story, Benevolent Neglect.

The film is sprinkled with grainy family footage and stills of Josie’s life in California’s Central Valley. Estrada points out that his mother was “adored by the family.”

The documentary also includes videos shot on Estrada’s cellphone during some of Josie’s more difficult moments.

“In 2007, my mom began experiencing hallucinations. During acute episodes, she’d hear people inside the house,” Estrada tells the camera.

Estrada said the voices would tell his mother not to take her psychiatric medications. For more than a year, Josie lived out of her car after her erratic behavior got her evicted from her apartment. Time and time again, Estrada would plead with first responders to hospitalize her.

Often the people who were supposed to help would be hamstrung by a lack of psychiatric beds and what Estrada sees as overly strict criteria for hospitalizing someone against their will.

“As a family it’s just a constant slap in the face. Constant disrespect. In the meantime, our loved one is suffering, deteriorating before our eyes,” Estrada said.

His mother died in 2019, but he’s hopeful CARE Court will give families like his more leverage to get help.

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaking in March 2022 with local mental health service providers and officials about CARE Court.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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Officials report an ‘unprecedented demand’ 

There are concerns, however, about whether the county’s behavioral health care system will have enough staff to meet the need.

In June, L.A. County supervisors voted to expedite hiring for CARE Court.

“In order to meet a variety of our expectations, including CARE Court — we’re focused on setting up the court infrastructure — the point is the judge will have to have a place to send that individual,” Supervisor Holly Mitchell said during the board meeting.

“I think the supervisors were right to be concerned about what kind of infrastructure is in place,” Dr. Lisa Wong, director of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, told LAist.

“We’ve been having this unprecedented demand for mental health services in our system, so we know that the system is stretched. And we know that with CARE Court, we’re going to be working with some really high acuity individuals,” Wong added.

Wong said hiring has improved this year, but it’s still a major stress point as the county works to bring thousands more behavioral health beds online. And, Wong points out, the initial petition is just the beginning.

“What happens when that person has to go into treatment and how do we keep them engaged?” she said.

Defense attorneys' role

Some of that help will come from the new Independent Defense Counsel Office, which is separate from but administered by the Public Defender’s Office.

A new panel of about 50 specially selected attorneys will work with an estimated 1,900 respondents within the first six months of CARE Court.

“It will not only be there to represent the client’s legal interests and protect their civil liberties, but also to serve as a facilitator and an encourager and a supporter throughout the treatment program,” said Marco Saenz, Independent Defense Counsel program director.

He said those lawyers might encourage respondents to follow through with treatment, but they’ll also work to hold the behavioral health system accountable in providing services.

But the success of CARE Court will ultimately hinge on the participant

“Under the statute, the respondent can walk away at any time,” Saenz told LAist. “It’s completely voluntary. How that will work, we will see.”

Coercion or voluntary? 

CARE Court may be voluntary, but civil liberties groups continue to warn about stripping of individual rights.

If the care plan fails, the person could be hospitalized or referred to a conservatorship. That could mean forced treatment down the line.

Some 40 groups including JusticeLA, Disability Rights California and ACLU California Action signed a letter in 2022 opposing CARE Court. It reads, in part, that the plan is: “a system of coerced, court-ordered treatment that strips people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives.”

Mike Estrada would have been OK with conservatorship for his mother.

“I wanted her to have some chance of building her life back. And there was no way it was going to happen without her being stabilized,” Estrada said.

Mike and Josie Estrada.

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Courtest Mike Estrada

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There are also continued concerns about whether the public guardians’ offices throughout the state will be able to handle the potential increased conservatorship caseload. Public guardians' offices are responsible for guiding care for people who are deemed unable to do so themselves because of a serious mental illness.

“Everybody keeps saying, ‘We need facilities, we need facilities, there’s no room at the inn.’ And that’s true. If you talk to my members throughout the state, they are struggling to find placements,” said Tom Scott, executive director of the California State Association of Public Administrators, Public Guardians, Public Conservators.

What's next

As CARE Court continues to roll out across the state, Estrada wants families like his to be allowed input in the process. And he wants to see counties held accountable for making it work.

Some counties, including San Diego, San Francisco and Orange County have a head start on L.A., because their CARE Court efforts launched in October.

According to California Health and Human Services, as of early November, there were a total of 80 CARE Court petitions statewide.

Saenz said the case volume in some places outside of L.A. County has been lower than what was anticipated.

But as a nearly 30-year veteran public defender who has represented “innumerous” clients living with mental illness, Saenz said he’s holding out hope that CARE Court will be able to help a population that is not generally reached.

“It’s another tool in our toolbox, and to the extent that we’re participants in it ... we’re going to be there to be supportive in any way we can,” Saenz said.

“But time will tell.”

The Japanese American National Museum announced today it will reopen in January after a two-year, $25 million overhaul of the country’s largest museum dedicated to the Japanese American experience.

The museum in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is reshaping its galleries and expanding its signature exhibition to include more perspectives and connections between Japanese American history and current debates over race, immigration and democracy.

The new exhibition at JANM features A.I.-assisted avatars of Japanese American survivors of incarceration.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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“We want to tell the story in a way that is more expansive and that other immigrants, communities can see their own story reflected,” said Ann Burroughs, the museum’s president and CEO.

That effort to tie history to the present comes as JANM itself has faced political pressure, with the museum losing federal funding amid Trump administration cuts.

From the outside, visitors returning to the museum, which has been closed since January 2024, will recognize its modern, minimalist exterior. Once they step through the doors, though, the experience will be vastly different.

The biggest change will be the installation of a 9,200-square-foot permanent exhibition occupying nearly all of the museum’s first floor — more than twice the space of the exhibition it replaces.

"Common Ground," which opened in 1999, covered Japanese American history from migration to the U.S. in the 1800s to the passage of a federal law — the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — that formally apologized for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and provided $20,000 in reparations to surviving detainees.

The new exhibition, called "In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy," will include more recent history, such as Japanese American support for reparations for Black Americans and vocal opposition to the Islamophobia that swelled after 9/11. It will also cover the Japanese American response to ICE detention and incarceration of migrant children, drawing parallels to World War II camps.

Galleries have been reconfigured to include more recent history and more objects from the past, including kimonos owned by women from Japan, who immigrated to the U.S. in larger numbers starting in the turn of the 20th century.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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It will also bring lesser-known perspectives to familiar history through telling the story of incarceration from “women and mothers” and those incarcerated at Tule Lake, the camp in Northern California where Japanese Americans labeled as disloyal by the U.S. government were isolated during World War II.

“JANM hadn’t told that story before,” Burroughs said. “You can’t draw those parallels of what’s happening now if you don’t talk about the camps and if you don’t talk about Tule Lake.”

The new exhibition will also lean more heavily into audiovisual storytelling, using technology and archival media to make the history feel more immediate.

The interactive “StoryFiles” incorporate AI so visitors can pose questions to digital avatars of incarceration survivors like the actor George Takei.

Burroughs stressed that the museum is not using generative AI, but drawing upon hours and hours of interviews in which subjects answered hundreds of questions.

The new exhibition will also draw deeply from JANM’s extensive collection of Japanese American home movies, including footage dating to the 1930s, and give visitors a window into everyday life before World War II.

Some of JANM’s best-known objects will be included in the new exhibition, like barracks from the Heart Mountain incarceration camp in Wyoming and a model of Manzanar in California’s remote Owens Valley, the first of the camps to be built.

The museum is also emphasizing everyday culture, with displays ranging from kimonos brought by Japanese immigrant women at the turn of the 20th century to rice cookers, and the worldwide reach of Hello Kitty.

The Hirasaki National Resource Center has been relocated to the second floor and will showcase work from artists like Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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The larger new exhibition was created without growing the museum's footprint through reconfiguring the building. For example, the museum’s Aratani Central Hall will take on a new role as the museum’s main entrance, with visitors entering through its sweeping curved glass wall and moving directly into the exhibition galleries. But Burroughs said the redesign will not come at the expense of the hall’s longtime function as a community space available to local nonprofits.

Upstairs, visitors will find reconfigured spaces including a new reading room filled with works and furnishings by Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi. Behind the scenes, JANM has upgraded decades-old building systems such as its HVAC and elevators.

The museum overhaul was funded as part of a much larger $135 million fundraising campaign, Burroughs said. The rest of the campaign supports JANM’s operations and long-term financial stability, including about $56 million in endowment and board-designated reserves.

"You know, life is never secure in the nonprofit world or in the museum world," Burroughs said. "We have to do a lot more to build up our endowments. We just will keep going."

Public health officials are urging people to be wary of flea-borne typhus after a recent outbreak of the illness.

The outbreak in late July was centered in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Public Health said five people were hospitalized; all recovered.

The outbreak comes as typhus cases continue to tick up in L.A. County.

Cases have been increasing fairly steadily for more than a decade, but they nearly doubled over the last three years. The Public Health Department logged a record 220 cases in 2025, and officials say this year is on track to exceed that.

Public health officials say the increase is likely because human-animal interactions are also increasing. That could be due to human population expansions into areas with more animals, available food sources for wildlife in populated areas or more people owning pets.

The bacteria that causes typhus is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas.

Typhus can’t be passed from one human to another, and public health experts say the illness is completely treatable, especially if it’s caught early.

Outbreaks and how to prevent them

Most of the time, typhus cases are spread out across L.A. County. But sometimes, there’s a localized spread over a short period of time that turns into an outbreak.

Public health officials respond to a few of them in L.A. County each year.

Generally, outbreaks are triggered by high concentrations of host animals.

“Wherever these animals may be present or wherever they may be congregating, in those areas we can see an increase in the number of human infections,” said Dr. Aiman Halai with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

The most common hosts for typhus are rats, opossums and free-roaming cats. When people or pets come in contact with host animals, they can pick up the infected fleas and bring them into homes, spreading them to other people and animals in the process.

Halai says a variety of factors can attract animals and lead to an outbreak, including overflowing dumpsters, overgrown vegetation or a well-meaning neighbor feeding local critters.

You can help prevent outbreaks by securing trash in bins, making sure food isn’t left outside, and ensuring pets are on up-to-date flea control medication. Cutting back overgrown vegetation and blocking off crawl spaces can eliminate places where animals can shelter in and around homes.

Halai also says it’s important not to feed wildlife.

Should you be worried?

Although public health experts are wary of the typhus uptick in L.A. County, the 220 cases recorded in 2025 in L.A. County are not overly concerning.

"That’s a very  low rate at the population level,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Typhus is an acute infection caused by bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi. Variations of the bacteria also cause other illnesses transmitted by fleas, ticks, lice and mites, including tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Doctors can test for typhus fairly easily, and it is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms are similar to the flu, and can include fever, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. It can also cause rashes in some cases.

Most infections are mild, but they can cause hospitalization and, in rare cases, can be fatal.

Klausner said the concern is that testing for typhus is not always routine.

“The most important thing is that when patients come in to their doctor — and they have fever, they may have a rash, they may have headache, may have muscle or joint aches — that the doctor's thinking about potentially flea-borne infectious diseases because the treatment can be different,” Klausner said.

The best treatment for typhus is the antibiotic doxycycline. If a patient with typhus gets another type of antibiotic like penicillin or amoxicillin, the treatment may not be as successful.

According to Klausner, when presented with flu-like symptoms, it’s also a good idea for patients to tell their doctors if they’ve been around animals, spent time in an encampment or even just gone on a hike.

Topline:

Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.

What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.

Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.

What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”

What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.