This story was originally reported by Jasmine Mithani of The 19th. Meet Jasmine and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

This reporting was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Domestic Violence Impact Reporting Fund.

SACRAMENTO, California — “Before I say anything, I want everyone here to take a moment and think about someone finally reaching out for help and there’s no one here to answer,” Jazz LedBetter said to a crowd of over 250 survivors of abuse and advocates against domestic violence and sexual assault. 

LedBetter was speaking on the lawn of the state Capitol as part of an effort to press California lawmakers to include $100 million in the state budget that would cover a gap in money for domestic violence and sexual assault services caused by a drop in federal funds. The push comes as the Trump administration has prematurely terminated grants to domestic violence organizations, delayed payouts of over $200 million from the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women and tried to block assistance to trans and immigrant survivors. 

LedBetter is a survivor of sex trafficking and spoke about how Woman Haven, a domestic violence services organization just north of the California-Mexico border, helped her heal.

“I didn’t have stability, I didn’t have answers, and I didn’t have a clue what the future held, but I had access to something that changed everything: I had access to a shelter, not just a place to stay, but a safe place to breathe, to think, to begin again,” she said. 

Over 4,800 Californians were assisted by domestic violence services over a single day in 2025, according to data from the National Network to End Domestic Violence. But 605 requests for help went unanswered due to limited resources. 

The crowd assembled before LedBetter called on Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to step up to support survivors where the federal government has let them down. They emphasized that they weren’t seeking additional funding but rather coverage for a drop in federal dollars from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). The Crime Victims Fund created by VOCA pulls from white-collar crime settlements instead of taxpayer dollars, but those prosecutions have been declining for a decade, leading the fund to decrease.

Sandra Henriquez, the CEO of ValorUS, California’s sexual assault coalition and co-organizer of Tuesday’s rally, said 50 state legislators had put out statements in recent weeks condemning specific, high-profile incidents of intimate partner violence. 

“We are demanding that state legislators and leaders put their money where their mouth is and fund survivor services,” Henriquez told the crowd. 

The state Senate’s version of the budget includes the requested $100 million due to efforts by Democratic Sen. Susan Rubio, herself a survivor of domestic violence. The Legislative Women’s Caucus has indicated its support for the measure, and Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat, is pushing for its inclusion in her chamber, as well. 

“As we advocate today, carry this with you: we will not allow California leadership to balance the budget on the backs of survivors,” Henriquez said.

California is one of the few states that has allocated VOCA stopgaps in the annual budget. But advocates are seeking a more permanent commitment. 

The need hasn’t gone away, said Krista Colón, the executive director of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, which also organized the rally. She said the most recent annual data shows domestic violence hotlines in the state answered 149,000 calls for help.

Other sources of federal funding have also dried up this year. The Trump administration has attempted to ban grants from the Office on Violence Against Women from being used to promote ill-defined “gender ideology” and “illegal DEI” and prioritized funding for municipalities that cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

Culturally specific service providers, which have dedicated funding streams through the most recent reauthorization of the federal Violence Against Women Act, are being hit hard. 

Patima Komolamit, the executive director of the Center for the Pacific Asian Family, said there is a misunderstanding of culturally specific organizations. Her nonprofit is focused on serving the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across Los Angeles County, but her team helps anyone in need who approaches them.

She said the organization lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly terminated a multiyear grant. Komolamit said she is waiting to hear back on multiple funding applications from the Office on Violence Against Women that should have been issued in October.

Without the stopgap measure, the YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley could lose $1.9 million that goes toward programs like housing domestic violence survivors and providing in-person support at hospitals when a rape survivor is being treated, said Adriana Caldera, the organization’s CEO. 

“$100 million is not just a number. It is safety, it is healing, and for some, it is the difference between life and death,” said Tim Ruise, the community outreach coordinator at Strong Hearted Native Women’s Coalition. He highlighted May 5 as the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. 

“Do not leave our community behind,” he said. “We are still here. We are still fighting, and we are not going anywhere.”

Domestic violence services remain operational throughout the country. Confidential, anonymous help is available 24/7 through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (1-800-799-7233) or online.

California families welcoming newborns will soon receive hundreds of free diapers before leaving the hospital under a first-in-the-nation program announced Friday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

During the program’s first year, it will be offered at about 65 to 75 hospitals that handle about a quarter of births in the state and largely serve low-income patients, Newsom’s office said. The initiative will expand to more hospitals statewide, though the governor’s office did not say how many. The state has partnered with nonprofit Baby2Baby to manufacture the diapers under the label “Golden State Start.”

Newsom said the plan builds on California’s effort to make living in the notoriously expensive state a little easier for families. He highlighted policies in recent years to provide students with free meals at school and make preschool free for all.

“Every baby born in California deserves a healthy start in life — and that means making sure parents have the basics they need from day one,” the Democrat said in a statement.

The state set aside $7.4 million in last year’s budget to roll out the initiative, and this year’s budget proposal includes an additional $12.5 million to implement the program for the upcoming fiscal year ending in June 2027.

It will allow each family to receive 400 diapers in sizes for newborns and babies up to 14 pounds (6 kilograms) when they are discharged from a hospital after birth. That’s a little more than a month’s worth, since newborns on average require eight to 10 diapers a day.

Baby2Baby provides families in need with essential items. The nonprofit built a manufacturing system that allows them to produce diapers for 80% less than the retail price, co-CEO Kelly Sawyer Patricof said.

“California is once again setting the standard of what it means to show up for mothers and babies,” added co-CEO Norah Weinstein.

The announcement comes two years after Tennessee and Delaware became the first U.S. states to offer free diapers to families enrolled in their Medicaid programs, which provide healthcare to low-income families. Tennessee families can go to pharmacies to pick up 100 diapers per month for children under two. The Delaware program, which began as a pilot before the state extended it in 2024, provides individuals with up to 80 diapers and up to one pack of baby wipes per week in the first 12 weeks of life.

California’s Medicaid system doesn’t cover diapers for newborns, but it does cover the items for enrollees ages 5 and older if they have a medical need for them.

Diapers are a large, ongoing expense for many families. They typically spend about $100 a month on the items per child, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. The cost burden can lead some parents to leave their child’s diapers on for too long or reuse disposable diapers, which can result in rashes and urinary tract infections, the center says.

California officials are touting the new effort as a way to ease that financial strain.

“The first days at home with a newborn should be focused on the love, connection, and joy of an expanded family, not stress about affording diapers,” said Kim Johnson, the state’s health secretary. “This program helps ensure families can begin that journey with greater stability and peace of mind.”

This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.

Elenilson Armando Coto Delgado believed that he would be imminently deported to El Salvador when he had a medical emergency in late April while in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Coto Delgado feared that the Salvadoran government would send him to a notorious prison called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, where guards have tortured U.S. deportees. Now he and his family are worried that he will be discharged from the hospital and deported, only to be tortured while still recovering from what he told his family was a stroke.

“They don’t care what we suffer,” his mother said in Spanish through tears. “There’s no love. There’s no compassion. There’s pure racism now.”

She asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation from the U.S. government. She is also afraid that if she’s forced to return to El Salvador, its government will come after her.

Coto Delgado still has pending motions with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but, without explanation, the court lifted a stay on his deportation in January. The Ninth Circuit had earlier blocked ICE from removing him while the case is pending, according to court records. Records show the court has not approved his attorney’s renewed requests to block his deportation, with the most recent decision coming at the end of April, the same day he said he had a stroke.

Since 2002, according to court records, the Ninth Circuit has generally granted temporary stays of deportation for immigration cases, but that may be changing. This year, some of the court’s appellate judges have indicated a desire to rethink the practice.

Coto Delgado and his family believed ICE was preparing to deport him from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington. On April 30, he called a loved one and said his face had twisted up uncontrollably when he went to brush his teeth and that he’d felt confusion and a lot of pain in his head.

He said that facility officials had waited four or five hours before getting him medical attention and that he was eventually hospitalized. His mother said that ICE is severely limiting his ability to communicate with his family and that it hasn’t allowed him to sign documents that would enable doctors to apprise them, his attorney or members of Congress of his medical condition. 

“The worst is that they don’t let him talk to us,” his mother said. “We don’t know anything about him.”

GEO Group, the private prison company that operates the detention center in Tacoma, said that medical staff at the facility are directly employed by ICE through the ICE Health Service Corps and deferred to the agency when asked for comment on the situation. ICE did not respond to a request for comment about Coto Delgado’s health condition.

Detainees at the facility, including Coto Delgado, have complained of worsening conditions — including a lack of access to medical care — since the Trump administration began increasing the number of people taken into ICE custody. 

State health inspectors have gone to federal court to try to get access to the facility to review conditions. Health inspectors have been denied access to the detention center 10 times since 2023.

At least 18 people have died in ICE custody so far in 2026, and 51 in total during the second Trump administration, according to ICE. Doctors said they have found signs of medical neglect in many of those cases.

Coto Delgado told his loved ones in a short telephone call from St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma that he’d had a stroke.

When asked about the situation, the hospital said that it does not comment on or share details about its patients’ care. 

“We understand that questions sometimes arise when patients are in the custody of law enforcement or are otherwise detained,” said Deepak Devasthali, president of St. Joseph Medical Center. “Our focus in every situation is the same: ensuring patients receive appropriate medical care in a safe and respectful environment.”

Nurses at the hospital have complained about ICE interfering with treatment. Some have asked that ICE officers be removed from the hospital.

“Here they have me tied up at my feet and hands,” Coto Delgado told a loved one in a phone call, according to a recording of the conversation reviewed by Capital & Main. “I can’t move. Even to eat, they only unlock one of my hands.”

The family has asked the office of Rep. Troy Carter, a Democrat from Louisiana who has accused the Trump administration of violating the rights of immigrants, to look into the case since Coto Delgado most recently lived in Louisiana and his children are there. Retired Louisiana state Sen. John Alario Jr., who served most recently as a Republican, sent a letter on Coto Delgado’s behalf to ICE in February.

In March, when Capital & Main first learned that Coto Delgado might soon be deported, ICE said through an unnamed spokesperson that journalists had “wasted countless hours drumming up sympathy for criminal illegal aliens like Elenilson Armando Coto Delgado.” The agency accused him of being a member of the MS-13 criminal gang because of his tattoos.

In court filings related to his immigration case, Coto Delgado explained that he got several gang-related tattoos at age 14 or 15 while detained at the California Youth Authority.

“Although he never officially joined a gang, he spent time with people who were,” a court document asking for his release from custody says.

Coto Delgado has been in ICE custody for more than six years after he requested protection at the San Ysidro Port of Entry at the San Diego-Mexico border in 2019. 

He initially came to the U.S. as a child fleeing war in El Salvador in the 1980s, growing up in Los Angeles. He was working in construction when Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2005, and he moved to New Orleans to help rebuild.

While there, he said he fought off someone who robbed him and ended up being charged with second-degree battery. He said he didn’t realize the U.S. would deport him for pleading guilty to the charge. 

Deported to El Salvador in 2013, he said police there tortured him and left him for dead by a river because of his tattoos. After someone helped him recover and flee the country, he said he was also kidnapped and tortured in Mexico. That experience made him feel that the only place he could be safe was back in the U.S., so he returned in 2019.

An immigration judge denied his initial request for protection, according to court records.

His case has been slowly moving through the appeals process, with his attorney arguing that conditions in El Salvador changed in 2022 in a way that makes his return even more dangerous due to the country’s “state of exception,” which suspended civil rights and resulted in the imprisonment of thousands without thorough evaluation of innocence or guilt, according to court documents. Changing country conditions allow attorneys to make motions to reopen a case to evaluate those new circumstances.

To further bolster Coto Delgado’s claims, the attorney filed another set of evidence with documentation of deported Venezuelans tortured in Salvadoran prison after the U.S. paid El Salvador to imprison them. But the Board of Immigration Appeals denied the motion to reopen without including any of that evidence in the official record. The attorney is now trying to correct that record through the Ninth Circuit, according to court documents.

Meanwhile, Coto Delgado’s loved ones helped him clean up his record. By arguing that the attorney in his New Orleans criminal case had provided ineffective counsel because she didn’t tell him that he could be deported for accepting a plea deal, he convinced a Louisiana judge to vacate the conviction in February, according to court records.

His mother prays daily that her son will be allowed to return to his family, she said. He has several U.S. citizen children who have autism, and she wants him to be able to be with them.

“What can one do except trust in God that he has mercy?” she said. “The only thing we will trust in is God. We can’t trust people anymore.”

Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.​

Copyright 2026 Capital & Main

The San Diego City Council will consider a settlement in the lawsuit challenging the city’s trash fee during a closed session on Monday.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, attorney Gabriel McWhirter, who is representing the city against a group of local homeowners, told Judge Euketa Oliver during a hearing on Friday that a proposed settlement is “currently on the table” regarding Measure B, which instituted a pickup fee for single-family households after being passed in November 2022.

The proposed settlement comes around a month after Oliver denied the city’s request to dismiss the suit, which argued that the fee violated Proposition 218, the state ballot measure stipulating that the cost of utility fees cannot exceed that of providing the intended services.

In her ruling, Oliver cited the city’s estimate that the fee would increase despite a discrepancy in the amount of households whose service would be affected. The city had originally said homeowners would pay between $23 and $29 a month. That cost was later revised to be around $43 a month in 2026, and an estimated $55 a month in 2027, though some households may qualify for financial assistance.

“The apparent inconsistency between declining service demand and increasing costs, coupled with unsupported assumptions and, at this point, unexplained deficiencies in the city’s analysis, creates triable issues of material fact as to whether the fee exceeds the ‘actual cost’ of providing the service,” she said at the time.

The council’s closed session will come a day before opening statements were scheduled in the lawsuit.

The fee had come under criticism from former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has spearheaded a push to repeal it in his current role as CEO of the conservative Lincoln Club.

McWhirter did not return a call requesting comment.

No damage was reported in San Diego County after a “seismic swarm” of earthquakes rocked neighboring Imperial Valley this weekend.

More than 360 minor earthquakes were reported in and around the Imperial County city of Brawley between the Salton Sea and the Mexican Border beginning at around 4 a.m. Saturday and continuing until late afternoon Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The strongest one, registering at magnitude-4.7 shortly after midnight, was still considered a light quake. The others ranged between micro, minor and slight, according to the USGS.

Geology Professor Emeritus Pat Abbott of San Diego State University told City News Service that a swarm like this is not unusual.

“These earthquake swarms happen here every few years,” Abbott said. “The swarm will not spread. No damages or injuries are expected to occur.”

Abbott also said he expects the swam to continue for the next few days, “but historically they do not lead to a big earthquake.” The swarm is not occurring on fault lines per se, according to Abbott, but rather represents “hundreds of little movements within the Brawley Seismic Zone.”

Lt. Joe Barry, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office watch commander on duty Sunday, told City News Service that there have been no calls to his office regarding the earthquakes.

Mayra García (derecha), con sus hijos Jared y su hija Fernanda, durante una celebración familiar del Halloween. Foto: Cortesía familia Garcia.

En esta celebración del Día de las Madres, Tiempos de San Diego quiso hacerles un homenaje amplio, mostrando ejemplos de vida que representan las diferentes realidades de millones de mujeres que trabajan de sol a sol, o que han tenido que emigrar para ofrecer una mejor calidad de vida a sus hijos, o a aquellas que por diferentes circunstancias de la vida han tenido que desempeñar el papel de madres y padres ante la ausencia de un compañero.

Todas las historias que estamos compartiendo tienen un hilo conductor común: el esfuerzo, la valentía, la superación de obstáculos a pesar de todas las barreras. Son mujeres ejemplares y extraordinarias, que escogimos porque representan muy bien a las mujeres de nuestra comunidad.

En esta fecha, todo el equipo de Tiempos de San Diego nos unimos para decirles: Feliz Día, y gracias por todo ese esfuerzo.

A continuación, las historias:

Mayra García: ‘No hay barreras tan grandes que puedan detener a una madre’

Cuando Mayra García supo que su hijo Jared tenía autismo y al menos 16 graves discapacidades, entendió que ella y su esposo tendrían un gran trabajo por delante. Estaba convencida de que juntos, en familia, podrían brindarle lo mejor a su hijo.

Pero no contaba con que su esposo pensaba de otra manera y que luego de 12 años de casados, terminaría pidiéndole el divorcio. “Me dijo ‘ahí están tus hijos y a ver cómo le haces’”, dice García con una expresión casi fría que denota los difíciles años que siguieron.

García hace una pausa. Supervisa los movimientos de Jared y continúa. “Entonces desapareció de nuestras vidas y la responsabilidad cayó sobre mis hombros y gracias a mi hija Fernanda que se convirtió en mi mano derecha, logramos salir adelante”.

Y entonces inició una lucha contra la cotidianidad. “No tenía carro y la escuela de Fernanda me quedaba a más de cinco millas de distancia, tampoco tenía papeles y trabajaba en lo que podía”.

Pero a García nunca se le ha cerrado el mundo. Con una carrera en ingeniería en sistemas y comunicaciones en México, ha hecho todo para poder cumplir con el llamado sueño americano. “Estudié cultura de belleza, secretariado ejecutivo, pero lo dejé todo cuando me casé y nos venimos a Estados Unidos”.

Han pasado 14 años desde la separación. Y la vida le ha sonreído. “Me dediqué en cuerpo y alma a cuidar de mis dos hijos y los resultados están a la vista, mi hija hoy tiene 27 años, es salvavidas, trabaja en la Policía y nunca he tenido un problema con ella, somos como dos grandes amigas”.

El golpe del divorcio lo resintió físicamente. “En menos de un mes pasé de 130 libras a 90, afortunadamente el padre de la iglesia a la que asistía me recomendaba para limpiar casas, no me importaba hacer cualquier tipo de trabajo honrado con tal de que mis hijos estuvieran bien”.

Y su espíritu de lucha nunca la abandonó. Y cuando más perdida se sentía más recordaba los consejos de su papá. “Me decía ‘te enseñé a trabajar duro. Estudia y aprende el inglés. Tienes dos hijos que no tienen a nadie más’”.

Entonces estudió y se capacitó y hoy trabaja en organizaciones de apoyo a los discapacitados y por los derechos de los indocumentados. Cuenta con certificaciones para tratar situaciones de violencia doméstica y tráfico humano.

La fuerza ha sido su hijo Jared hoy de 24 años. “Yo sabía que él no podría independizarse y que dependía absolutamente de mi”. Entonces buscó apoyo y el esfuerzo dio sus frutos. “Actualmente tengo más de 80 certificaciones y me he especializado en educación especial”.

García ha recibido invitaciones de la casa Blanca y del Concilio de Los Ángeles, por su trabajo en favor de la comunidad con discapacidades

¿Qué has aprendido de tus hijos?, le pregunto.

Se queda muy seria, reflexiona. “Siempre quise estar cerca de mis hijos, quería tener la mejor comunicación posible con ellos y creo que lo he logrado, entre mi hija y yo no hay ninguna barrera de comunicación, eso me hace sentir que he hecho las cosas bien. No puedo decir si soy una buena madre, pero siento que hasta el momento he hecho lo mejor por ellos”.

En todo este proceso de ver a sus hijos crecer, dependiendo exclusivamente de ella, se pasaron los años. “Recuerdo que era una gran responsabilidad, salía del baño con la cabeza enjabonada y no me daba cuenta o me la pasaba pendiente de la cámara de noche para asegurarme de que Jared estuviera bien”.

No duda un segundo cuando le preguntó cuáles son ahora sus prioridades. “Siempre estarán primero mis hijos”.

¿Qué le dirías a tu mamá?

“Gracias por haberme dado la vida, los fundamentos, los principios y todo el amor y que la amo con todo el corazón”.

Sandra Egas Alvarez en compañía de sus hijos. “Ser madre es un verdadero regalo de Dios”, dice Sandra Egas. (Foto: Cortesía familia Egas)

Sandra Egas: Una vida llena de milagros

¿Qué es lo que he aprendido? Sandra Egas Álvarez piensa detenidamente su respuesta y dice pausadamente: “Que hay que agradecer lo bueno y lo malo y que no hay que apegarse a los planes, porque las cosas cambian en un abrir y cerrar de ojos”.

Egas Álvarez, originaria de Guayaquil, Ecuador, de 60 años y madre de cinco hijos, tiene motivos de sobra para pensar así. Sabe que la vida puede dar un vuelco en cualquier momento, como ese 5 de octubre de 2000, cuando días después de haber recibido el diagnóstico de que Sebastián su hijo mayor tenía leucemia, decidió que había que viajar a Estados Unidos para conseguir un tratamiento que le ayudara a salvar la vida de su primogénito.

“Éramos jóvenes y teníamos muchos proyectos y planes por realizar”, dice mientras remueve sus recuerdos. “Margaret, una gran amiga que ya vivía en Estados Unidos en cuanto supo de lo que le pasaba a mi hijo buscó información y nos puso en contacto con el Children Cancer Caring Center”.

Buscaron boletos de avión y como en un abrir y cerrar los ojos ya estaban en Estados Unidos. Allá se quedaron sus otros tres hijos al cuidado de su madre.

Empezar de cero

Entonces todo se transformó. De tener una casa propia y un negocio de cosméticos naturales, pasaron a vivir en el departamento que su amiga compartía con sus padres. “Mi esposo dormía en el piso y mi hijo y yo en una camita que poníamos en la sala”. Hace una pausa, seca una lágrima y me dice: “No tengo más que palabras de agradecimiento para ellos”.

Y entonces había que empezar de cero, su esposo que en Ecuador era visitador médico, aquí trabajó instalando antenas para satélites, haciendo mudanzas y después en una cadena de donas.

“Fueron tiempos muy difíciles, de mucha angustia y desesperación”, dice Egas. Los médicos y los especialistas les recomendaran que trajeran a los otros 3 hijos, no sólo como apoyo emocional para su hermano enfermo, sino porque en caso de que Sebastián requiriera un trasplante de médula ósea, sus hermanos tenían más posibilidades de ser compatibles.

La casa que tenían en Ecuador la remataron para rentar un departamento y comprar un auto económico para llevar a sus hijos a la escuela y a Sebastián al médico.

“Antes de que tuviéramos el carro, lo llevaba al tratamiento tres veces a la semana en autobús, tren y metro, me hacía tres horas y medio de camino, y el problema no era yo, sino que él regresaba con mucho malestar después de la quimioterapia”.

El tratamiento duró tres años y las revisiones semanales duraron cinco años más.

Egas recuerda con un inmenso agradecimiento el centro médico en el que atendieron a su hijo. “Con el paso del tiempo nos hicimos como una comunidad en la que nos conocíamos y nos apoyábamos todos, y vi morir a muchos niños conocidos que tenían cáncer y eso era muy doloroso, porque siempre pensaba, el próximo puede ser mi hijo”.

Hoy Sebastián está completamente curado y ha hecho una vida normal. Cuando Egas piensa en esos tiempos refleja un poco de tristeza, a pesar del buen ánimo que mantiene.

“Se nos fue el tiempo como en un abrir y cerrar de ojos y poco a poco salimos adelante con un esfuerzo enorme”, dice mientras sostiene la mano del cuarto de sus hijos que la acompaña en la entrevista.

De milagro en milagro

Pero la vida no ha sido fácil. Es como una carrera de obstáculos en la que hay que saltar siempre con optimismo, dice Egas.

Y es que cuando pensaba que su vida se había encarrilado y lo que seguía era disfrutar la tranquilidad que dan los años, el 22 de junio de 2007 recibió una visita de la policía en la que le notificaron que su hijo mayor había tenido un accidente muy grave en la carretera.

Su hijo iba de pasajero en el auto de su novia porque se dirigían a una fiesta. El auto cayó en uno de los tantos canales de Florida. Su novia fue rescatada de inmediato, pero falleció antes de llegar al hospital.

A su hijo Raúl, que llevaba el cinturón de seguridad fue muy difícil sacarlo del auto. Permaneció bajo el agua más de 15 minutos”, recuerda Egas.

“Cuando llegamos al hospital vimos las radiografías y supimos que se encontraba en un coma inducido”, dice Egas. “En realidad los médicos nos estaban esperando para que nos despidiéramos de él”.

Pero ocurrió el milagro. Despertó del coma 24 horas después. Aun así, los médicos les dijeron que, si se recuperaba, tendría graves repercusiones en su cerebro porque había permanecido mucho tiempo bajo el agua. Once días después fue dado de alta, sin ninguna secuela. Hoy está casado, con hijos y lleva una vida laboral exitosa.

El milagro más reciente ocurrió cuando vio un anuncio en una de las redes sociales, en los que  se estaba rifando el pago de los gastos de hacerse ciudadano y un abogado, así que decidió entrar en la promoción.

“Semanas después recibí una llamada de La Red Hispana diciéndome que había resultado ganadora”, dice con lágrimas en los ojos. “Me parecía muy bueno para ser verdad”, dice con una sonrisa.

Para ella el premio tiene un enorme significado. “No es sólo que quiera hacerme ciudadana, es que al naturalizarme puedo arreglar los documentos de Gabriel, mi cuarto hijo que no ha podido arreglar sus papeles”.

Gabriel, de 27 años, tiene una serie discapacidades mentales y a los 17 tuvo su primer ataque de epilepsia, por lo que depende completamente de su madre. “Por eso, cuando recibí la llamada diciéndome que iban a pagar el costo y además que tendría la ayuda de un abogado para poder regularizar la situación de mi hijo, pensé en que Dios una vez más había intercedido por nosotros”.

Rina Paz Rojas: Una madre alegre y feliz con la vida

Rina Paz Rojas, junto a su esposo, hijo, nueras y nietos. (Foto: Cortesía familia Paz.)

“La verdad es que no me siento vieja, aunque tenga hijos cuarentones”, dice Rina Paz Rojas, una mujer jovial, alegre, madre de tres hijos y originaria de San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

La entrevista es acerca de su vida, de su experiencia de ser madre, de sus preocupaciones y aciertos. Y sin duda es una historia llena de anécdotas y sonrisas.

Después de venir a los 12 años a estudiar inglés en el estado de Ohio, regresó a Honduras donde trabajó en una compañía de café y en la empresa Shell. Fue en el país centroamericano donde conoció a quien después se convertiría en su esposo. “Era mi alumno, yo le daba clases y siempre le digo que él cometió ‘proferisidio’. Hoy tenemos 50 años de casados”.

“Tuve mi primer hijo a los 29 años, y como siempre ocurre en esos casos, lo sobreprotegimos, estábamos atentos a que no le fuera a pasar nada, después de todo uno experimenta con el primero”, dice Paz Rojas. “Con el segundo las cosas fueron menos extremas y ya para el tercero, ya teníamos la experiencia de que no son necesarios esos cuidados extremos que les damos al primero”.

De la experiencia de ser madre, asegura que fue una labor de parto de 32 horas. “Sinceramente dije, me voy a quedar con un solo hijo, no quiero a volver a pasar por este dolor, pero Dios es grande y el dolor se olvida y terminé con dos hijos más”.

La mejor decisión

Era principios de los ochenta cuando Centroamérica parecía estar a punto de un incendio. Las relaciones con la Nicaragua sandinista iban de mal en peor. El Salvador era también un polvorín y entendieron que la situación en Honduras se estaba deteriorando a pasos acelerados.

Paz Rojas y su esposo decidieron que lo mejor era salir del país. En menos de un año ya estaban instalados en Estados Unidos.

Visto en retrospectiva sabe que fue una buena decisión. “Tenemos tres hijos maravillosos, profesionales, seguramente hicimos algo bueno, porque no lo hicimos pensando en nosotros, sino en ellos, para darles un futuro mejor”.

Pero el que haya sido una buena decisión no significa que no haya sido duro. “Muy duro porque hay que construir desde cero y hacer crédito”.

Aunque en Honduras no eran ricos, no les faltaba nada. Pero aquí las cosas son diferentes. Su esposo que es ingeniero mecánico no encontró acomodo fácilmente. “El primero fue un trabajo horrible y se sentía frustrado y decía que quería regresarse a Honduras”, dice Paz Rojas quien recuerda esos momentos con un poco de nostalgia. “Yo le decía tú eres la cabeza de esta casa y si quieres que nos vayamos, nos vamos, pero recuerda que lo hicimos por nuestros hijos”,  entonces él recapacitaba”.

Primero los hijos

Paz Rojas siempre tuvo la fortuna de tener trabajos flexibles y jefes comprensivos. “Me permitían salir corriendo si me llamaban de la escuela o si mis hijos necesitaban algo”.

Recuerda una ocasión en la que le llamaron de la escuela y tomó su auto y en medio de la carretera se le descompuso. Entonces un automovilista se detuvo para ayudarla. Ella sin pensarlo se subió al auto y le pidió que la llevara a la escuela. “Iba desesperada y no pensaba en nada, hasta que estuve ahí me di cuenta de que había corrido un gran peligro y que ese hombre me podría haber hecho cualquier cosa, en realidad fue como un ángel”, dice con toda su fe.

Paz Rojas es elocuente y agradable. La conversación fluye con toda facilidad. Tiene muy claros los momentos que le han dado una gran felicidad.

“Cuando asistimos a las graduaciones de nuestros hijos he llorado de felicidad, porque me convenzo de que hicimos bien las cosas. Sabíamos que en algún momento ellos iban a seguir sus caminos y así lo han hecho y afortunadamente han tomado buenas decisiones al elegir a sus compañeros de vida”.

También sabe que los tiempos han cambiado y que nadie experimenta en cabeza ajena, por lo que deja que sus hijos encuentren las respuestas de crianza que ella muchas veces también buscó.

De sus padres, la señora Rina sólo tiene palabras de elogio y admiración. “Mis papás tenían pocos estudios, pero eran muy buenos trabajadores, tenían una ‘trucha’ (tienda de abarrotes) y mi mami trabajaba lado a lado con mi papá y cuando le dije a él que quería estudiar inglés él lo hizo posible y me mandó a Estados Unidos, luego envió a mi otra hermana. A la tercera no la aceptaron en el mismo colegio que a nosotras, pero la mandó a México”.

Pero, así como eran de trabajadores y generosos, eran estrictos y disciplinados. “Le doy gracias a Dios porque por ellos soy lo que soy”.

Una etapa para disfrutar

Ser madre sin duda ofrece muchas razones para ser feliz, pero ser abuela no se le compara. “A mis nietos les doy puro amor”, y dice que está viviendo un momento de gran felicidad.

“Mis tres hijos se encuentran ahora en Tampa y puedo disfrutar de mis dos nietos”, dice con una amorosa sonrisa.

“He dado todo por ellos, yo no he pensado en mí, y lo he hecho porque me nace, porque los amo y ellos me dicen ahora, ‘descansa, no te preocupes, estamos aquí para cuidarte’”.

Sheyla Zamora: Los sacrificios que las madres hacen

Cuando a Sheyla Zamora le asaltan las culpas, muchas veces se ha preguntado si es una mala madre. Rápidamente desecha esos pensamientos y recuerda que todos los sacrificios que ha hecho (y no han sido pocos) han sido por el bienestar de su hija

Hace seis años Zamora tomó la dolorosa decisión de dejar Taramoto, Perú, su ciudad natal para buscar un mejor futuro para su hija Mariana, de 6 años y a quien ha tenido que criar como madre soltera.

“La tuve a los 30 años y sabía que no tenía gran cosa que ofrecerle a pesar de mis largas jornadas de trabajo haciendo pasteles”, dice Zamora en uno de sus momentos de descanso de su trabajo limpiando oficinas y edificios.

Zamora nunca se ha quedado con los brazos cruzados. En Perú vendía pasteles y tenía su propia marca de granola orgánica. “Pero no era suficiente, veía que mi hija iba creciendo y me preocupaba mucho su futuro económico”.

Cada vez más preocupada por la situación económica de su país y de lo que le deparaba el destino a su hija, habló con un familiar que vivía en Estados Unidos y ella le dijo que se viniera, y que ella le daría trabajo.

Habló con su mamá y le dijo que no se preocupara, que ella cuidaría de su hija de la misma manera que lo hizo con ella.

Entonces emprendió un viaje que ya dura seis años y que muchas veces piensa en terminarlo abruptamente ante los sentimientos de angustia, culpa y soledad que algunas veces la asaltan.

“En esos momentos mi mamá me reta, me dice que tome un vuelo y que me vaya, pero que recuerde que las cosas no han cambiado en el Perú, que la situación sigue igual o peor que antes, pero que si no aguanto que me regrese”.

Entonces Zamora entra en razón y se concentra en el trabajo limpiando cuidadosamente para ganar el dinero que religiosamente envía para los gastos de su hija.

Pero no se crea que Sheyla es una madre ausente. Ella está pendiente absolutamente de todas las cosas de su hija. “Hablo con ella todos los días por videollamada, le digo que me gusta como está peinada, le ayudo con su tarea, en ocasiones le canto alguna canción”.

En este proceso de estar presente a pesar de la distancia, su madre ha sido la clave.

“Ella me habla a cualquier momento, me dice cómo va en la escuela y hasta ha acordado con las maestras que me hablen por videollamada cuando se necesita algo”.

A pesar de todos estos esfuerzos para burlar la distancia, por supuesto que extraña las fiestas de cumpleaños, las celebraciones, la Navidad. “Dormíamos abrazadas, extraño todas las noches el calorcito de su cuerpo”.

La separación ha sido un proceso muy difícil. “Hay días buenos y hay días malos, y entonces lo que hago es trabajar muy duro para olvidar ese dolorcito que siempre me acompaña”.

En este largo proceso su mamá ha sido la fuerza para resistir. “Tu hija es la más amada y querida, no te preocupes, todo esto va a pasar y cuando menos lo esperes estarán juntas de nuevo”, le dice su mamá.

Pero los malos pensamientos la acosan una y otra vez. “Algunas veces me siento muy culpable y me digo que soy una mala mamá, que dejé a mi hija, que está creciendo sin mí, que mi mamá en lugar de estar pendiente de su nieta debería vivir relajada y en paz”.

“No tengo cómo pagarle a mi mamá todo lo que ha hecho por Mariana y por mí”, dice Sheyla con una lágrima que moja sus mejillas. “Todos los días le doy gracias a Dios por tener a mi madre. Mi mamá sabe que las palabras no me alcanzan para decirle gracias”.

This article was produced by Capital & Main. It is published here with permission.

California could be the first state to ban the sale and installation of engineered stone, also known as quartz, as state regulators try to stem a growing silicosis epidemic among stone fabrication workers.

The occupational lung disease has killed 30 fabrication workers and sickened more than 550 in the state since 2019, according to the California Department of Public Health. 

A new state law that took effect Jan. 1 imposes tougher rules on the shops that cut, grind and polish the engineered stone used in kitchen and bathroom countertops. But health experts said it doesn’t go far enough to prevent workers from dying.

A petition was filed in December by the Western Occupational & Environmental Medical Association (WOEMA), a nonprofit representing occupational medicine physicians and other health and safety experts in seven Western states. It said that engineered stone containing more than 1% crystalline silica is too toxic to fabricate and proposed that state officials follow the lead of Australia, which became the first country to ban engineered stone in 2024 after facing a similar health crisis. 

But the proposal faces an uncertain future. Despite garnering the support of medical experts, public health officials and workers, it faces stiff opposition from the industry, including manufacturers who have argued that their costs would rise if they were forced to switch to safer alternatives. 

The proposed ban’s fate, and that of scores of California workers, rests in the hands of the California Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board, a seven-member governor-appointed panel of experts that determines workplace standards in the state. 

The board is expected to decide whether to reject or accept the proposed ban at a public hearing later this month in Los Angeles. 

Medical experts said a ban is necessary to respond to a worsening public health crisis. 

“While we wait, while we talk about it, people are getting sick and dying,” said Dr. Robert Blink, an occupational medicine physician and former president of WOEMA. He urged regulators to act quickly to “stop future exposure and prevent more cases.”

Workers who fabricate engineered stone slabs can inhale dust containing tiny crystalline silica particles that tear and scar their lungs, making it extremely difficult to breathe. In California, that workforce is made up mostly of young Latino men, many of them undocumented immigrants.

There is no cure for silicosis; the only treatment is supplemental oxygen and, eventually, a risky and expensive lung transplantation, which medical experts said may only prolong life by an average of six years. 

After working as a stone fabricator for 16 years and being diagnosed with silicosis, Oscar, 46, received a double lung transplant. 

“I think that if I hadn’t had the transplant, I wouldn’t be here to tell the story. Because in the end, I couldn’t even breathe with the oxygen,” Oscar said in Spanish. He spoke on condition that he be identified only by his first name to protect his privacy.

“At no point did we know that those materials caused silicosis,” he added. “But I think that as long as those materials exist, there will always be people willing to work with them, and people will always keep getting sick.”

Are Stricter Regulations Enough?

The new California law bans the dry cutting of engineered stone and mandates the use of wet cutting methods, ventilation and respirator masks. But many public health officials said that’s not enough and that engineered stone is too toxic to work safely with, even under the state’s tougher standards. 

“Engineered stone is definitely much more toxic to work with than natural stone,” Blink said, citing its higher silica content (over 90%) compared to natural stones such as marble and granite. The crystalline silica powder, mixed with other polymers and resins to bind it, generates an even more toxic nano-sized dust when cut, he added. 

“In order to work with the material safely, you would have to wear a class A hazmat suit,” Blink said, “and you simply can’t work the artistic corners of the material for your kitchen while wearing a space suit.”

Public health officials said the best way to protect workers from a toxic material is to eliminate it or substitute it with a safer option. It’s a more effective safeguard than workplace controls or personal protective equipment requirements, which may reduce the risks but do not get rid of them entirely, they added.

Since Australia banned the material, Blink said, manufacturers switched to producing amorphous silica stone slabs, a much safer option composed of ground glass. 

But industry representatives are pushing back on the proposed ban in California, claiming quartz can be safely fabricated when following safety measures of the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA. 

Cambria, the nation’s largest engineered quartz manufacturer, has blamed noncompliant fabrication shops for the growing silicosis epidemic in California. 

“The ban proposed by WOEMA will not effectively address the cluster of silicosis cases in Southern California. It will not stop the unsafe shops from operating and endangering their workers,” said Rebecca Shult, Cambria’s chief legal officer, at a Cal/OSHA meeting in March. 

Micah Aberson, a Cambria spokesperson, said the company “is committed to promoting the health and safety of all workers in the stone fabrication and installation business” through education, safety warning labels and by advocating for “stronger compliance and enforcement of safety regulations, along with the prosecution of reckless employers.”

Medical, health and safety experts said most shops cannot afford the expensive equipment needed to protect workers from contracting silicosis when fabricating engineered stone, rendering California’s current rules impractical and insufficient.

What’s Next?

In a series of hearings over the last six months, the California Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board has heard presentations and other testimony from industry representatives, manufacturers, health experts and workers.

It remains unclear how the independent, governor-appointed board might vote on the matter. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not answer Capital & Main’s questions about his position on the proposed ban. 

Members of the board have publicly expressed concern over the rising number of silicosis cases in the state, but none of the five current appointees have made it clear in public remarks in recent months whether they support a ban on engineered stone. Capital & Main reached out to the board for comment.

“I don’t know how we fix this problem,” board member Nola J. Kennedy said at a public hearing in March. 

“As an industrial hygienist, I do believe the material can be worked with safely, but as someone who sits here and listens to testimony, I believe it’s not being worked with safely,” Kennedy said. 

Board Chair Joseph Alioto Jr., whom Newsom appointed in 2023, said at a hearing in February that the state should focus on enforcement following the passage of SB20, which increased penalties for workplace violations, and suggested partnering with local law enforcement agencies and district attorneys. 

In a letter later that month, the board urged district attorneys in the seven counties that account for 95% of silicosis cases in California to criminally prosecute fabrication shops that are dry cutting in violation of the new state law. 

“With an estimated 1,400 stone fabrication shops in the State, the regulatory bodies alone cannot feasibly enforce these regulations with the power and urgency needed to save lives,” the Feb. 27 letter said. “You can play an enormously important role by prosecuting and deterring the violations that are killing Californians.” 

Even if the Occupational Safety & Health Standards Board approves a ban on engineered stone, the decision would initiate a rulemaking process that could take years before the ban is fully implemented. In the meantime, health experts said they expect silicosis cases to keep rising.

“Banning it won’t take care of it today. It’ll take several years to actually execute and implement,” board member Chris Laszcz-Davis said at a public hearing in April. “What do we do in the interim to make sure that this doesn’t continue?” 

Regardless of the board’s decision, Blink said consumers and designers have an opportunity to push the industry to adopt alternative amorphous silica stone slabs, which are already available in California. 

At the April hearing, he urged the board not to waste this opportunity to protect workers: “Why are we continuing to allow this inherently toxic material to endanger and damn our workers to unhealthy lives and early deaths?”

Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.​

Copyright 2026 Capital & Main

This article first appeared on KFF Health News. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

When Gavin Newsom ran for California governor in 2018, his support for a state-run single-payer healthcare system was considered a risky move and earned him hefty labor endorsements.

Today, leading Democrats in the wide-open race to succeed Newsom have embraced single-payer as a political necessity, an answer to voters fed up with rising premiums and other spiraling healthcare costs.

But with no clear front-runner, they are sparring among themselves in debates and political ads over who is most committed to a government-run model. No candidate has outlined how California would fund comprehensive health coverage for its 40 million residents, leaving voters unable to discern which candidate has a concrete plan for the nation’s most populous state.

Healthcare and political experts said the concept of single-payer has shifted from progressive pipe dream a decade ago to today’s mainstream talking points in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1. Democrats have pledged the model as the best way to lower costs in an attempt to woo voters worried about affordability as ballots arrive for the June 2 primary. The top two Republicans, meanwhile, have dismissed government-run healthcare as a “disaster” and “socialism.”

“In many ways, single-payer healthcare has become a progressive litmus test,” said Larry Levitt, a former White House policy adviser and a healthcare expert at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Few voters fully understand the term single-payer, let alone expect the next governor to achieve it, Levitt said. Rather, he added, the term has become more of a signal to voters about a candidate’s approach to healthcare reform.

Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, who for decades backed single-payer healthcare in Congress, has come under criticism from opponents for a nuanced but clear shift away from single-payer. It came after Becerra secured an endorsement from the California Medical Association, a powerful group representing doctors and a longtime opponent of single-payer healthcare bills in California.

At a May 5 debate put on by CNN, Becerra declared his support for “Medicare for All,” a proposal for a federally run system that’s been stalled for years, but he declined to say whether he’d pursue a California-led effort. He said his immediate focus would be on mitigating the drastic federal cuts expected to hit low-income and disabled enrollees in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which covers more than a third of residents.

Becerra is counting on voters not to distinguish between the often-confused terms single-payer, Medicare for All, and universal coverage, noting during the debate that “Californians don’t care what you call it, so long as they have affordable healthcare.”

“A lot of people aren’t clear what single-payer is, and they need a metaphor to understand it,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and one of the lead pollsters for former President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who’s touted his self-funding as a signal he can’t be bought, has emerged as the race’s most vocal advocate of single-payer after opposing it during a short-lived 2020 presidential bid.

As governor, Steyer has said, he would pass legislation backed by the California Nurses Association that has failed to come to fruition under Newsom’s tenure. Pressed on how he would cover the estimated $731.4 billion cost, Steyer told KFF Health News that “God is going to be in the details.”

At a forum last year, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said she didn’t believe achieving such a system was realistic in the near term, but the Orange County Democrat later told party delegates that she would “deliver single-payer.” Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Democrats who are trailing their competitors in the polls, don’t support single-payer. The top two vote-getters — regardless of party — advance to the November general election.

Some of the most seasoned politicians have failed to deliver single-payer. Newsom, who campaigned on the promise of being a “healthcare governor,” dialed back his ambitions upon taking office, choosing instead to pursue “universal access” to health coverage under a series of Medi-Cal expansions and efforts to contain healthcare spending.

Vermont, which remains the only state to pass a single-payer healthcare law, reversed course when leaders there couldn’t identify a funding source.

To enact single-payer, California would need permission from the federal government to redirect billions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, and other funding that currently flows to the system — approval not likely to come from the Trump administration.

More than half of adults nationally say healthcare costs will have a major impact on whom they vote for in November, according an April KFF poll.

Danielle Cendejas, a Los Angeles-based Democratic consultant who works with state legislative candidates, said single-payer healthcare increasingly appears on candidate questionnaires from small-business advocates as well as hyperlocal Democratic clubs, in state legislative races and national union endorsements.

What most California voters want to hear, Cendejas said, is how candidates plan to give them more immediate relief from higher premiums, expensive drug costs, and long waits to access care.

The high price tag doesn’t faze Jennifer Easton, a 63-year-old Democrat from Oakland, who said other countries with similar models have proved they can lower costs. She said she supports a single-payer health system because it’s clear to her that Americans have reached the limits of working within the existing system. But she isn’t expecting any of the current candidates to succeed in implementing one, and she hasn’t decided whom to support.

“No one can in four years,” she said. Seeing a candidate enthusiastically support the concept gives her a good idea of their philosophy. “It is, if we’re lucky, a 20-year, 25-year plan.”

Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said while Americans may be supportive of single-payer in polls, focus groups suggest that approval drops quickly when voters realize it could mean losing their current doctor or insurance plan.

At the CNN debate, Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate President Donald Trump has endorsed, said Californians would end up with subpar patient care and “taxes sky high to pay for it,” like in his native United Kingdom.

Instead, Hilton suggested the state stop providing “free healthcare for illegal immigrants who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

San Diego Padres pitching prospect Humberto Cruz pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving money to transport noncitizen immigrants within the United States.

The San Diego Tribune reported on Friday that Cruz, who is not a U.S. citizen, acknowledged in a plea agreement that he almost certainly would be deported. The Padres told the paper that the 19-year-old also would likely lose his work visa for 10 years, but can reapply after five years if he demonstrates good behavior.

Cruz underwent Tommy John surgery last August and had been rehabbing at the team’s spring training facility in Arizona in late October at the time of his arrest near a border town.

Cruz pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in November in exchange for prosecutors dismissing a felony charge, according to the paper. He was sentenced to 30 days in prison with credit for time served.

The Padres placed Cruz on the restricted list in March and declined further comment.

The Padres signed Cruz out of Monterrey, Mexico, for $750,000 in February 2024.

A warming trend will continue through Monday in San Diego County, and next week will begin hotter than normal, the National Weather Service said Saturday.

Temperatures will peak around 10 to 20 degrees above normal Monday for inland areas with areas of moderate to high heat risk.

A cooling trend with a deepening marine layer will return by the middle of next week as an area of low pressure approaches the West Coast, according to forecasters. Until then, high pressure off the coast will begin to build through Monday, which will suppress the marine layer even further. This will keep low clouds and fog within 10-15 miles of the coast, according to the NWS.

“This system will also bring a warming trend to the region through Monday as high temperatures increase a couple degrees again on Sunday with greater warming on Monday,” the NWS said.

By Monday, highs will reach 105 to 110 degrees across the deserts.

“Heat alerts have been issued for these areas, so please take breaks and drink fluids if you are outdoors for long periods,” the NWS said. “Cooler weather will occur at the coast with a mix of clouds and sun.”

By Tuesday, temperatures will drop about 5 degrees across the deserts and coast and up to 10 degrees for inland valleys. Inland areas will cool again into Wednesday.

Mountains and deserts can also expect increasing southwest and west winds near 25-45 mph, with temperatures near to slightly above average with continued dry weather expected.

The extreme heat warning will be in effect from 10 a.m. Sunday to 8 p.m. Monday for San Diego County deserts.

Even before Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe popped off on the Union-Tribune’s Editorial Board this week, the Board caught my eye. 

The Editorial Board recently started endorsing City Council candidates, as it does every election year. 

So far this year, the board has chosen Richard Bailey, Mark Powell, Gerardo Ramirez and sitting Councilmember Henry Foster III.

It’s not the endorsements themselves that got my attention. It’s who’s actually making them. 

Editorial Board may sound like a large, imposing group of people sitting around a long mahogany table; but in the case of the U-T it is not. Now, it is just two people. 

Editorial Boards are misunderstood little life forms. When a newspaper endorses a candidate, regular people don’t really know what that means. They think that the upper echelons of people at the U-T sit down and decide who to back. Not exactly. 

The paper’s Editorial Board decides. It has generally been a group of people totally walled off — at least metaphorically — from the rest of the newsroom. Sometimes it might include the paper’s publisher or editor-in-chief. Frequently, it is just a group of opinion writers. 

That’s how it has worked at the U-T. In 2023, the Board has had as many as seven people. It was a group of opinion writers — no upper management — doing their thing, apart from the rest of the operation. 

To be sure, it had quite a few White men — some liberal, some conservative. But it also had several young people and women of color. They would do copious research, have intense deliberations about whom to endorse and eventually come to a decision.  

The Board lost three people to buy outs when Alden Global Capital purchased the U-T in 2023. Another left. Then another got laid off and claimed she was censored for writing about immigration raids. That left two. 

The U-T’s current board is made up of Chris Reed and Tania Navarro, both long time reporters and editors. This isn’t aimed at either of them personally. It’s aimed at the number of them — and the wild presumption of two people, hiding behind the title of Editorial Board, telling a county of 3.3 million people how to vote. 

Montgomery Steppe came at Reed by name in her social media post. She insinuated he was essentially in charge of making the endorsements himself. 

She also accused the Board of racism, writing that it chose an “absurd” photo of her that made her look like an “angry Black woman.” 

I texted Reed, but he told me he didn’t want to comment. He said the Editorial Board was working on its own response to Montgomery Steppe to be published Friday. 

The Board appeared to release that response, in the form of an endorsement of Kristine Alessio, Montgomery Steppe’s opponent. 

The endorsement barely addressed Montgomery Steppe’s criticisms. “The U-T Editorial Board has no desire to feud with Montgomery Steppe,” Reed and Navarro simply wrote. 

Montgomery Steppe’s criticism contained one other interesting kernel. She said the Editorial Board asked her only four questions. 

“No in depth interview about the body of my work or qualifications. Four questions. Asking me about other people’s policies and priorities rather than mine,” she wrote. 

It’s true. The Board asked her and Alessio both only four questions. 

That too is a departure from the past.  

I have heard from past Board members that the previous endorsement process was extremely arduous. It required lots of research and discussion. And beyond that, it required in-depth interviews, conducted live with the candidates. The Board would sometimes interview candidates for an hour each and then post the recordings or transcripts. 

Now the Board is limiting candidates to about 600 words — and using those words as a serious basis for the final endorsement decision.

As the number of people on the Board has decreased, it’s not just a diversity of opinions that has been lost. It’s also the Board’s ability to conduct a robust, heavily-researched endorsement process. 

— Will Huntsberry

Josh Coyne, Well-Known Protecting Neighborhoods Guy

If you’re new here, we want to see the mailers, interesting social media ads and campaign text messages you receive. We got a good text message advertisement this week. 

It was touting Josh Coyne, who is running in the southern coastal City Council district against several other people including Richard Bailey, Nicole Crosby and Mandy Havlik. 

“Democrats in our district have had enough of politicians who talk about protecting neighborhoods and then approve every developer project that comes through City Hall,” the ad said. Coyne will “oppose height limit increases in coastal communities” and “demand real community input before any major development moves forward.” 

That felt strange because in a previous candidate forum Coyne seemed like an unrepentant pro-growth, YIMBY kind of guy. 

He also previously told us he supports the Midway Rising project moving forward, even though it will breach the height limit. 

We asked Coyne whether he stands by the ad. Coyne seemed surprised. He said he hadn’t been aware of it, but would get back to us with a few thoughts. At press time, we still hadn’t heard from him.  

Coyne himself didn’t pay for the ad. It was paid for LiUNA, the laborers union. 

Related: Bailey seems to have gotten some inspiration from the socialist who won New York’s mayoral race: Zohran Mamdani.

Check out their logos. Mamdani’s:

And Bailey’s:

GOP Chaos: Which Is the Real Republican Voter Guide?

Loyal Politics Report subscribers will remember the Republican Party of San Diego County’s inability or unwillingness to settle on key endorsements this cycle. The Central Committee did not put out an official Republican Party voter guide.

It seemed to work out just fine for Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, whose Reform California voter guide was set to fill the vacuum. But his rivals, Sen. Brian Jones, Rep. Darrell Issa and the former chair of the Republican Party, before DeMaio ousted him, Corey Gustafson, put together their own Big Beautiful Voter Guide.

Now they’re attacking each other.

“We have now confirmed that the FAKE Republican Voter Guide mailer has hit every neighborhood in North and East San Diego County – along with blatantly dishonest mailers attacking our endorsed Republican candidates in target races. You most likely received at least one of these deceptive mailers or you soon will!” DeMaio warned his followers.

He pointed them to the “REAL San Diego County Voter Guide for Republicans” at RepublicanVoterGuideCA.com.

The two big Republican battles this June are in the county supervisor race, where San Marcos Mayor Rebecca Jones is running against Vista Mayor John Franklin for the chance to face Democrat Kyle Krahel in North County. The other is the race to replace Sen. Brian Jones, where Republican Kristie Bruce-Lane is running against San Marcos Republican City Councilmember Ed Musgrove.

DeMaio supports Jones and Kristie Bruce-Lane, as does his voter guide.

It certainly looks official, what with the “official” label.

But then there’s the thumbnail rendering that comes up when someone texts you the link to the REAL guide DeMaio puts out.

And that definitely looks like it’s from the Central Committee. What with the “Central Committee” tag on it, for example. But the Central Committee, again, did not take a position on these two key races.

Issa sent a response. “Carl DeMaio is actively lying to Republican voters. He has abandoned any commitment to the truth in his attacks against fellow Republicans.”

He’s touting the San Diego Republican Leadership Endorsement Guide at sdrepublicans.com, which is also not affiliated at all officially with the Republican Party. That guide supports Franklin and Musgrove.

“Carl is wasting valuable time, energy, and resources on destructive intraparty fights that only hurt our movement,” Issa wrote. The party of course could settle a lot of this but the local GOP has dissolved away into a forum simply for infighting leaving a vacuum this kind of fight.

Off the Record: It Was a Huge Success

Thank you to everyone who came to last week’s Off the Record event (you can see some of the photos here). Matt Awbrey and Jamie Fox were as good as ever as emcees and a special gratitude for chairing and inspiring the event to Lani Lutar. The organizers were amazing: our Julianne Markow, Kaila Weedman and Kaylie Sadlon (K2) And a big thanks to our video guy, John DeBello and Richard Bailey, Barbara Bry, Vivian Moreno, Dan Rottenstreich, Brigette Browning, Sean Elo-Rivera, Bill Wells, Steve Vaus, Chris Cate, Nick Serrano and Lauren Cazares. Your senses of humor are elite.

It seems we’ll have to do it bigger and better again next year.

If you have any feedback or ideas for the editorial board of the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.

The post Politics Report: U-T Editorial Board, Cooked appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

LA JOLLA – Calling all gardening enthusiasts.

If you’ve ever wanted to take a stroll through some of the most private gardens in one of San Diego’s most exclusive areas, you’re in luck, because the annual Secret Garden Tour of La Jolla is coming up soon.

The fundraising event, which is produced by the La Jolla Historical Society and is now in its 27th year, offers an exclusive glimpse into six private gardens, showcasing the artistry of local landscapers, architects, and designers. Tickets start at $55.

“All of the proceeds go right back into our free exhibitions and public programs,” said Lauren Lockhart, La Jolla Historical Society executive director.

Participants don’t have to be members of the La Jolla Historical Society to participate, but members do receive early access and discounted rates.

The scheduled hours of the tour are from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. However, it’s up to each individual regarding how long they want to participate.

“Because it’s a self-driving tour, folks could choose to really take their time and explore all six gardens included on the tour,” Lockhart said. “Some will enjoy the gardens all day long, then come back at the end of the day. But if you are in a time crunch, none of the gardens are terribly far apart, and so you could see all of them in a shorter time frame; you don’t need six hours to see them all.”

A new component added to this year’s event is a “Lunch and Learn” ticket, where tour participants can also gain knowledge from master gardeners at a meal setting.

“This is something that can actually be purchased in tandem with a self-driving ticket to the tour,” Lockhart said. “It will include a beautiful catered lunch at a historical location. So, if you’re planning to tour the gardens with friends, this is a great way to break up your tour stops.

“You can stop in the middle of the day, have a fabulous lunch, and you’ll also be able to meet master gardeners there who’ll be offering some tips and tricks and sharing some of their expertise with the lunch attendees,” she said.

Another selling point is that at each stop on the tour, participants will find more than just gardens.

“In every garden there is an artist, a musician, and a tabletop designer who’s enhancing your experience in each of the gardens, so that’s something really unique about this tour,” Lockhart said. “Not only are you experiencing these beautiful private gardens, but you also get to hear fabulous live music, see a planter painter at work, and see some lovely designs on the tabletops.

“It’s a really great day,” she said.

Secret Garden Tour

When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, May 16; luncheon is from noon to 2 p.m.

Cost: $55 for La Jolla Historical Society members, $65 for non-members. Starting May 11, the cost for each increases by $10.

U.S. immigration authorities have canceled the visas of more than two dozen people, including some who worked on a Disney Cruise Line ship, amid allegations they possessed or had viewed child sexual abuse images.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Friday that they boarded eight cruise ships in late April and determined that 27 people, most from the Philippines, were involved in “the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing” of child sexual abuse images.

The agency canceled the visas of those involved and returned them to their home countries, the statement said.

The agency did not say if any passengers aboard the ships were believed to be victims. It also did not say which ships agents boarded, why those ships were targeted or where the operations took place. The statement said no additional information was available.

Media outlets reported at least some of the ships had docked in San Diego.

Disney Cruise Line in a statement said the company has a “zero-tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement. While the majority of these individuals were not from our cruise line, those who were are no longer with the company.”

A federal lawsuit against San Diego County filed by the family of a 43-year-old woman who was found half-submerged in a Lemon Grove drainage ditch and later died, will be allowed to move forward.

The judge agreed that the family has shown enough evidence in its claims that county first responders refused to provide care for Irma Espinoza when a neighbor called 911 to report seeing her in the ditch three days prior to her getting treatment.

According to the family’s December 2025 lawsuit, Lemon Grove resident Richard Quinones saw Espinoza on July 27, 2025, near his home. At the time, Espinoza was “neatly dressed,” and the two had a brief conversation about the heat.

“Ms. Espinoza was fanning her face with her hand, saying, ‘It’s hot, it’s hot,’ and Mr.
Quinones gave her two water bottles,” said the lawsuit.

Two days later, Quinones was walking his dogs when he saw Espinoza sitting in the dirt with her legs partially submerged in the drainage ditch. Quinones, according to the family’s lawsuit, asked if she wanted him to call for help. She told him yes.

Quinones called 911 just after 8:35 a.m. that morning. When a female deputy arrived on the scene, Quinones said he saw the deputy’s patrol cruiser arrive and then suddenly leave, without checking on Espinoza.

Quinones called 911 again. As he was on the phone with dispatch, the lawsuit alleges Quinones received another call from the deputy who had left earlier. The deputy, according to the federal complaint, told Quinones that Espinoza was a “transient.”

The Lemon Grove man said felt intimidated and assumed someone would come check on Espinoza.

Quinones said he did not see Espinoza for two days. Then, according to the lawsuit, another neighbor saw a man emerge from the area near the ditch, “acting suspiciously.”

On August 1, 2025, Quinones was back walking his dogs when he heard someone moaning from the edge of the drainage pond. He checked and saw a woman, later identified as Espinoza, half-dressed, covered in ants and nearly fully submerged.

“When the first responders pulled her out at about 7:07 a.m., Ms. Espinoza had agonal breathing and heavy ant activity over the entirety of her body,” attorneys stated in the court documents.

Espinoza’s body was stiff, and she was suffering from hypothermia. At the hospital, doctors found numerous contusions and abrasions on her body. Espinoza died at the hospital. The medical examiner determined the cause of death was from heavy alcohol use, cirrhosis and pancreatitis.

In their lawsuit, the family contends that the medical examiner failed to look at any physical injuries or whether or not Espinoza was sexually assaulted.

Once the family filed their wrongful death lawsuit alleging that deputies and others violated Espinoza’s rights by not conducting a physical check after Quinones’s first 911 call, the county asked the court to throw it out, arguing that neither the county nor the deputies were at fault for her death.

In a written ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel rejected most of those arguments.

Curiel found that the deputy may have “exposed Ms. Espinoza to a situation that was more dangerous than the one she found her in.” The judge also declined to dismiss causes of action against three of the deputy’s supervisors, who are accused of knowing the deputy failed to return to the scene and had dissuaded Quinones from assisting.

In a statement to Times of San Diego, the family’s attorney, Julia Yoo, said Espinoza and her family deserved more.

“Irma Espinoza was a daughter, a sister, and a mom, not a ‘transient’ deputies can discard in a ditch. Irma’s family is grateful for the opportunity to uncover the truth of what happened and to ensure all people are treated with dignity and fairness by law enforcement and the Medical Examiner.”

“We did not receive that information.” 

Over and over, the audience heard this answer to questions posed to Seattle-based data researchers looking at deaths in San Diego County jails. 

One of the researchers, Cheryl Brown Hill, referred to her team’s correspondence with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office under the California Public Records Act in her answer.

“We asked similar questions in our CPRA requests, and on the whole we were not able to obtain any data,” she said. 

Audience members submitted numerous questions during Thursday’s meeting of the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) – they wanted to know, among other things, how long it took sheriff’s staff to intervene once alerted to medical distress, whether victims of in-custody homicides were charged with crimes against women and children and if deceased inmates had been in solitary confinement prior to their deaths. 

Most of those audience members did not get answers, to the frustration of everyone, including board members and the researchers themselves, from Mountain-Whisper-Light: Statistics and Data Science. 

“These were really good questions. They’re very insightful. They’re important questions, and we would have loved to have gotten the data so that we could have looked into those issues,” said Michele Dietch, another one of the researchers. 

The research team worked for three years on studying in-custody deaths in county jails. They were able to show that the most dangerous time and place for an inmate is within the first two days of booking at one of the county’s seven detention facilities, San Diego Central Jail. 

However, the Sheriff’s Office did not release data that would have let researchers compare those who died to those who lived.

“Comparing those who died to those who didn’t die allows you to identify a cause. Once you have a cause, then somebody can try to do something about changing that cause,” said Nayak Polissar, the study’s lead author. “We’ve emphasized getting the data. You can’t make any conclusions without the data.” 

That data was particularly important for the Mountain-Whisper-Light team’s methods, which rely on actual deaths recorded in county jails rather than projections, models and comparisons with other counties. 

“Once you close yourself into just looking at San Diego, never compared to anything in the rest of the world, what do you contrast inside? The biggest contrast: Person who enters jail and dies and person who enters jail and does not die,” said Nirnaya Miljacic, who attended the meeting in person to present the study. But lacking the data, he said, “you cut 90% of things” that could have been learned. 

“It just goes away,” he told the board. 

The resulting report fell short of what CLERB wanted when it initiated the study. Board members shared researchers’ frustrations over the department, led by Sheriff Kelly Martinez, withholding information.  

At one point, the board hired an attorney to sue the sheriff for the release of data. It did not work; assistant sheriff Dustin Lopez explained why.

“The information that was not provided was protected by law. And that’s obviously personal medical data, booking information, charges and mental health history and stuff like that,” Lopez said during closing comments. “We’re trying to be, as an office, as transparent as possible.”

One advocate who spoke during public comments, Yusef Miller of the North County Equity and Justice Coalition, noted that the frustration the board and researchers felt was a small taste of what families who lost loved ones in jail have gone through for years while fighting for the sheriff to release information. 

“Data, data and the lack of data is all you’ve heard,” Miller said. “If you were an impacted family, you can now feel some of the frustration that they have trying to get data on their loved ones. And they don’t work for the county like you do. They’re not hired (as) a contractor like you guys are.” 

In an effort to circumvent the sheriff’s office, the research team submitted public records requests to five other county departments, hoping for better results. However, other than the Health and Human Services Agency, those departments said they did not have access to the data the team sought. 

“We did make attempts to obtain the necessary data for the study in these other avenues, and we’re mostly unsuccessful in obtaining that,” Brown Hill said. 

The researchers noted HHSA was extremely cooperative to their requests and provided data they had on whether those inmates who died had accessed mental health services. 

But without mental health data from the Sheriff’s office, researchers solely relied on suicides and overdose deaths as a crude aproximation of the overall mental health picture. 

“I just want to re-emphasize that we did not receive any mental health data about any incarcerated person who died, or anyone who did not die,” Brown Hill said. “So we can’t really make any statements about the impact of mental health, although it stands to reason.” 

Board chair MaryAnne Pintar praised the staticians for persevering through a difficult process. 

Another board member said the study was still helpful, even without reaching its intended goal. 

“This was extremely enlightening, educational to me, even though we need the data that we think we should have,” said R. Lee Brown. 

The Trump administration is conducting a review of the 53 Mexican consulates in the United States, a move that could lead some of them to be closed, a State Department official said Thursday.

No reason was given for the review, which was earlier reported by CBS News, or what it would entail, but it is likely to further inflame tensions between the neighboring countries. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

President Donald Trump has engaged more aggressively in Latin America than any U.S. president in recent decades, capturing Venezuela’s leader in a military raid and pushing massive reforms in Venezuela, imposing an oil blockade on Cuba, getting involved in Argentine and Honduran elections, and threatening military action on Mexican cartels.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has sought to maintain a strong relationship with Trump and offset U.S. threats by cracking down more heavily on Mexican cartels, resulting in a dip in homicides. But a series of scandals in recent weeks have set off a political firestorm in Mexico.

First, two CIA agents died in an anti-narcotics operation with local authorities in northern Chihuahua state, leading to days of contradictions by Mexican authorities. Then last week, the U.S. indicted a number of officials in Sheinbaum’s party — including a top ally — on drug-trafficking offenses.

Earlier this week, Trump once again remarked, “If Mexico doesn’t act, we will.”

It all has ramped up Trump administration pressure on Sheinbaum and fueled speculation about her insistence on ensuring Mexican sovereignty.

Mexico’s network of diplomatic outposts is by far the most extensive in the United States. Its consulates help Mexican citizens living in the U.S. by providing identification documents, legal assistance and other needs.

“The Department of State is constantly reviewing all aspects of American foreign relations to ensure they are in line with the President’s America First foreign policy agenda and advance American interests,” said Dylan Johnson, U.S. assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

The U.S. has in recent years closed a Chinese consulate in Houston and three Russian facilities, including a consulate in San Francisco and outposts near Washington and New York.

Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson has some beefs with county governance reforms supported by board Democrats a few weeks ago. 

Now he’s pitching a similar but competing ballot measure that nixes the elements he thinks cross the line, including extended term limits for sitting supervisors and appointment votes for top county positions. 

Last month, Democrats led by Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer took an initial vote to send a charter reform measure to voters in November that would give supervisors more sway over county government. The proposal gives supervisors an additional term and the power to approve the hiring and firing of top county officials, creates new auditing and budget analyst positions and an ethics commission, and tweaks longstanding policies meant to prevent supervisors from inappropriately interfering with staff or contracting. 

Anderson, who urged Lawson-Remer to postpone the April vote to allow more time to review it, is now introducing his measure on May 19, the same day the board will take a final vote to place Lawson-Remer’s measure on the November ballot. 

Anderson said his proposal largely matches Lawson-Remer’s but includes five key changes to address what he deemed fatal flaws. 

Anderson’s proposal calls for sitting supervisors to be held to two terms and clarifies that extended terms only apply to new supervisors, the approach taken in a 2010 measure that set existing term limits. It also deletes language Anderson and others have deemed misleading about the measure’s ability to create term limits for other positions including the sheriff and district attorney, more politically popular tweaks that require changes to state law.  

“This is an earnest way of saying we’re not trying to game it for ourselves,” Anderson said. “We’re actually doing it because we think it’s good government.” 

Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear has urged similar tweaks. 

Lawson-Remer and supporters of the measure have argued additional terms for supervisors would lead to more experienced, effective legislators. 

Anderson’s pitch also nixes language giving county supervisors the authority to take confirmation votes on top county posts and to fire those officials with a super-majority vote. Lawson-Remer and advocates say this move would make these officials more accountable to constituents. But Anderson argues the county’s chief administrative officer should maintain this authority and that Lawson-Remer’s proposed approach could open the county up to inappropriate micromanaging and political influence.  

Anderson also wants an elected auditor to review county programs – or an appointed auditor that reports to an elected official – rather than create an appointed position that reports to the board to ensure the position’s independence. His proposal also maintains existing county governance rules barring supervisors from directly dealing with county contract staff that were tweaked in Lawson-Remer’s proposal. Lawson-Remer has described these as minor edits proposed by county lawyers. 

“We need to make sure that there’s a moat between the Board of Supervisors directly controlling the contracting process,” Anderson said. 

Lawson-Remer and a broad coalition behind her measure argue that the reforms she introduced will make county government more accountable and transparent without increasing costs. She also said she hasn’t decided if she’ll run for a third term if the reform measure passes. 

Anderson’s replacement proposal faces high odds. Only three board votes are needed to place an initiative on the ballot and Lawson-Remer had those votes last month. 

But Anderson said he hopes his board colleagues will give his pitch an earnest look. 

“They say this is about the charter and improving government,” Anderson said. “My board letter will give them a chance to prove it because I’m delivering everything that they say needs to be reformed but without any of the goodies they included in their version.” 

The post County Supervisor Rolls Out Competing Governance Reform Measure appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

A few weeks ago, Democrats on the county Board of Supervisors took an initial vote to place a county governance reform measure on the November ballot. A proposal to extend supervisors’ term limits – and give sitting supervisors a shot at a third term – has been particularly controversial.

Now Republican Supervisor Joel Anderson is pitching a competing measure that eliminates that divisive passage and makes other tweaks to address what he deems fatal flaws.

Our Lisa Halverstadt broke down Anderson’s proposal, which will be heard on May 19. That’s the same day supervisors are set to take the second vote needed to place Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer’s reform proposal on the ballot.

Real talk: Anderson’s pitch will face a tough crowd later this month. Lawson-Remer had the votes last month to advance her measure. But Lawson-Remer’s proposal to extend term limits for sitting supervisors has also gotten bipartisan criticism, including from Democratic state Sen. Catherine Blakespear. We’ll be watching to see if that criticism has changed any perspectives.

Read the full story here. 

South County Report: The Latest on the Chula Vista’s Big College Dream

Chula Vista has long dreamt about welcoming a four-year university. A new task force created by state legislation recently met to plan a hoped-for hybrid university serving South County students.

In his latest South County Report, our Jim Hinch shared his takeaways on that initial meeting and Chula Vista’s prospects.

He also delivered a status update on National City’s budget woes.

Read the South County Report here. 

Where Sewage Dollars Go 

After we published a story about a proposed countywide sales tax measure that promises to fix the Tijuana River sewage crisis, Dan Rottenstreich, a longtime Democratic campaign strategist and spokesperson for the sales tax campaign, argued the measure’s language was specific on Tijuana River sewage crisis fixes. 

“I think it’s very specific – so specific in fact that the county (would be) required by law to spend that amount and no less than that on infrastructure/engineering, not something else, to stop the sewage,” he wrote. 

Rottenstreich said that the County Board of Supervisors would control how the sales tax money is spent. 

May Gray Never Looked So Good

May Gray is here, and our collection of gray Voice of San Diego gear is the perfect match for the season. From cozy sweatshirts to everyday essentials, these pieces are clean, classic and ready for cool mornings, cloudy beach walks and coffee runs around town.

Show your support for independent local journalism – while embracing the San Diego marine layer in style. Shop the May Gray collection today.

In Other News

• The iconic annual December Nights event at Balboa Park may not survive city budget cuts. (Union-Tribune)
• The county eliminated 13 sheriff’s office dispatcher positions despite a staffing shortage that’s keeping the county from meeting national standards for connecting callers with dispatchers. (NBC 7 San Diego)
• Late last month, U.S Customs and Border Protection detained more than two dozen apparent cruise ship workers at the San Diego Port in a child porn operation and later deported them. (Fox 5 San Diego)
• A new city audit found fault with the Fire-Rescue Department’s approach to inspections of brush on private properties. (Union-Tribune)
• County supervisors earlier this week voted to expand a gun-violence prevention program into Spring Valley. (KPBS)
• Two years after Santee voters rejected a proposed sales-tax hike, city leaders are considering another sales-tax pitch this November. (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and MacKenzie Elmer. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.

The post Morning Report: Republican Supe Shakes Up County Governance Debate appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, a Republican, said on Friday he does not support a lawsuit filed last week by the city of El Cajon seeking to overturn California’s immigrant sanctuary law. The law prohibits cooperation with immigration enforcement efforts except with people convicted of violent crimes.

The lawsuit, spearheaded by El Cajon Mayor Bill Wills, also a Republican, argues that California’s sanctuary policy limiting local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities forces cities to violate either federal or state law when deciding whether to assist federal agents.

Local Democratic politicians assailed the El Cajon lawsuit after the city filed it. Until now, observers wondered whether other San Diego-area Republican leaders would join in supporting the suit.

McCann, who has come under fire in his city for recusing himself from votes on a recent local sanctuary policy, said in response to questions from Voice of San Diego he “definitely would not support a similar legal action [to El Cajon’s] in Chula Vista.”

“Public safety is always the most important issue for me, and the Chula Vista Police Department does an excellent job at keeping our city safe…within the guidelines of state law,” McCann said.

McCann did not go so far as to offer blanket support for all unauthorized immigrants.

In his statement, he took pains to clarify that “I voted for Chula Vista to become a welcoming city for legal immigrants. Immigrants and their families want violent criminals, rapists and pedophiles out of their neighborhood.”

The post Chula Vista Mayor Does Not Support El Cajon Immigration Suit appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Dramatic changes to a bill aimed at helping the Midway Rising project in San Diego continue as negotiations to exempt the planned sports arena and housing from the state’s preeminent environmental law press on.

The bill, Senate Bill 958, would clarify state law that if a project examines and mitigates its environmental impacts adequately, its height alone cannot be considered additional impacts needing study. It is a direct legislative follow up to a state Supreme Court ruling that struck down  a voter-approved ballot measure that lifted the 30-foot coastal height limit for the entire Midway planning area. The new bill is authored by Senator Akilah Weber Pierson, who represents the Midway District.

It’s common for housing bills that target CEQA to undergo numerous changes as construction unions bargain for minimum pay levels and union hiring requirements. Recent changes to SB 958, including removing language about labor contract agreements, are one example of the ongoing conversations with interest groups.

“SB 958 improperly uses CEQA exemption legislation as a vehicle to advance a policy preference for project labor agreements (PLAs), thereby undermining fair and open competition in California’s construction market,” Richard Markuson, a lobbyist for Western Electrical Contractors Association, wrote in an April 10 opposition letter addressed to Weber Pierson..

Project labor agreements are contracts that typically steer developers toward hiring unionized workers. WECA represents non-union electrical workers.

An original draft of the bill exempted the entire project from the California Environmental Quality Act, the state’s premier environmental law, which can lead to delays and costly litigation. Then, suddenly, after an April 14 committee hearing, Weber Pierson dramatically narrowed the bill to focus only on a minor clarification to state law about whether a project’s height should  be considered “significant” as part of the environmental review process. It also removed the language about project labor agreements.

In January, the state Supreme Court ruled that a 2022 ballot measure allowing the stadium to exceed the Midway District’s 30-foot height limit did not properly inform voters about the environmental impacts of taller buildings.

City officials have since pushed heavily for legislation that would give the long-delayed stadium a break from the state’s hallmark environmental law, a time-tested method that previous sports projects have used to speed-up construction.

The California Conference of Carpenters, which supports the bill, has been an influential force in the state’s housing and development politics, and is likely one of the main interest groups lawmakers are working with on SB 958. Last year, the carpenters helped lawmakers pass major housing reforms through negotiations for minimum wages for housing construction workers.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, the national umbrella that includes the California conference, has donated at least $28,800 in campaign contributions to Weber Pierson from 2021 to 2024, according to CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

At an April 22 hearing, Weber Pierson said the bill was changed after initial feedback from the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality “so that impacts related to increased building height are properly accounted for within the project’s future environmental impact report.”

It unanimously passed the Senate Local Government committee and is expected to be up for a floor vote in the coming weeks.

“The bill focuses narrowly on building height to clarify recent court rulings with statewide implications. It does not create exemptions for any project,” Weber Pierson said in an emailed statement.

The bill has traveled through the Legislature with little fanfare. At a Senate Local Government hearing last week, amendments to the bill were met with no opposition from lawmakers or environmental groups.

For nearly two decades, California lawmakers have helped developers who want to build sports arenas in their districts bypass the state’s environmental reviews, which can often lead to costly lawsuits and years-long delays.

Some Democrats joined environmentalists to make it harder for other lawmakers to push through legislation that allowed professional sports stadiums to sidestep the environmental review process. But last year’s major housing legislation that exempted most new apartment housing from CEQA epitomized the decade-long shift in attitudes toward the keystone environmental law as a burden rather than something worthy of protection.

This sea change makes it easier for all developers to point to CEQA and say it’s making it more difficult for them to develop, too, said Kellen Zelle, a land use law professor at the University of Houston.

“Just in a decade or so, the ‘third [legislative] rail’ of CEQA has become very vulnerable to change,” Zelle said.

In 2017, developers for a proposed Clippers’ arena sought to shorten the amount of time CEQA lawsuits against the project could last just three years after the San Francisco Warriors pushed for similar legislation.

What I’m Reading Now

• Xavier Becerra’s rise in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom has baffled some of his former colleagues, Politico writes.
• Democrats are, again, under pressure to eek out more congressional seats as the redistricting war continues to escalate, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• The San Francisco Chronicle maps California voters by six distinctive groups beyond Democrat or Republican, ‘Tesla liberals’ included.

Thanks for reading the Sacramento Report. Please reach me at nadia@voiceofsandiego.org for any comments or questions.

The post Sacramento Report: What’s Behind the Changes to the Midway Rising Bill appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

There will be one very mad podcast host if the Tijuana River sewage problem is not solved by 2036. That podcast host is Scott Lewis.

What’s going on: A group is pitching a countywide tax hike that would fund a fix to the sewage crisis — among other things. Signatures gatherers, though, could not answer a reporter’s question about the plan to fix the problem. Our crew explains what the proposed ballot measure actually says.

Also on the show: California agreed with Midway Rising developers that they never needed to get rid of the height limit in Midway, even though the city put it on the ballot twice just to support them. We’ll explain.

Plus: It’s mailer season and District 2 has a good competition shaping up. Bella Ross walks us through District 2 City Council candidates and what she took away from a recent forum.

Listen Here Now

Listen: Apple | Spotify | PodLink

The post VOSD Podcast: Scott’s Pledge (TJ River Edition) appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The Schizophonics, Anthony Cullins, Slightly Stoopid and Tigers In Cairo took home top honors at the 35th annual San Diego Music Awards, which drew a sold-out crowd from the local music community on a cool Wednesday evening at Humphreys by the Bay. 

Garage-rock trio the Schizophonics were named Artist of the Year. Fallbrook blues/soul artist Cullins won Album of the Year for “Inside Out & Backwards.” Ocean Beach reggae-rockers Slightly Stoopid won Song of the Year for “Step Into The Sun.” And postpunk band Tigers In Cairo was named Best New Artist.

Awards shows can be difficult propositions, and SDMA’s organizers should be commended for getting through an extensive program in three hours. In addition to handing out 28 awards, SDMA presented six performances by nominated artists, plus another by musicians from the educational nonprofit Young Lions Jazz Conservatory.

A mid-show highlight was former San Diego Padres player and coach Tim Flannery’s presentation of the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award to singer-songwriter Steve Poltz, who also performed two songs. Flannery told hilarious stories about how he and Poltz first became friends decades ago, and Poltz regaled the crowd with memories of his adventures rising up from Round Table Pizza lackey to internationally touring musician.

The evening also included SDMA founder Kevin Hellman’s presentation of an oversized check for $86,465.20 to the charity group Guitars for Schools, which provides instruments from El Cajon company Taylor Guitars to students in more than 100 San Diego-area schools. This year’s amount put SDMA’s total contributions in its 35-year history over $1 million.

And there was the “In Memoriam” segment, a video roll-call of names from the San Diego music community who died in 2025. The last name in that video was Tim Lowman, whose death in a motorcycle accident in late 2025 hit many San Diegans hard. Awards voters acknowledged the loss of Lowman by selecting his one-man-band Low Volts’ last album, “Forbidden Frequency,” as the winner of Best Blues Album. (Lowman had won several San Diego Music Awards in the past 15 years, for both Low Volts and his Americana group Blackout Party.) 

Accepting the award for Low Volts were Lowman’s friends Tim Mays (co-founder of the Casbah) and Tony Sanfilippo, the latter of whom said that Lowman “really is what San Diego music is all about.” Mays called Lowman “a treasured friend and an amazing guitar player and just an amazing human.”

The musical performances, most just one or two songs, helped keep the evening rolling, and stage crews did an exemplary job with quick set-changes. Horn-driven rock/pop/R&B outfit Sullvn kicked off the proceedings at 7 p.m. sharp. Other first-half performers included six of the Young Lions students and a solo-acoustic song from “latin/alternative/hip-hop” artist Obed Padilla that was arguably the best musical performance of the night. (Padilla was nominated for Artist and Album of the Year.)

Just before Poltz’s lifetime-achievement presentation, the San Diego Blues Allstars served up three songs that put the spotlight on keyboardist Sue Palmer, whose shiny gold jacket drew all eyes toward her.

Later, Palmer and her Motel Swing Orchestra won Best Local Recording for their album Eight To The Bar! A native San Diegan, the seventy-something Palmer was gracious and joyful in accepting. “I can’t believe I’m still recording, but I just love music so much,”  she beamed.

The downsides of awards shows are difficult to change. Yes, there’s a lot of crowd chatter, but given that the evening was about socializing with friends and fellow music community members, that’s hard to avoid. And while it’s sad to see the major awards given out when three-quarters of the crowd has departed, it’s understandable that some audience members leave early on a long night.

Ultimately, the greatest value of the San Diego Music Awards is simply as a gathering of the tribes — and as a reminder to residents that the city has a wide range of musical experiences to offer on any given night.

Palmer put it best at the end of her speech. “It’s nice to see all the people here,” she said. “I don’t know everybody’s genre, but when I see it here, I want to go out and hear everybody.”

Here’s the full list of award winners:

• Artist of the Year — Schizophonics
• Album of the Year — Anthony Cullins, “Inside Out & Backwards”
• Song of the Year — Slightly Stoopid, “Step Into The Sun”
• Best New Artist — Tigers In Cairo
• Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award — Steve Poltz
• Best Blues Artist — Chickenbone Slim
• Best Blues Album — Low Volts, “Forbidden Frequency”
• Best Country or Americana Artist — Kimmi Bitter
• Best Country or Americana Album — Elizabeth Bowersox, “California Queen”
• Best Country or Americana Song — Alex Bergan with Ash Easton, “Hair Of The Dog”
• Best Folk or Acoustic Song — The Beard and the Bird, “My Dearest Eloise”
• Best Hip Hop/Rap Artist — Brothers Burns
• Best Hip Hop/Rap Song — Neighborhood Kids, “The World Is Worth Saving”
• Best Indie/Alternative Artist — Dusk Drama
• Best Indie/Alternative Album — Film Company, “Starving Artist And The Holy Ghost”
• Best Jazz Artist — Leonard Patton
• Best Jazz Album — Irving Flores, “Armando Mi Conga”
• Best Local Recording — Sue Palmer & Her Motel Swing Orchestra, Eight To The Bar!
• Best Pop Artist — Cassie B
• Best Pop Album — Hillandale Drive, “Love, Fear & Everything In Between”
• Best Pop Song — Sara Jade, “Hippies Raised A Cowgirl”
• Best R&B, Funk or Soul Song — Rebecca Jade, “Not Me No Way”
• Best Rock Artist — Mistress 77
• Best Rock Album — Suede Grenades, “Flashbulb Memories”
• Best Rock or Indie/Alternative Song — Daring Greatly, “Lucid Ride”
• Best World Music Artist — Boostive
• Best World Music Song — Smoke & Mirrors Sound System , “Ain’t That Lovin’ You”
• Best Video — Gravities, “Stuck In The Desert”

MISSION BEACH – Just past the breaking waves, roughly two miles west of Belmont Park’s Giant Dipper roller coaster, the sandy ocean floor resembles an underwater desert.

For divers, the area off Mission Beach known as Wreck Alley holds the key to life-affirming and haunting findings.

Beneath the emerald haze of the Pacific Ocean, divers encounter massive looming silhouettes. The vast underwater desert is a graveyard of intentionally sunken ships that serves as a premier West Coast dive spot.

According to Smithsonian Ocean, part of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, approximately 3 million shipwrecks are scattered across the ocean floor worldwide. Many shipwrecks, whether they were intentionally sunk or were naval mishaps, now function as artificial reefs, providing habitats for marine life. Studies suggest thousands of intentional, large-scale wrecks were specifically designed for ecological restoration or tourism.

For divers off the coast of San Diego, Wreck Alley serves as a nesting ground for new underwater habitats, as well as a premier diving destination.

Wreck Alley’s undisputed crown jewel is a 366-foot Canadian destroyer. July 15 marks the 26th anniversary of the sinking of the HMCS Yukon, a refuge for marine wildlife and for divers alike.

“The Yukon eclipses a lot of the other dive sites just because of its size and its magnitude,” said Zach Weisman, owner of Waterhorse Charters on Quivira Road. “It’s the newest wreck addition and the only warship. Warships are built with much more structural integrity and thicker hulls to withstand the battering of relentless ocean waves.”

The Yukon was gutted and cleaned before the San Diego Oceans foundation scuttled the warship in 100 feet of water off Mission Beach to serve as an artificial reef.

Even the sinking of the HMCS Yukon was dramatic. A day before, the warship flooded in rough weather, turning what was supposed to be an upright, highly orchestrated public show into a sea-worthy spectacle.

Dive charter captain Weisman said the crew on board had to call a mayday to be rescued as the ship settled on its port side.

The ship’s sideways orientation creates a challenge for the divers who venture inside.

“All those cutouts that they designed for divers to swim directly through … well, now they go straight down to the sand,” Weisman explained. “Your brain thinks there might be doors where there aren’t and access panels where there shouldn’t be. It’s just not familiar, and that causes a little more challenge and risk.”

Lora Meyer, founder and owner of Marissa Charters on Santa Clara Place, notes that the disorientation is a unique sensory experience.

“It is definitely strange to see the toilets hanging at an odd angle,” said Meyer. “We really encourage our divers to ‘plan their dive and dive their plan.’ Staying on the outside is much less disorienting than going inside.”

While the Yukon is the titan of Wreck Alley, it is far from the only attraction. The heart of Wreck Alley belongs to the Ruby E and the El Rey.

The Ruby E, a former Coast Guard cutter, is known to locals as “San Diego’s Sweetheart.” Sunk in 1989, Ruby E sits upright in 85 feet of water and is blanketed by vibrant pink and purple strawberry anemones.

Because it is one of Wreck Alley’s most visited sites, Waterhorse Charters maintains the mooring lines using materials donated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“The Ruby E and Yukon mooring lines are actually on GPS chart plotters for everyone’s standard equipment,” Weisman said. “You’re not going to run over them at night and foul your propeller.”

A few hundred yards south lies the El Rey, the alley’s oldest resident, which was sunk on April 2, 1987. For 35 years, the vessel was a kelp harvester for Kelco, a food-production company, Meyer said.

“She was like the lawnmower of the ocean,” Meyer said. “The El Rey worked, cutting the tops of the kelp forests off to harvest for things like ice cream and toothpaste. Kelp is a great emulsifier.”

Today, the El Rey is home to a resident Pacific electric ray — capable of delivering a jolt of up to 45 volts — that keeps divers very alert.

Wreck Alley is also a place to get a feel for some of San Diego’s land-based history. When San Diego’s old Ingraham Street Bridge was demolished in 1992, its cement and rebar remnants were added to Wreck Alley by the California Department of Fish and Game’s Artificial Reef Program.

Now it’s a big pile of rubble, and because it sits in shallower water — around 60 feet — it remains a rare Wreck Alley site accessible to entry-level open-water divers.

On the other hand, not far from the old Ingraham Street Bridge, the NOSC Tower, an old U.S. Navy research platform that once resembled a miniature oil rig. A winter storm in 1988 ripped the top right off the structure, leaving what Weisman describes as a small, largely unremarkable site visited now mainly by lobster hunters.

The transformation of the seafloor from sandy desert to thriving reef at Wreck Alley is a real phenomenon.

“I have a saying about the ocean: stuff attracts stuff,” Weisman said. “You have a big metal structure, and then you get the polyps and the algae … then the anemones grow, and then the fish come. It’s an exponential effect.”

That growth, however, is subject to the whims of the climate. Meyer points to a strong El Niño a decade ago that devastated the white plum anemones that once defined the Yukon.

“Our giant kelp forests were mostly decimated, and without the kelp, many fish lost safe shelter,” she said.

Despite those shifts, the wrecks continue to serve as nurseries, with studies showing they attract young and juvenile fish rather than displacing adults.

Diving Wreck Alley is often a reality check for those used to the warmer waters of places like Hawaii or the Caribbean. Temperatures in San Diego’s offshore waters hover near 51 degrees Fahrenheit, making a wetsuit essential. Adding to the experience, an often thick murky marine layer can leave divers in near-darkness.

“A light is a must-have,” Meyer said. “Without it, everything looks like a brown-red landscape. With a light, you see these vibrant reds and blues and purples. It brings the color spectrum back at 100 feet.”

For Meyer and the crew of the Marissa, Wreck Alley is just the beginning of San Diego’s underwater inventory. While permits to sink additional vessels exist on paper, they have been stalled for years due to the multi-million-dollar cost of stripping ships of toxins like lead paint and fuel.

“The last time they tried to add a wreck, it was denied by the state of California,” Weisman said. “The environmental study showed how beneficial the life was, but it was denied because they feared a negative impact. It’s a shame.”

The United States’ Indigenous people are subjected to violence and disappearances at rates far higher than the national average. Most of those, though not all, are women.

In California, murder rates for Indigenous women and girls is seven times higher than the national average, according to Missing and Murdered Indigenous People San Diego, a resource founded by four Kumeyaay tribes and maintained by a network of partners. Human trafficking is also a major concern, particularly in San Diego County and other regions near the border.

Law enforcement, tribal leaders, and representatives signed an historic agreement Wednesday in order to call attention to the issue and strengthen tribal and law enforcement responses to better respond to and prevent violence, murders, and disappearances.

“For too long, Indigenous families have faced these tragedies without the coordinated response and resources that they deserve,” said Erica Pinto, Chairwoman of the Jamul Indian Village, in a statement about the memorandum of understanding.

“The formation of the SDMMIPC and the MOU reflect our commitment to upholding tribal sovereignty while working together to protect our people and honor those we have lost. This partnership strengthens collaboration across jurisdictions, builds trust, and ensures that cases involving our communities are handled with urgency, respect, and cultural understanding.”

The San Diego County MMIP Collaborative includes the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, Pala Band of Mission Indians, Jamul Indian Village of California, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. The signing took place in front of the Native American Monument in Sacramento’s Capitol Park, honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous People Week.

“The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office understands that trust is built through consistent engagement, transparency and open, reliable lines of communication,” said San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez. “That is why not only do I have a designated tribal liaison to serve our tribal partners, but we also have a tribal issues advisory committee whose mission is to communicate and address any issues occurring with tribal law enforcement partners.”

By establishing communications protocols, shared data practices, and rapid-response procedures, proponents say that the MOU addresses barriers that have made families feel alone or unheard.

“This collaboration represents more than an agreement between agencies, it is a commitment to our communities that these cases will not be ignored, and these victims will not be forgotten,” said Robert Smith, Chairman of the Pala Band of Mission Indians.

“When tribal leaders and law enforcement work together with trust and purpose, we give families something they deserve, hope that justice is still possible.”

Hacker group ShinyHunters has compromised the learning platform Canvas, disrupting exam preparation and coursework for students at UC San Diego and San Diego State University.

Students were hit with the shutdown just before 1 p.m. on Thursday. Screens across the country displayed the same warning, with the threat that the schools’ data would be released if a settlement could not be reached by Tuesday.

The group claims to have stolen 280 million records from nearly 9,000 institutions, ranging from Ivy League schools to international universities. Since forming in 2019, ShinyHunters claims to have stolen data from Microsoft and Ticketmaster, along with AT&T in two separate instances.

Canvas is operated by Instructure, which calls the platform “the most-visited education website in the world.”

“At this time, please DO NOT attempt to access Canvas in any way until further notice. If you are currently in the system, do not click on any links; just close your browser,” UCSD’s executive vice chancellor Elizabeth Simmons said in an email at 2:41 p.m. on Thursday.

UCSD’s Information Technology Help Desk said it would not provide additional information. All updates are being posted to the school’s Systems Status tracker, which listed their first report at 1:10 p.m.

The school has told students to wait for instructions from professors for alternatives for submitting assignments. There are no estimates for when the situation will be resolved, according to San Diego State.

“It’s out of our control. We do have other applications on campus that we can still use, but for Canvas-related issues, we can’t do anything at the moment. There’s no timeline,” SDSU’s Information Technology department said in a statement at 3:34 p.m.

The outage has affected students in different ways. It’s finals season at many semester-based schools, so the disruption has cut off most, if not all, of their course resources.

UCSD uses a quarter system, meaning Tritons are studying for midterms and submitting regular assignments through Canvas. Many were caught off guard by the shutdown.

The outage struck just as Raymond Warner clicked to send in his assignment, only to be greeted by the hackers’ warning screen right before 1 p.m. With classes still underway, Warner wondered how this might affect his next two lectures.

“For the first, we pull the worksheet from Canvas, so we’ll see how the professor adapts,” said Warner, a masters student in chemical engineering. “I feel bad for the students with midterms today, who would’ve used Canvas to study.”

According to EdSource, the entire California State University system, which includes San Diego State and Cal State San Marcos, has been affected. In 2024, federal prosecutors said that between April 2020 and July 2021, ShinyHunters posted sales of hacked data from more than 60 companies and sometimes threatened to leak or sell stolen sensitive files unless a ransom was paid.

The San Diego Community College District continues to deal with an unrelated cyberattack that began Saturday. Thursday’s attack on Canvas is not connected, a district spokesman said, explaining that they are “separate systems.”

Drew Sitton and Jennifer Vigil contributed to this report.

A 36-year-old man suspected of molesting a 10-year-old girl in Poway was behind bars Thursday.

The Poway suspect was arrested Wednesday in connection with the alleged sexual battery of the child near the 13400 block of Midland Road, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities released two photos of a man riding a scooter in the days after the Saturday attack.

The suspect allegedly assaulted the girl shortly after 6 p.m., then fled on an electric scooter when a friend of hers screamed at him to stop, Lt. Aloha Peters said.

Deputies booked the man into San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of performing a forcible lewd act on a person under age 14. He is being held without bail pending arraignment, scheduled for Friday.

The county sales tax signature gatherers seemed to be everywhere – outside Trader Joe’s in Hillcrest. Or on the corner of 30th and University Avenue – the busiest intersection in North Park.  

They all asked passersby one question: Would you like to stop the Tijuana River sewage crisis at the border?  

They were promoting a citizens’ initiative to get a countywide half-cent sales tax on the November ballot. I asked one how it would be used on the Tijuana River. 

They couldn’t point to a specific project. Probably because the “Protect San Diego County Health and Safety Act” doesn’t specifically point to one.  

Fixing the persistent problem — what the Wall Street Journal called a “tsunami of raw sewage” — has become the main selling point of the tax, which could generate $360 million a year. The measure would dedicate about $80 million of it to “stop sewage flows.” If they packaged it into a bond, it could provide billions to invest immediately.  

But proponents do not have a plan yet on what the county would do with the funding. A county supervisor mentioned a persistent and particularly gross and harmful area that needed immediate attention but also suggested that any hope Mexico and the U.S. federal governments would fix it are unfounded and the money should be used to ultimately divert the river entirely. 

Its backers, a coalition of labor unions, a child care advocacy group among them, say this is the county’s chance to finally throw some real, dependable cash at the seemingly unsolvable sewage problem at the U.S.-Mexico border.  

“When we pass this, it’ll be the first dedicated sustainable fund for the Tijuana River,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, with Children First San Diego, an organization advocating for affordable child care – which 22 percent of the sales tax money would fund.  

Baltiyskyy said sales tax proponents polled voters last fall. Voters said they were most worried about the sewage crisis. They also expressed concerns over health care, food insecurity, fire and emergency response – the other things the measure would fund. 

“Voters across San Diego County are showing empathy and deeper awareness for the first time historically on this issue,” Baltiyskyy said. “It’s one of the our greatest pressing needs for health and safety.” 

Balitskyy said the annual revenue could be used to pay back a bond, a big loan for expensive projects. 

Reading further into the measure’s language revealed that it would be up to an appointed committee to make sure that money is being spent where the measure’s creators intended. 

But so far, it’s not clear what those projects would be.  

No Specific Tijuana River Plan 

The sales tax measure’s expenditure plan says 22.5 percent of the money should be used on “environmental mitigation and related programs in connection with the toxic crisis in the Tijuana River Valley.” Twenty percent of that must be spent on “infrastructure and engineering projects to stop sewage flows from Tijuana into the U.S.”  

That could mean a lot of things. But it shouldn’t take the county long to figure it out. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency already spent about a year studying what needs to be done on both sides of the border five years ago. They put $600 million-worth of projects on a big list and prioritized them. But the feds hit a bunch of snags trying to get those done – like a huge sewage main break in Mexico in 2022, then Hurricane Hilary knocked out the United States’ main treatment plant in 2023, etc. And Congress hadn’t yet dedicated enough money to pay for most of that. 

Still, both countries agreed to do those projects under a treaty signed while Joe Biden was president. Then President Donald Trump basically had Mexico re-commit to doing those things again under another agreement.  

However, $80 million a year for the Tijuana River sewage problem is a lot. It’s $30 million more than the entire maintenance budget of the International Boundary and Water Commission (the federal agency charged with treating Tijuana’s sewage at the border) just a few years ago. 

Raising what the border sewage problem needs by locals taxing themselves is a much easier way than how it works now. 

Most of the infrastructure installed at the U.S.-Mexico border to try and prevent sewage pollution is run by the federal government, which means it takes an act of Congress to secure funds to take care of it. It took the rewriting of the North American Free Trade Agreement during President Trump’s first administration to secure $300 million back in 2020 for all cross-border water problems (and there are many). San Diego had to fight hard to get most of that dedicated to its sewage problem with Tijuana.  

San Diego’s Congressional delegates had to fight again to secure more emergency money to help fix a sewage treatment plant run by the United States, which Voice of San Diego revealed had been so neglected, it didn’t really work.  

Who Decides Where Money Will Be Spent 

The language of the sales tax measure requires the San Diego County Board of Supervisors appoint an 11-member oversight committee three months after the measure passed to oversee how the money is spent. None of the members can be elected officials. One of them must be from a community affected by the border sewage — Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Coronado or San Ysidro. 

This committee would pay for an independent auditor to evaluate whether the money is being spent according to the measure’s intent.  

“These folks …make sure expenditures are in line with the will of voters and make a slate of recommendations to supervisors,” Baltiyskyy said.  

The commission’s work would be directed by the county’s pollution crisis chief, a new position the county is apparently interviewing candidates for as I write this.  

If the Tijuana River is ever cleaned, meaning it’s deemed safe for human recreation and is removed from the state’s list of polluted waters, the sales tax measure says that money could go to other environmental mitigation programs that protect clean water. The same would be true if the river is ever completely diverted and treated, which has been one of the options on the table for a long time – and what former Imperial Beach Mayor now Supervisor Paloma Aguirre has been talking about for years. (EPA prioritized that project last on its list.) 

“First we have to prioritize the hot spot, because that is a major infrastructure fix that we’ve already invested $2.5 million in county money,” said Supervisor Paloma Aguirre in an interview Monday. “That’s an immediate thing we can bring relief to families.” 

The so-called hot spot is an area in Nestor where the river spills from concrete pipes underneath a road, generating toxic air pollution.  

“But of course the ultimate purpose is to eliminate toxic sludge coming through. And we can wait here another 20 years for Mexico to do it, or we can do it ourselves,” she said. 

I asked Baltiyskyy if any of the money could be spent in Mexico, whose broken sewage infrastructure is the main source of the problem. The United States already spends millions of dollars on fixes to Tijuana wastewater systems as a result of the crisis (like the $13.4 million being spent on an old sewage pump in Mexico), which is typically the only way projects get done. She didn’t know whether, logistically, that could work.  

“There’s enough to do on the U.S. side to use the locally-generated funding,” she said.  

The post County Sales Tax Measure Vague on Tijuana Sewage Fixes appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Supporters of a countywide half-cent sales tax hike on the November ballot have zeroed in on a catchy sales pitch to voters.

The measure, they say, will generate up to $80 million annually to fix the seemingly never-ending Tijuana River sewage crisis.

But as our environment reporter MacKenzie Elmer found out, backers of the tax hike are vague on what all that money will pay for.

Elmer asked San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre and others in the coalition of labor unions and environmentalists to name sewage-related projects they hope to fund if it passes.

We’ll get back to you, they said.

Aguirre did mention fixing a troublesome sewage culvert that churns up the river and sends toxic gases into the atmosphere.

But beyond naming a far-off – and hugely expensive – goal of diverting the river entirely and treating much of Tijuana’s sewage in the U.S., backers identified no other immediate uses for the new tax money.

So why foreground the river? One backer told Elmer the river polled highest among all the issues the new tax seeks to address.

Read the full story here. 

ICE Has Deported More than 16,000 People in San Diego County

Federal immigration authorities have deported 16,368 people from San Diego County since the start of last year.

That’s according to numbers provided to U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, who asked federal officials last year for details about immigration enforcement operations in the county.

The Department of Homeland Security waited nine months before responding to Levin’s request.

In addition to deportations, federal authorities also booked 10,489 people into custody since January 2025.

Our South County reporter Jim Hinch recently wrote about the economic and emotional toll caused by the steady drumbeat of arrests and deportations.

In a statement, Levin pointed out that federal authorities omitted key information from their response, including the percentage of people arrested or deported who had prior criminal records.

“The public should use these numbers to hold the government accountable and to push for greater transparency about who is being targeted for removal,” Levin said.

In their response, federal authorities said the focus on immigrants’ criminal histories was misplaced.

“ICE enforces immigration law against all removable aliens, and the commission of violent crimes is not a prerequisite for enforcement,” the response said. 

North County Report: Coastal and Inland Cities Diverge on Homelessness

There was good news and bad news for North County cities in the latest count of the region’s homeless population.

The good news: Homelessness declined, in some cases by a lot, in most inland cities.

The bad: Coastal cities, with the exception of Encinitas and surrounding areas, saw numbers rise.

Our North County reporter Tigist Layne, broke down the results of the annual point-in -time count, which volunteers conducted earlier this year.

Standouts include Escondido, which saw a 12-percent drop in unsheltered homeless residents. The city, which has embraced a stricter approach to homelessness, no longer has North County’s largest homeless population.

There’s a huge caveat to the numbers. Volunteer census takers can only count the people they find. If stricter policies push people into places that are harder to reach, sometimes they won’t be counted. 

Read the North County Report here.

Budget debates in style 

Despite the city of San Diego’s fiscal woes, Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera has been lightening the mood by rocking some custom Dickies jackets at City Council budget meetings. Our City Hall reporter Mariana Martínez Barba asked him how many of these personalized fits he has.

He simply replied “lol” and said he has two different jackets. He gets them embroidered at Walla Alterations downtown. 

Meet the Beat: Environment Report

Join us on May 21 at Grant Park to meet Voice of San Diego environment reporter MacKenzie Elmer and talk about what she’s working on and what’s on your mind. Don’t miss this free event.  Reserve your spot today. 

In Other News

• A federal judge appears likely to give San Diego County the go-ahead to conduct a public health inspection at the Otay Mesa Detention Center after two county supervisors were barred from entering earlier this year. (City News Service)
• County supervisors on Wednesday voted to invest up to $2.75 million in local arts and culture programs. (Times of San Diego)
• Devotees of La Jolla’s 112-year-old city-owned recreation center are rallying to save the center after a city of San Diego analysis included it on a list of possible budget-related closures. (La Jolla Light)
• inewsource fact-checked a new ad opposing Measure A, a proposed tax on second homes. The verdict: The ad falsely claims the tax threatens all homeowners in the county. In fact, only 5,100 homes could be affected. (Sidenote: No way to fact-check the ad’s truly vampiric photo of Mayor Todd Gloria.)
• Podcasters and shower crooners: Chula Vista has just the place for you. In addition to the requisite fancy gym and pool, a new apartment complex also includes a podcast studio and a karaoke room. (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch, Mariana Martínez Barba and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: New Tax for What, Again? appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Chula Vista’s long-held dream to build a four-year university on 383 acres of vacant land the city owns near its southeastern border took a small step forward last week. 

The 14-member South County Higher Education Planning Task Force, recently created by state legislation, held its first meeting Friday to begin planning what city, state and local education officials hope will become a unique hybrid university offering four-year degrees to South County students. 

But there’s a reason this dream has remained just a dream for so long. And Friday’s meeting left unclear whether anything has changed enough to make the dream a reality anytime soon. 

City leaders and higher education advocates want a four-year university in Chula Vista to serve local and bi-national students who otherwise travel out of the area to get a four-year degree. 

But no one knows how to pay for such an endeavor. And no existing university – including the California State University or University of California systems – has expressed interest in building or paying for a new campus in San Diego’s border region. 

The task force is responsible for producing a report that will outline what a South County university could look like, what sorts of degrees it would offer and how the school might be funded, built and governed. 

The open question is whether that report, due next year to state legislators, will, like so many other reports, sit on a shelf gathering dust. Or whether it will galvanize construction of a new university that could in turn galvanize South County’s economy and regional standing. 

Lurking behind that question is a more fundamental question facing South County. The region, especially the city of Chula Vista, is seeking to move beyond its historical identity as San Diego County’s second-class stepchild. 

Will it succeed? That depends in part on whether the higher education task force can persuade policymakers to make Chula Vista’s educational dream a reality. 

The driving force behind the university at the moment is state Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat who says he is determined to give South County residents access to the kinds of educational opportunities that propelled him from a childhood in Barrio Logan to the halls of power in Sacramento. 

Alvarez graduated from San Diego State University. He said he wants to enable South County students to obtain a four-year degree without having to leave the place they grew up. 

It was Alvarez who authored legislation to create the higher education task force. On Friday, he warned task force members – including representatives from SDSU and the University of California, San Diego – that if California’s two public university systems continued to drag their feet on participating wholeheartedly in the new university, Alvarez was prepared to move on without them. 

“We’re going to look for ways to maximize educational opportunities for our community,” he told task force members. “I don’t mean to be offensive, but if it’s not UC or CSU, it’s going to be a community college or a private institution or a combination.” 

The city of Chula Vista recently inked a deal with SDSU to begin offering four-year nursing degrees at the soon-to-open Millenia Library. 

Alvarez, along with other local higher education leaders, including Southwestern College President Mark Sanchez, have a bigger vision. 

A consultant presented task force members with a proposal that features a verdant campus set within a larger urban village of housing and retail. Multiple universities would use portions of the campus to offer a flexible mix of degree programs that would change in response to labor market demands. 

If that makes universities accustomed to controlling their own facilities uncomfortable, too bad, Alvarez said. 

“We’re looking to serve students and have systems adapt to students, instead of students adapting to systems,” Alvarez said. “Universities are accustomed to managing their own facilities. But we might be looking at doing something different here.” 

I asked SDSU Provost William Tong, a task force member, what he thought of Alvarez’s pointed remarks. Would SDSU be willing to participate in such a project? 

Tong was noncommittal. He said SDSU already is partnering with Southwestern College to offer four-year degrees in South County, and soon would offer the nursing degrees at the Millenia Library. 

“We’ll expand on these programs,” he said. “This [envisioned] campus will be a place where these programs have a physical home…SDSU is very popular.” 

National City’s Budget Woes Echo Countywide Trends 

Earlier this week, I attended a budget workshop in National City, which is sprinting to pass a budget by the end of June. 

The city faces daunting math. Recent salary increases for employees, along with inflation, flattening tax revenue and rising pension and liability costs, could result in a $16 million deficit next year. That’s a lot in a city with a roughly $90 million general fund budget. 

On Monday, councilmembers debated how to close the gap. I couldn’t help noticing that the debate echoed arguments taking place elsewhere in San Diego County as governments grapple with rising costs and stagnating revenues. 

Similar to leaders in the city of San Diego and on the County Board of Supervisors, National City councilmembers debated whether to rein in spending, find new sources of revenue, tap city reserves – or relax because the budget situation maybe isn’t as bad as it seems. 

Councilmember Jose Rodriguez, especially, seemed skeptical of dire projections. 

“[City budget] projections have been wrong over the past 10 years,” he said. 

Rodriguez said National City needs to break what he said is a longstanding habit of overly cautious budgeting. The city should find creative new sources of revenue and expand programs serving vulnerable residents, such as the city’s free meals program, he said. 

At one point, Rodriguez grew visibly exasperated with Mayor Ron Morrison’s calls for fiscal restraint. 

“I remember sitting in the [City Council chambers] audience [years ago] and hearing you saying over and over again the same thing,” Rodriguez said to Morrison. “It’s an excuse to keep [city] employees underpaid, keeping city services scarce, keeping businesses from paying their fair share. We need to get out of this scarcity mentality.” 

Morrison and Councilmember Luz Molina said good intentions don’t alter mathematical reality. 

Molina noted the city already has drained one of its main reserve funds by nearly half to balance this year’s budget. 

“We face the possibility [the reserve fund] could drain to zero,” she said. “I’m scared.” 

In Other News 

• The Chula Vista City Council on Tuesday voted 4-1 to initiate an inquiry into who paid for Mayor John McCann’s recent special effects-laden State of the City speech. I wrote last week about the speech’s eye-opening extras (skydiving, opera soloist, Hollywood-style movie) and noted that McCann’s staff said sponsors paid for everything but routine costs. Councilmembers on Tuesday said the speech was mostly a political stunt and risked creating an appearance of deep-pocketed donors buying influence. McCann, a Republican, is up for re-election this year and said the speech complied with all city regulations. He voted against the inquiry. The other councilmembers are Democrats. 
• Tired of all the political drama? Take a break by participating in a series of events this week celebrating the tiny insects that make the rest of life possible. The San Diego Pollinator Alliance is hosting outdoor walks (including a nighttime walk focused on bats, “the forgotten pollinators”), a milkweed farm tour, a presentation on native California bees and other family-friendly activities as part of San Diego Pollinator Week. Details here. 

The post South County Report: Chula Vista University Inches Forward – Maybe appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Imagine tackling the city of San Diego’s budget crisis through a one-cent sales tax with a ballot initiative written by the people and for the people.

This quixotic thought crossed my mind as civic opposition to Mayor Todd Gloria’s 2026-27 budget proposal hits a fever pitch. To me, it seems the fiscal blueprint’s draconian cuts to neighborhood libraries, parks, recreation centers and arts-and-culture programs are driven by his misplaced anger at the voters who opposed his 2024 Penny for Progress ballot proposition. 

What elected official wouldn’t be infatuated with the idea of a $400 million infusion of taxpayer money into the city’s general fund each year?  Poof! The city’s yawning $146 million budget shortfall would be erased, and our strong mayor and malleable city councilmembers would be handed a nearly half-a-billion-dollar piggy bank. Such ready access to non-discretionary taxpayer revenue is irresistible to the high-rolling political donors, lobbyists and city hall insiders who would be certain to come calling, self-serving project wish lists in hand.

It’s beyond me how the mayor thought his ballot initiative would win over a majority of voters in the wake of the 101 Ash Street scandal, and as he spitched the $18 million conversion of a dilapidated Middletown printing plant into a 1,000-bed homeless mega-shelter to the tune of a $72 million, 30-year lease.

Here’s what I believe: San Diegans are smart, compassionate people who care deeply about improving the quality of life in our beautiful, bighearted city. If our elected officials were to agree to open the city’s budget to a reputable, civically-engaged regional nonprofit — the Prebys Foundation comes to mind — and invite the public to participate in an honest conversation about how we, the people, would envision our municipal government spending $400 million a year, I’m confident a majority of San Diegans would vote in favor of a one-cent sales tax increase. 

A ballot initiative, guided by that level of citizen involvement in our representative government, would truly be a Penny for Progress.

A second-generation San Diegan and nonprofit consultant, Molly Bowman-Styles is the president of Windansea Communications.

In the wake of a devastating proposed city budget, a citizen-led initiative to assist the city of San Diego meet its Mission Bay Park Master Plan began Wednesday.

The initiative invites locals to help steer the direction of the city’s largest aquatic park.

The Mission Bay Park Conservancy seeks to maintain city-owned structures around the bay, including the visitor’s center and 25 restrooms, which are at risk of seasonal closure as San Diego seeks to patch a more than $120 million hole in its Fiscal Year 2027 budget.

Additionally, 14 city jobs in the park would be eliminated under San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget.

“This nonprofit is designed to be a community catalyst — bringing together public and private efforts to turn vision into action,” said Bradley Schnell, Mission Bay Park Conservancy founder and president.

“My connection to Mission Bay started with a simple walk through the park, where I came across the deteriorating remains of the original visitor center — an iconic structure that had clearly been forgotten.

“I didn’t just see what was there; I saw what it could become,” he added. “What we’ve done there is a proof of concept for what’s possible across the entire bay when we strike the right balance between environmental stewardship, community needs, and respect for the site’s history. This organization is for the Park by the People.”

Mission Bay Park welcomes more than 100,000 visitors on peak summer days to its 4,235 acres, roughly equal parts land and water. It generates tens of millions in annual lease revenue, according to a conservancy statement.

The conservancy seeks to create a reliable revenue stream to supplement city resources, tackle a lengthy maintenance backlog featuring items such as restrooms, pathways, fire rings and landscaping, speed up the permitting process for events, festivals and youth programs, and lead a diverse group of people who care about the park as they help the city meet the first master plan update since 1994 — including salt marsh and eelgrass restoration.

Balboa Park has a similar conservancy, which uses private funding and a management team to protect the park. Schnell is hoping for that outcome.

“Within the first 60 days, the conservancy expects to announce the first adopted Mission Bay restroom, an initial cohort of founding board members, and the kickoff of community input for the master plan update,” the nonprofit’s statement read.

Those who wish to volunteer or get involved in other ways can find more information here.

A federal judge indicated Wednesday that he will grant a request from San Diego County to conduct a public health inspection of the Otay Mesa Detention Center, though he said some of the county’s requests, such as having local lawmakers be part of the inspection team, will require additional arguments from the county.

San Diego County sued the federal government and private prison company CoreCivic earlier this year after a coalition of lawmakers — including County Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Paloma Aguirre — were blocked from inspecting the facility. The county’s public health officer was provided access, but county officials say that inspection did not include access to medical records, confidential interviews with detainees, and a review of facility health policies.

U.S. District Judge James Simmons agreed with the county that it has authority to evaluate the conditions of the facility, but said some other requests from the county regarding the scope of what that inspection would look like were “broad and vague.”

Those requests include permitting “non-subject matter experts” to inspect the facility.

Attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security argued in court filings that ICE determined the lawmakers who previously sought to enter the facility “were not public health professionals with the appropriate subject matter expertise to conduct health and safety inspections.”

County attorneys argue in their filings that the county’s health officer has the discretion to select the members of the inspection team.

Simmons, who gave both sides three weeks to file supplemental briefs on their respective positions before he would render a final decision, also said he wanted more information regarding what facility policies and procedures county officials would seek to review and how they would go about examining detainees.

Government attorneys said the county’s requests to interview detainees and review their medical records raised privacy concerns. They argued detainees were provided privacy waivers during previous Department of Justice inspections at the facility, an issue county officials didn’t address in their inspection requests.

The county denied that furnishing privacy waivers was the standard practice for such inspections. They argued in their filings that prior to other inspections, a notice was posted in detainee housing areas notifying any detainees who wish to speak to inspectors that they can. The county argued their team was not provided with this option during previous inspection attempts.

The San Diego Community College District is reviewing the code in its network “line by line and file by file” to root out any malicious code embedded during a two-pronged cyberattack that started Saturday. 

“This is not just a precaution,” said Chancellor Gregory Smith of the work by district IT teams. “We’re not being overly cautious about it. It’s a necessity.” 

Network security was ready

Like many large institutions, the district faces frequent cyberattacks meant to steal data and financial information. 

“We have daily, I don’t think it’s overstating, attempts for people to send phishing emails or to try to gain access into our networks,” Smith said. The cybersecurity system filters out the overwhelming majority of those attempts. “It’s a regular occurrence now. I think probably every significant organization of a significant size is having this happen on a daily basis.” 

In 2022, the district, which serves 100,000 students annually, began upgrading its security systems and moving sensitive student and employee information to the cloud behind multiple layers of security. That cloud data was safe during this breach. Attackers did not access any personal information, the district said.  

But now the district may upgrade low-priority legacy systems sooner than planned. The attack exposed vulnerabilities in those systems that attackers attempted to exploit to breach secure parts of the network. 

Cyberattacks have hit other colleges and school districts or large institutions like Scripps Health. Hackers stole large swaths of data and encrypted it, with the institution forced to pay a ransom or immediately lose key data. Those are typically one-and-done events. 

Timeline of attack 

At first, SDCCD thought a similar plot was at work. Machine learning software detected an issue Saturday morning and alerted security professionals about a possible attack. Those IT teams shut down the servers, essentially trapping the attackers inside the network so they could not communicate any information outside of it. 

The district believes the attackers gained access to a vendor and entered the district’s network through them. 

On Sunday, the cybersecurity teams did small test runs, bringing one system online then immediately turning it off to see how the attackers responded. Everything seemed fine in those system tests. 

That’s why on Monday the district brought its network back online, assuming the weekend hack attempt failed. 

A new plot? 

But the district uncovered a more sinister attack Monday. The cyberattacks restarted, this time using vulnerabilities discovered on Saturday. 

“Very quickly, after we opened our network back up, the attack resumed in a little bit different way,” Smith explained. “That’s why we suspect that Saturday may have been an attempt to understand how we would respond and then to evolve the attack in order to be successful and detect our security software.” 

Instead of immediately ransoming data, SDCCD now believes the attackers intended to embed malicious code in their network. That code could have gone undetected for months or even years while hackers covertly harvested login credentials, financial information, social security numbers and other personal information.

“They would have been able to steal people’s identity,” Smith said. “It could have been a much worse scenario where we’re dealing with this personal data being compromised and not just having to shut down systems.” 

In response, the district shut down its network entirely on Monday. 

“We had to make the decision that we’re going to fully shut down and we’re not going to bring it back online until we know with certainty that we’ve removed any inappropriate access so that they could, again, not be able to start to extract information back out,” Smith said. 

Finals week disruption 

Smith said this was a necessary disruption that came at a poor time. It’s finals week and summer class registration is open. 

Some cloud-based systems are still working, including the summer class registration site and class portal Canvas. However, wifi and food services on campus are shut down. 

Additionally, some student services like mental health counseling, health appointments and other basic services were closed at some points this week because underlying applications supporting those offices were offline. The district restored most of those services through other means. 

Food service resumes Wednesday. Officials anticipate that internet, websites and file servers will be restored by Friday. 

Professors canceled a few classes. In other cases, professors had to pivot some tests to in-person. Hybrid classes moved to fully remote options off campus due to lack of internet. In other cases, students and faculty had to use hot spots on personal devices.

“It’s been more of a frustration,” Smith said. He believes all classes will finish the term on time.

Normality by next week 

By next week, Smith thinks the district will be back to normal operations with no lingering threat. Before that happens, IT staff and a vendor need to ensure there is no embedded malicious code that could be activated later.

“We’ve had to completely rebuild or re-image some of our file structures and servers where the level of infiltration suggested that we might have some risk that we can’t see, and so erring on the side of caution, (we) completely rebuilt (them) so we know it’s eliminated,” Smith explained. 

Smith said that effort takes longer than a few hours or days. It will be closer to a week to completely review the network.

 The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved a proposal Wednesday to use millions of dollars in county funding to bolster the region’s arts and culture scene, with a focus on diverse and underserved communities.

Key components of the initiative include:

• Artist Grant Program ($1 million annually): Direct, low-barrier funding for individual artists, prioritizing underserved communities and supporting both emerging and established creatives;
• Artist-in-Residence Program ($250,000 annually): Placement of local artists within county departments to address public challenges through “creative, community-informed” approaches;
• Artist Space Grant Program ($500,000 annually): Expanding access to affordable creative spaces, including county-owned properties for public arts programming;
• Binational Creative Economy Investment ($250,000 annually): Strengthening cross-border arts and cultural collaboration in the San Diego- Baja California region;
• Arts and Cultural District Designation Program: Formal recognition and support for “culturally rich areas” across the county, with a focus on historically underfunded communities;
• Black Arts and Culture District Investment ($500,000 one-time): Supporting infrastructure, programming and economic development in nine blocks within the San Diego community of Encanto. The program will also offer help to artists in navigating the application system, based on a recommendation from Aguirre. Desmond, who represents the northernmost portion of the county, said the proposal would turn the county’s coffers into the city of San Diego’s personal ATM.

Proponents Terra Lawson-Remer and Monica Montgomery Steppe, along with Paloma Aguirre, were in favor, while Jim Desmond was opposed. Their colleague Joel Anderson was absent.

Before voting, board Chair Lawson-Remer said the funding initiative “has really been a labor of love,” with participation by many community members. She cited Chicano Park in the Barrio Logan neighborhood and the county Administration Center — a New Deal-era building lauded for its architectural beauty, as examples of why arts funding matters, and “can (happen) at a time when people are divided and feel hopeless — and uplift the best in ourselves.”

Board Vice Chair Montgomery Steppe said the investments “are not solely cultural in nature — they are economic drivers, that enhance tourism, workforce development and the county’s overall quality of life.”

Desmond said he strongly supports artistic programs, adding that the city of San Marcos had one when he was its mayor — but said the county needs to focus on its unincorporated regions. Desmond noted that many of those speaking in favor during a public comment period live in the city of San Diego, and the county should not have to rescue city programs.

“There are some major flaws with this initiative as it is,” he said, adding that it didn’t seem to feature metrics, accountability or guardrails.

“It’s hard to deliver on something that sometimes is abstract,” Desmond said. “This is how fraud starts —government dollars go out the door.”

Lawson-Remer responded that the program will have specific guidelines, including reports from the chief administrative officer.

Aguirre said she was really excited to support more funding. “Arts and culture are part of who we are,” she added.

Most public input on Wednesday, including from the county’s Arts & Culture Commission members, was favorable.

An Encanto neighborhood resident and barbershop owner said arts are transformative and “(take) us places that nothing else can besides traveling.”

One critic said it made no sense for the county to spend money on arts with so many San Diegans struggling financially.

County arts support comes as the city of San Diego continues its budget process. Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget would slash all arts and culture grants to the tune of nearly $12 million.

“Our residents are hungry for these arts programs in so many communities,” Lawson-Remer said earlier. “The proposal includes up to $2.75 million in total funding, with $2.25 million in ongoing annual investments, to launch and sustain everything from an artist grant program, to investments in the Black Arts and Culture District, to an artist space grant program and a binational creative economy investment and artist in residence program.”

San Diego isn’t the only government entity proposing to roll back arts funding as grants and other sources from Washington, D.C. begin to dry up.

“Too often our Black, brown and immigrant neighborhoods have been overlooked,” Montgomery Steppe said. “Arts and culture are not optional — they are foundational to a thriving, inclusive San Diego County. Today, we are making the choice to move that vision forward.”

“New staff. New grant programs. New designations. And a sizable chunk of it headed straight into the city of San Diego,” Desmond wrote to supporters. “Let me remind you what the city of San Diego looks like right now. Streets that flood because storm drains went uncleaned for years. A budget deficit so deep they’re closing libraries and rec centers. Homeless encampments the city refuses to enforce against. A downtown most families won’t visit after dark.”

Desmond said colleagues are using general fund money “that pays for our deputies, fire prep, mental health beds, and roads in North County.”

Arts leaders, however, said the funding could be the step needed to preserve programs.

“Today’s investment signals that the county recognizes and values the power of diverse voices across the arts sector,” said Gaidi Finnie, executive director of the African American Museum of Fine Arts. “The Black Arts and Culture District stands as a vital hub for cultural expression and creative enterprise, and this investment affirms the county’s commitment to advancing arts and culture in an inclusive and meaningful way.”

According to the supervisors, the proposal also includes efforts to work with philanthropies, advocate for expanded arts funding and establish the county as a designated Local Arts Agency through the California Arts Council.

“San Diego ART Matters and the broader artist community commend the county’s long-overdue historic investment in the arts,” said Bob Lehman, executive director of San Diego ART Matters. “This initiative transforms passion into purposeful, strategic action — placing the creative economy at the table of our region’s future.”

In late 2010, San Diego Unified leaders began officially rolling out a new way to get parents and families more involved in schools. It was called the cluster council system. 

The term cluster referred to the collection of elementary and middle schools that fed into each of the 16 traditional high schools open at the time. This new system created a group for each cluster comprised of parents, teachers and administrators that met regularly to weigh in on the direction of schools and discuss their problems.  

At a board meeting that year, Nellie Myer, then the district’s deputy superintendent of academics, described the system as a school reform model that “empowers teachers, site leaders, students and parents to help improve student achievement.”  

She pitched a utopic list of possible benefits. It included everything from increasing student attendance to improving achievement and addressing safety concerns. It wasn’t crazy. Research has long shown community engagement is one of the keys to increasing student achievement. 

District officials promised to support the cluster groups. Administrators would be required to participate and help each unique community in whatever way best fit its needs. The superintendent would even be graded on whether she developed a plan to help them flourish. 

For a while, the cluster councils seemed to work. The groups met and planned events – from rummage sales to arts showcases to movie nights – and helped push for new programs at their schools.  

But 15 years later, the system has almost entirely deteriorated. 

In the early 2010s, every district had a cluster council. Today, only six of the district’s 17 clusters have a functioning council.  

Some district leaders say the model was doomed from the beginning and favors communities with more resources. But for others who were involved in cluster groups, district officials’ failure – or disinterest – in supporting the system is to blame.  

The Halcyon Days

The cluster council push was part of a much-touted district initiative called Vision 2020. It was a suite of reforms spearheaded by former school board member John Lee Evans that promised to usher in a “quality school in every neighborhood.”

Mike Snyder, a parent of a San Diego Unified grad, saw how it all worked firsthand. In his former role as the head of the Madison cluster council, he was something of a poster child for the cluster council system.  

During his time with the group, the cluster successfully pushed new initiatives, like a program that prioritized science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. It also threw events that brought together schools from across the area, like the Clairemont Day at the Bay – a yearly festival attended by thousands that was essentially an interactive marketing pitch urging Clairemont residents to keep their kids in local schools. 

“We did some amazing things at Madison,” Snyder said. “My thinking was, ‘I’m helping some kids today. I’m bringing in some programs that are going to make a difference in their lives.’” 

But the Madison cluster council’s halcyon days were numbered. It’s been inactive since 2020. 

That story is a common one. At the height of the initiative, each cluster stood up its own council group. District spokesperson James Canning wrote in an email that this year only six clusters have held meetings: Clairemont, Mira Mesa, Scripps, Henry, La Jolla and University City. A website for the Clairemont Community of Schools, though, says meetings are on hold due to declining attendance.  

But not every cluster council shut down because of low attendance. Keashonna Christopher was born and raised in southeastern San Diego and helped lead the Lincoln cluster group, while it was active. She also worked as a counselor at nearby Porter Elementary, where she also attended school.  

Christopher said district officials didn’t always participate. 

“Anytime there was a hard conversation, we noticed administrators stopped coming to meetings,” Christopher recalled. “It should be no surprise that parents in this neighborhood want the best for their students and good conditions at their kids’ schools and good learning outcomes. It’s almost like the message that the community was getting was, ‘How dare you hold us to the standards that we’re supposed to work by?’” 

The Lincoln council had one of the rockiest relationships with administrators. When controversies arose, the community often took to cluster council meetings to vent their frustrations. That was the case when community members discovered a Lincoln High educator had a historical “No Coloreds Allowed” sign hanging in his classroom and when allegations of misspending surfaced that later proved to be largely true.  

In the Lincoln cluster council, volunteers booked spaces for meetings, sent out invites to community members, coordinated appearances with administrators and even purchased water and snacks for attendees coming straight from work or with a child in tow. It added up, Christopher said.  

That heavy lift is part of why the cluster council has been on hiatus for months.  But a lack of district support contributed to the group’s breakdown, Christopher said.

“If there are communities with the means and resources to do that every meeting, then it works out, fine,” Christopher said. “But we need support from community partners, like administrators and area supes.” 

The five clusters with active councils all share one obvious trait: they have fewer low-income students than the district average.  

None of the eight poorest clusters, which include Lincoln, have active councils. The clusters that are active also tend to be disproportionately White; the problem of cluster councils, it turns out, mimics the age-old achievement gap. 

Not everyone involved in clusters has felt unsupported.  

Megan DeMott has volunteered with the La Jolla cluster for about a decade. Though they’ve built a core group of volunteers, it still hasn’t been easy to keep it running. DeMott said she coordinates each meeting, sometimes spending time on weekends to put together agendas.  

But she’s always been able to rely on district officials. School principals, as well as the area superintendent overseeing the cluster, attend each meeting. She can even text them between meetings should issues arise. 

“Clusters really have to be parent led and run, because it’s not [district officials’] job. There has to be interest,” DeMott said. “For people to say, ‘The district’s not responsive and it’s not open and this and that,’ I’m not buying that at all. They have a voice, they just aren’t using it.” 

What District Officials Say 

According to district policies, fostering the cluster council system actually is part of district officials’ jobs. The policies instruct the superintendent to “develop a cluster management strategy that will be supportive of democratic clusters in the improvement of schools.” As part of that strategy, the guidelines encourage district staff to get involved in a support role rather than to issue directives from on high. They also instruct staff to be responsive to “each unique community.” 

Deputy Superintendent Nicole DeWitt said, in practice, the district’s approach is more laissez faire. It’s up to community members to form cluster councils and set up meetings, though local principals and area superintendents are expected to partner with them.  

Besides, she added, cluster councils are just one avenue for community involvement. Parents can still join multiple different organizations, like PTAs and school site councils or larger district committees. 

“If a cluster is interested in hosting parent cluster meetings, we support them, but if they are more interested in participating in committees and other parent volunteer opportunities at their individual school sites, we support that decision too,” she wrote in an email. 

From the get-go, a basic tension has plagued the model. To its early boosters, the system was a much-needed opportunity to decentralize decision-making, funneling some of the power held by those at the top into the hands of community members. Some were skeptical of that more expansive role and wanted the councils to operate in more advisory-like capacity.

But even the boosters sensed a precarity in the model. If it devolved into a bunch of “BS talk about clusters,” that didn’t actually empower community members, then “the cluster idea is doomed,” said then-Trustee John de Beck a decade and a half ago. 

Richard Barrera, the district’s longest-serving trustee, never agreed with that part of the thinking. 

“That concept was always problematic to me,” Barrera said. “The idea that we were going to have unelected people who may or may not have been representatives of even the consensus opinions within their own cluster make the kinds of decisions that the elected school board was responsible for, I never supported that idea.” 

What also troubled Barrera was the inherent imbalance in many of the cluster structures. While clusters north of the Interstate 8 were often filled with parents, those in the poorer parts of the district Barrera represents were often largely collections of principals. It’s no surprise to him that the system has now devolved back into the reality that existed prior to the district’s introduction of the more structured system. 

That’s why Barrera thinks investing in the cluster system as a tool for parent engagement shouldn’t be a district priority. To him, it never was an effective outlet for community engagement. He even thinks the board may need to stop grading the superintendent on their cluster strategy.  

“The district obviously should be, you know, putting resources and energy into engaging parents. But I’m not sure the best use of district resources is for cluster support,” he said.  

To some of those who were most involved in the system, like Snyder, the fact that so many cluster councils have fallen apart is no surprise. In his view, the district never cared about the system. 

“The district wanted to push a narrative, which is that they wanted to have community involvement. They put it in Vision 2020 – it’s all about community involvement – but that was just a checkbox,” Snyder said. “There were incredibly vibrant, vocal groups prior to Vision 2020, that are gone. The district didn’t just go backwards and eliminate all the work we did, they actually went back 10 more years and wiped out the whole cluster groups, period.” 

For Veri Chavarin, the president of San Diego Unifed’s Council of PTAs, the complaints about the district’s wilting cluster system are just one more example of a familiar refrain: that San Diego Unified has a community input issue. 

“There’s an intent to partner with parents, but the way it’s done is not centered around ‘How do we work with parents and make sure they come to meetings and participate?’” Chavarin said. 

That’s why she thinks getting family engagement right means taking the extra steps needed to meet families where they’re at. And while managing a cluster system in a district of nearly 200 schools is a daunting task, Chavarin believes that massive size makes them even more important. 

Christopher, the counselor and Lincoln cluster volunteer, said her community misses its cluster. When she’s out at the grocery store, for example, people sometimes approach her and ask when it will restart.  

The fact that it was comprised of people who’ve long lived in the community inspired trust. The forum provided people a space in which they could really be listened to, Christopher said.  

Her goal is to get the cluster restarted as soon as possible, so the community can once again have the direct conduit to school and district leadership it once had. To make that happen, Christopher said the cluster group needs greater support from the district that – as the policies lay out – speaks to Lincoln’s “unique community.” Despite her experiences, she’s eager to work with administrators and hopeful about the prospects for collaboration.

“We’d love to have them come to the table to ask, ‘How can we help?’ Not tell us what they want it to look like or feel like, or the topics we should talk about,” Christopher said. “That’s the top-down stuff. We get that all the time. We want them to partner with us on what parents and community members need, so they can have confidence in their schools and help build a strong district.” 

The post San Diego Unified Created a System to ‘Empower’ Parents. It Unraveled  appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

When San Diego Unified officials pitched a new cluster council system in 2010, they promised it would be a way to empower the community. Parents, teachers and administrators would meet, plan initiatives and together improve the schools they all loved.

As our Jakob McWhinney writes: “[One official] pitched a utopic list of possible benefits. It included everything from increasing student attendance to improving achievement and addressing safety concerns. It wasn’t crazy. Research has long shown community engagement is one of the keys to increasing student achievement.”

But right from the beginning, the council system was plagued by a basic disagreement: Was it meant to give community members more power to make decisions or were the groups simply another advisory organization?

Fifteen years later, they’re not much of either. That’s because they’ve largely unraveled. In the early 2010s, all 16 existing clusters of schools had a council. This year, only six have an active council. Those active councils are concentrated in wealthier parts of the district.

For some of those most involved, the deterioration was devastating, if predictable. They say district leaders never really cared about cluster councils or invested the necessary resources to support them.

Read the whole story here.

Foster Pushes for Permanent Fire Station in Skyline

On Tuesday, Councilmember Henry Foster pressed city officials on why they haven’t built a permanent fire station in his district.

Last month, we wrote about Fire Station 51, which is still operating out of a tent in Skyline. City leaders opened the temporary station in 2015 to improve emergency response times in the area. Then-Mayor Kevin Faulconer promised to open a permanent facility — but that never happened.

“How are we determining how we are moving and prioritizing stations?” he asked at a budget committee meeting. “I assume some of it has to do with coverage and certain things. But if you can help me understand, because we’ve had a temporary station there for quite some time.”

Assistant Chief Ted Moran told Foster what he told us – that the station provides the same level of service as any other station in the city. He also said fire department leaders plan to make improvements to the facility until they have funding available to put up a permanent one. 

Foster wasn’t convinced. 

“I’m not advocating for any new firehouses until I get that permanent station there.” 

Animals Rescued from “Appalling” Animal Sanctuary

“334 cats, 30 dogs, 29 chickens, 8 ducks, 4 geese, 4 turkeys, 3 roosters, 2 peahens, 1 peacock, 2 ravens, 1 crow, 12 goats, 3 pigs and 1 sheep.” 

That’s the still-growing list of animals rescued from a troubled sanctuary in Julian since officers with the San Diego Humane Society executed a search warrant on Friday. (Officers with the organization are legit peace officers in the state of California, able to file charges and make arrests.) Not included are up to 100 additional cats, 165 horses and dozens of other animals that remain at the 40-acre property.

Officials had for years heard complaints about the conditions at Julian’s Villa Chardonnay, but the search revealed just how grim the situation was. Volunteers found skinny animals barely able to walk, animals with open wounds and animals with missing extremities. Some of the animals were in such bad shape that they had to be euthanized, officials said.

Gary Weitzman, president and CEO at San Diego Humane Society, called the situation “appalling.” 

“There is no question at all about the neglect, at the very least, that occurred out there.” 

Song of the Month (Hopefully!)

Shelbi Bennett, “I’m Fine (but I’m lying)”: Local songbird Shelbi Bennett, a mainstay in the Redwoods Music constellation of bands, is out with the first track of her new solo project. It’s a heart-on-her-sleeve crooner that neatly melds her folk-pop sensibilities with atmospheric, cinematic instrumentation. As usual, it’s Bennett’s richly layered and honey-smooth voice that steals the show. 

In Other News

• Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget would virtually eliminate the nearly $12 million in arts and culture funding. Cultural policy strategist Linda Caballero Sotelo writes in a new opinion piece that the cut is “a cultural alarm, a canary in the coal mine warning us about the direction of our civic life.” (Voice of San Diego)
• The county Board of Supervisors wants cheaper parking downtown. On Tuesday, supervisors voted in favor of a measure to increase affordable parking at county facilities in downtown San Diego which include the Ash Street Parking Garage, Cedar-Kettner, and James R. Mill building structures. (NBC 7 San Diego)
• Mike Levin remains unchallenged by any other Democrat in the 49th Congressional District race. The incumbent faces two Republicans as he seeks a fifth two-year term. (Union-Tribune)
• A statewide PAC is shaking things up in the District 8 San Diego City Council race. The Latino Caucus of California Counties PAC dropped $100,000 in support of candidate Gerardo Ramirez. (inewsource)
• And another round of endorsements: The Union-Tribune endorsed Ramirez, who currently serves as chief of staff to current Councilmember Moreno. The U-T also endorsed Republican Mark Powell in the District 6 race.

The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney and Mariana Martínez Barba. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: The Unravelling of a School Reform appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The results from the annual homelessness census are in and in North County, there’s some good news and some bad news. 

Street homelessness decreased in inland North County and increased in coastal North County year-over-year, according to the annual point-in-time count.  

At the same time, coastal North County saw an increase of people staying in shelters, while the number of people in shelters in inland North County stayed relatively consistent year-over-year. 

Officials at the Regional Task Force on Homelessness released the numbers from the census last week. The actual tallying of homeless people took place during an early morning in January as volunteers fanned out across the region to count unhoused people. 

There’s always a huge caveat with these numbers. The point-in-time count is a bare minimum count that takes place all on one day. If the volunteer census takers can’t find someone, that means that person doesn’t get counted. The number of sheltered homeless San Diegans is fairly reliable. But unsheltered people can be hard to find sometimes, meaning that part of the count is less reliable.  

Here’s a closer look at what the latest numbers show. 

Inland Cities See Decrease in Unsheltered Numbers 

The number of unsheltered homeless people in inland North County fell by 10 percent compared to last year. 

Escondido saw a significant drop in its unsheltered population, decreasing by 12 percent from 307 unsheltered people counted in 2025 to 271 in 2026.  

That also means Escondido no longer has the highest unsheltered homeless population in North County, as it did in the last several point-in-time counts. The largest unsheltered population lives in Oceanside, which is also the most populated city in North County. 

San Marcos’ unsheltered population decreased by 77 percent from 30 unsheltered people in 2025 to just seven in 2026. Poway also saw a decrease of 67 percent, though its numbers are typically low to begin with. It went from nine unsheltered people last year to three this year. 

Every inland city saw at least a slight drop in unsheltered homelessness numbers except the city of Vista, which saw a 9 percent uptick in unsheltered people compared to last year, increasing from 144 in 2025 to 157 in 2026. The unsheltered population also increased in Fallbrook – not technically a city — from 16 unsheltered people to 17. 

Sheltered Homelessness: The number of homeless people living in shelters remained relatively steady overall in inland North County.  

In 2025, the number of sheltered homeless people was 428, and this year that number was 432. 

A couple of inland cities, though, saw significant changes in their sheltered populations. Escondido’s, for example, dropped by 18 percent from 281 last year to 231 this year. Coupled with the city’s decrease in unsheltered homelessness, that means homelessness in Escondido has decreased on all fronts – at least according to the count. 

Fallbrook’s sheltered numbers also decreased significantly from 76 people last year to 18 people in 2026. 

Unsheltered Homelessness Increased in Coastal Cities  

In coastal North County, unsheltered homelessness increased by 5 percent overall. 

Oceanside had the largest increase with its unsheltered population increasing by 14 percent from 328 in 2025 to 362 in 2026. The city now has the most unsheltered homeless people in North County. 

Carlsbad also saw an uptick in unsheltered homelessness, rising by 9 percent compared to last year. The tally in Carlsbad was 101 in 2025 and 110 in 2026, according to the report. 

Encinitas, which is also grouped in with Del Mar, Solana Beach and San Dieguito, saw a 30 percent decrease in its unsheltered population, which dropped from 91 to 64. 

Sheltered Homelessness: On the coastal side, the number of homeless people living in shelters increased year-over-year by 20 percent. There were 311 people counted in shelters on the coast this year, compared to 259 that were counted in 2025. 

Oceanside’s sheltered numbers increased by 20 percent, from 173 people living in shelters last year to 207 this year. That means the city’s unsheltered and sheltered populations saw increases year-over-year. 

Carlsbad had a 45 percent increase of people living in homeless shelters, growing from 42 people in 2025 to 61 people in 2026. 

Encinitas, Del Mar, Solana Beach and San Dieguito’s shelter numbers remained steady year-over-year. 

In Other News 

• Rep. Mike Levin is seeking a fifth two-year term in the 49th Congressional District, which includes a large part of northern San Diego County and southern Orange County. You can read more about that race here. (Union-Tribune) 
• The Oceanside City Council will consider extending a program to move homeless people camped along State Route 78 into long-term housing. It’s currently funded by a state initiative called the Encampment Resolution Fund. (Union-Tribune) 
• Related: You can read more about Oceanside and Carlsbad’s joint effort to move hundreds of homeless people from encampments into stable housing here. (Voice of San Diego) 
• San Marcos will allocate $1 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds toward public service, housing affordability programs and infrastructure improvements. (Coast News) 

The post North County Report: Homelessness Decreased Inland, Slightly Increased on Coast, Census Shows  appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Andrew Gauna, a self-described “bad student” at San Diego High and later Patrick Henry, took the long way home.

A late bloomer, the 6-foot-4, 220-pound corner outfielder began his college career at San Diego Mesa College, where he tied the program’s all-time hits record with 106 — since broken — before transferring to Division I Cal State Northridge.

Now a graduate transfer at the University of San Diego, Gauna has turned his final season into a heater, emerging as one of the Toreros’ most productive hitters.

“The harsh truth was I had to go to junior college and get my grades up,” Gauna said. “I kind of dug myself into a hole and then tried to get out of it taking summer classes — all that. There wasn’t anything wrong with me. It was just a lack of focus. You hear it when you’re young —
take care of things off the field so you can have success on it — but I didn’t really understand that until later. I’m so glad that I went to junior college. My body was always a little underdeveloped. I definitely wasn’t mature enough to play Division I baseball out of high school. I say that with no shame at all.”

Gauna, a right-handed hitter, is pacing USD (17–27) – he’s among the leaders in the West Coast Conference – with a .369 batting average and a team-best .581 slugging percentage. He also leads the team with 42 RBIs alongside six home runs.

“He has the talent, the ability to hit,” head coach Brock Ungricht said. “Once he simplified things at the plate and started using the opposite field, that’s when he really took off. The home runs started coming without him even trying to hit them. He’s done a great job working with our staff, accepting coaching and becoming a real middle-of-the-lineup presence for us.”

Gauna’s hottest stretch came in the opening week of April, when he helped lead USD to a three-game sweep of West Coast Conference rival Santa Clara. He went 6-for-12 in the series, homered in all three games, and finished with eight RBIs, three home runs, two doubles and six runs scored, earning WCC Player of the Week honors.

“We were coming off a series loss to Pepperdine,” Gauna said. “I had been swinging it well and didn’t expect anything too crazy. In that first game against Santa Clara, I was 0-for-3 going into my last at-bat, and that home run kind of flipped the switch for that weekend. It was almost like a fire got lit under me.”

Gauna stayed hot on April 19, lining a first-pitch walk-off single up the middle in the bottom of the ninth to score sophomore utility man CJ Moran and lift USD to a 13-12 win over Seattle University to close out a back-and-forth afternoon at Fowler Park.

“He’s such a people person,” Ungricht said. “He does a really good job of connecting with the team — checking in on everyone, from the coaching staff to support staff to every player. That’s hard to do when you’ve only been here 10 months, but it says a lot about him as a person. And it shows up in his game, because he’s able to just be himself.”

Gauna singled out teammates Diego Gutierrez – who transferred in with him from Northridge and is his roommate – and Moran as key to making him comfortable with his new team.

“Diego has been our Friday starter, and he’s been electric to watch,” he said. “Seeing his development over the last few years has been awesome — he’s really turned into a dominant pitcher. CJ Moran is another one; he’s one of the best athletes I’ve ever seen. He’s been swinging the bat like no other, tapping into power he didn’t even know he had. He’s just a joy to watch — and he loves to talk.”

Doubling as a pitcher at Mesa before arm troubles took him off the mound at Northridge, Gauna joked he’s still lobbying to get back on the bump.

“I miss it every day,” he said. “With pitching comes a little bit of narcissism — I love having the ball in my hand every play. If you understand pitching, you understand hitting.”

“You never know — there might be a time,” Ungricht said.

Gauna said he’s hoping his performance at the plate this season opens the door to professional baseball.

“Playing baseball for as long as I can has always been the number one goal,” he said. “It’s been a crazy collegiate journey for me. Professional baseball has always been a dream of mine.”

“If he keeps having success over the next two months, he can put himself in position to play past college,” Ungricht added. “With his ability to hit to all fields, handle multiple pitches, not strike out much, and still provide slugging, he’s shown he can keep playing beyond college.”

The Toreros play UC Irvine at home Tuesday, then have two more series – against Pacific on the road and Loyola Marymount at Fowler Park – before the WCC Tournament, set for May 20–23.

Fernando Tatis Jr. stood in front of his locker in the Padres clubhouse at Petco Park this weekend when a white rectangular box was delivered. He put it on the floor and lifted the lid to reveal two bottles of red wine and a cigar.

Asked if he likes cigars, Tatis said, “Yes!”

“I’ll smoke it when I hit my first home run,” he said.

He still hasn’t hit his first home run of the season and the cigar remains untouched. Through Monday he’s played in 33 games and gone homerless in 123 plate appearances. His slugging percentage is .301, well below his career number of .504 across six-plus seasons.

It’s the slugging percentage of a middle-infielder. Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith, for instance, had a .328 lifetime slugging percentage over 19 seasons, with 28 homers in 9,396 at-bats. Coming into the season, Tatis had 152 homers in 2,726 at bats.

Padres manager Craig Stammen has occasionally moved Tatis from right field to second base this season. A shortstop when he arrived in the Major Leagues, Tatis had never played second base in a big-league game until April 11. He’s started five more games there since then as well.

“I’m a utility player now,” said Tatis, who has multiple gloves of different kinds in his locker just to prove it. He’s a two-time Platinum Glove right-fielder.

Stammen explained that he wanted to use Tatis as a substitute when giving second baseman Jake Cronenworth or shortstop Xander Bogaerts a breather. In that game against the Rockies, Cronenworth moved to short while Tatis played second. Wouldn’t it have been obvious to play Tatis at his natural position?

“We thought Tatis would be the best option at second base,” Stammen said. “Maybe getting that kid smiling a little bit might have helped, too.”

Tatis is not a dour personality, and he’s weathered it all pretty well so far this season and in his career. If his 14-year, $340 million contract is a burden, he hasn’t said so. If his shoulder, wrist surgeries and 80-game steroid suspension on Aug. 12, 2022, have made him a more circumspect player, that hasn’t been obvious to an observer.

In interviews with Tatis across several weeks, at no time did he complain or place blame on anyone but himself.

“It looks like the baseball gods are really mad at me right now,” he said. “I’m hitting the ball hard to every part of the field. That’s all right. I’ll take it. It’s a long season, and I have plenty of time to straighten it out.”

He was hitting a low of .189 the day he was moved to second base for what turned out to be back-to-back games, and he had three hits that night. From there, his batting average has risen as high as .270 on May 1, but his power numbers have gone nowhere. He’s only driven in 13 runs.

“You get frustrated, obviously,” Tatis said. “At the same time, you’ve got to know you’re doing the right thing. You have to stay confident. You have to keep your head in the game, go out there and compete with your teammates, and find a way to win in this really hard game of baseball.”

Advanced metrics support the eye test and Tatis’ personal assessment, which both indicate he’s hitting the ball hard with little to show for it.

According to Baseball Savant, Tatis’ hard-hit rate on balls smacked higher than 95 mph is 66.7%, good for the best in the Major Leagues. His average exit velocity when the ball rockets off his bat is 93.2 mph. At that rate, his expected slugging percentage should be .410, not where it currently sits at .301.

Why the discrepancy? Scouts say his swing has flattened out and that with a launch angle of 3.5 degrees he’s not getting the lift on his hard hit balls to get over the fence. Instead, many of his hard-hit liners and ground balls are finding their way into the gloves of defenders all over the field. The baseball gods at play.

He only has five extra base hits: four doubles and a recent triple. Last year he had 54: 27 doubles, two triples and 25 homers out of 159 hits. Right now, he has only 31 hits.

For that reason, Stammen took him out of the lineup and rested him Sunday in a 4-3 home win over the White Sox, San Diego’s only win in its last six games, through a Monday-night loss to the Giants in San Francisco.

“I don’t think there’s any issue with Fernando Tatis Jr.,” Stammen said. “He’s a leader of our team. He makes plays all over the place even when he’s not hitting the ball in the air exactly how he wants to. This game’s not easy. Pitchers are all trying to get him to hit the ball on the ground. He’s not hot and he’s still pretty impressive.”

To be sure, it’s not just Tatis. The Padres are suffering through a team-wide offensive drought.

The Padres are 27th of the 30 teams in batting average (.230), 24th in slug (.377), 26th in OPS (.680), 22nd in homers (33) and 21st in runs scored (147). Individually, Manny Machado is hitting .221, Jackson Merrill .220, Gavin Sheets .215, Nick Castellanos .164, Felix Fermin .161 and Cronenworth .144.

That’s pretty much their daily lineup, with some exceptions. Yet, they’ve somehow been able to remain in stride with the Dodgers for first place in the National League West. It’s a long season of 162 games, of course, as Tatis says.

“I have all the confidence in the world that the guys hitting behind me will straighten it out,” Tatis said.

Para entender la crisis política en la que hoy se encuentra inmerso el gobierno mexicano, por su relación y subordinación a los cárteles de las drogas, es preciso conocer el caso Rubén Rocha Moya, el depuesto gobernador de Sinaloa que tuvo que dimitir a su cargo ante la acusación del gobierno de Estados Unidos.

La Fiscalía de Estados Unidos anunció la instauración de un proceso penal en contra de Ruben Rocha Moya, el gobernador de Sinaloa, bajo la acusación de haber dado protección al cártel de los Chapos, los hijos de Joaquín Guzman Loera, “El Chapo Guzman”, para que trasegaran drogas hacia Estados Unidos.

La acusación, concretamente, refiere que el gobernador Rocha Moya, ordenaba a un equipo de funcionarios, de la procuración de justicia y la seguridad pública del estado de Sinaloa, que escoltaran con patrullas oficiales el trayecto de los vehículos del cártel de Los Chapos que iban cargados de cocaína, metanfetaminas y fentanilo, con destino a la frontera de Nogales.

El 29 de abril de 2026, el Departamento de Justicia de EE. UU., a través de la Fiscalía del Distrito Sur de Nueva York, presentó una acusación formal contra Rubén Rocha Moya y otros nueve funcionarios sinaloenses. Los cargos principales son conspiración para la importación de narcóticos, posesión de ametralladoras y artefactos explosivos y conspiración para el uso de dispositivos destructivos.

La fiscalía estadounidense sostiene que Rocha Moya no solo facilitó las operaciones del cártel, sino que su administración permitió a “Los Chapos” ejercer un control casi total sobre las fuerzas del orden estatales y la Fiscalía General del estado de Sinaloa.

La historia comienza con la alianza entre Ruben Rocha y los hijos del Chapo Guzman, Ovidio, Joaquín, Iván Archivaldo y Jesús Alfredo, desde la campaña electoral de 2021, cuando Ruben Rocha, candidato de Morena a la gubernatura de Sinaloa, solicitó apoyo de ese cártel para ganar la elección. Bajo la oferta de Rubén Rocha de apoyar al Cártel si le ayudaban a ganar la elección a la gubernatura, los hijos de Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán apoyaron el triunfo mediante actos de violencia política.

Los sicarios de Los Chapos secuestraron y extorsionaron a los candidatos opositores a Rubén Rocha. Los narcos encabezaron operativos territoriales para asegurar el flujo de votos hacia Morena, en zonas clave de Sinaloa controladas por el narco. A cambio de esos favores, ya siendo gobernador, Rubén Rocha Moya ofreció un plan total de impunidad, brindando respaldo operativo hasta para el tráfico de drogas y la expansión de laboratorios de fentanilo en la entidad, sobre todo en la zona serrana.

Participación en la entrega de “El Mayo” Zambada

La sociedad y alianza entre los hijos de Joaquín Guzman Loera y el gobernador Rubén Rocha, no solo se limitó a la impunidad y la seguridad para el traslado de drogas desde Sinaloa a Estados Unidos. Rubén Rocha fue más allá, se convirtió en un subordinado de clan de los Guzmán.

Los Guzmanes, como los mencionaba Rubén Rocha a los hijos de “El Chapo” Guzmán, le pidieron ayuda para que acercara a una reunión a Ismael Zambada García, “El Mayo”, el jefe de la otra fracción del cártel de Sinaloa, con el que “Los Chapos” mantenían diferencias.

El conflicto entre Los “Chapos” y “El Mayo” Zambada surgió a partir de la suposición de Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salzar, de que “El Mayo” había traicionado a su padre “El Chapo” Guzmán, y que por ello Joaquín Guzman Loera había sido capturado y entregado en extradición a Estados Unidos.

Por eso “Los Chapos” pidieron a Rubén Rocha que citara a una reunión ficticia al “Mayo” Zambada, en donde ellos también ya habían pactado la presencia de agentes de la DEA para que lo detuvieran y se lo llevaran, en calidad de secuestro, hacia Estados Unidos.

Los sucesos se dieron el 25 de julio del 2024, cuando Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada fue emboscado mientras asistía a una supuesta reunión donde participarían el gobernador Rocha Moya y Héctor Melesio Cuén.

Rocha Moya ha negado sistemáticamente su asistencia, argumentando que ese día se encontraba en Los Ángeles, California. Sin embargo, la Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) detectó irregularidades en la bitácora de vuelo y el uso del avión privado, lo que mantiene abierta la línea de investigación sobre su conocimiento previo del operativo de entrega/secuestro de Ismael Zambada.

La muerte Melesio Cuen, exrector de la Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, ocurrida el mismo día de la captura de Ismael Zambada, es el punto de mayor conflicto para Rubén Rocha. Desde el interior de la fiscalía estatal se le vincula con dicho acto. Aun así, la fiscalía estatal, bajo control de Rubén Rocha, intentó presentar el asesinato de Melesio Cuén como un intento de robo en una gasolinera. Pese a ello, la FGR desmintió la versión oficial, señalando que Cuén fue asesinado en el mismo lugar donde fue secuestrado “El Mayo” Zambada.

La anterior versión forzó la renuncia de la entonces fiscal estatal Sara Bruna Quiñónez y colocó a Rubén Rocha bajo sospecha de obstrucción de la justicia y complicidad en el homicidio de su entonces rival político.

A pesar de la gravedad de los cargos, el gobierno federal de México ha mantenido una postura de cautela, señalando que “no hay pruebas suficientes” presentadas por EE. UU. que justifiquen una orden de aprehensión inmediata. No obstante, la presión internacional aumenta ante el inicio del Mundial de Fútbol 2026, mientras que en Sinaloa se reporta una fragmentación institucional debido al control que ejercen los grupos delictivos sobre las secretarías de seguridad locales bajo el amparo de la administración actual.

Opponents of San Diego’s growing bike lane network have criticized the lanes for slowing traffic, commandeering parking, and driving away foot traffic to local businesses.

A new voice joined that opposition.

A Little Italy church says a freshly-installed bike lane in front of its church doors is preventing churchgoers from accessing the place of worship, as well as hearses from parking in front of the church for pallbearers to load and unload coffins following funeral services.

Little Italy faith and community leaders gathered outside Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church on May 5 to decry the State Street bike lane. 

“This place must remain readily and easily accessible to everyone at every moment that matters,” said Father Joseph Tabigue, pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church. “I ask you, honorable mayor, to hear our dreams, to protect access to our church and to change, in particular, the bike lane.” 

Father Tabigue and his parishioners say they do not oppose bike lanes, but object to placing one outside their historic church. 

“We need more respect for this church,” said Domenic Brunetto, a long-time parishioner and Little Italy Association board member. “This is not a commercial building. It’s not a restaurant.”

Until recently, pallbearers could access the hearses and well-wishers could usher married couples to their departing vehicles without the bride’s dress touching the pavement, but now they must cross a bike lane.

“Our focus (of) concern is again, access for all buildings, for disabled, for those for those people that are distracted because they’re excited about a celebration or mourning those that they’ve lost,” said Chris Gomez, chief executive administrator of Little Italy Association. “Crossing a 10-foot buffer in that process is a huge liability.” 

Community members have a solution: replace the protected bike lanes with “sharrows,” where a bike shares the lane with cars, for the one-block stretch in front of the church. They want the city to return to a plan formulated with community input over a decade ago that keeps three lanes of traffic open and most importantly, keeps the loading zone as is. 

City council originally approved the bike lane in 2016 as part of efforts to repair the State Street roadway and implement the Downtown Mobility Plan, according to city spokesperon Anthony Santacroce. 

“We understand that direct access to the curb is important to parishioners and visitors,” said Santacroce. 

In response to the church’s concerns, the city removed the protective flex posts in a 60-foot section in front of the church so that cars can still reach the curb as needed. 

“This will provide direct access to the curb as well as a loading zone as necessary for mass and church events,” Santacroce said. 

And while the city says it trying to work with church leaders, cyclists and bike advocates say removing the protected lanes would be dangerous.

“Asking for a redesign would not only be a waste of limited city resources during a budget crisis, but it would surely put riders in danger…Southbound cyclists would suddenly be riding into oncoming traffic for one block without any protection.” said Monica de la Cruz, of Bike SD.

Californians plagued by spam emails and calls now have an easy way to clear their names from data brokers’ lists — and it’s free.

The California Privacy Protection Agency, or CalPrivacy, has launched an initiative to get the word out about the DROP tool — Delete Request and Opt-out Platform — which will do exactly that.

The free tool to remove personal data, which launched in January, can be found here.

“This data is being used in a lot of ways that probably the average California doesn’t want it to be used,” said CPPA director Tom Kemp. “You can just type in your name and your address and see all these websites that are selling these things about you.”

That data goes far beyond name and address, up to and including age, ethnic background, shopping tastes, Social Security numbers, and precise location information.

And there’s more: data brokers are working with the federal government to turn over sensitive data, up to and including information that is being used to target immigrants for deportation.

“There’s over fifty data brokers that sell your data to the federal government, so we know who they are,” said Kemp. “The beautiful thing is if you go to the DROP system, you get your data deleted from not only those 50, but 500-plus others.”

His agency says they have already signed up more than 285,000 Californians for the first mass deletion of data, which is scheduled for August, and are trying to get the word out in multiple languages to reach still more people.

“It is incredibly popular,” Kemp said. “There is such a pent up demand.”

But they are hoping more people hear about the tool, particularly the young and the elderly, who may be unaware of how data harvesting works to make people exceptionally vulnerable to scams using stolen or sold information.

People only need to sign up for the service once and their information will be off-limits to data brokers from then on. Kemp added that also applies to all new data brokers added to their system in the future, and that they plan to enforce it.

“We’re working towards this crescendo of the first deletion happening in August,” he said. “Starting in August you’re going to hear a big sucking sound as all the data gets deleted by the data brokers.”

The agency spent Tuesday at the San Diego State University campus, and will have a presence at the Vista Strawberry Festival on May 24. The full list of appearances around the state can be found here.

They say they’ve got the signatures. 

The coalition behind a proposed countywide half-cent sales tax hike delivered more than 151,000 signed petitions to the county registrar on Monday in hopes of making the November ballot.

The San Diego County Health & Safety Act would raise an estimated $360 million annually to fund healthcare, child care, solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis and public safety.  

The stinky headliner: The labor and advocacy groups backing the proposal have most emphasized that roughly $81 million annually would go toward combatting the Tijuana sewage crisis. But they have yet to flesh out specific plans for how that money would be spent. At least 20 percent of the funds would be directed toward infrastructure projects to “stop sewage flows from Tijuana into the United States or through the Tijuana River Valley,” according to the initiative, which was filed last year. The funding could also address related health issues and protect local waters from pollution. 

Where more of the funding would go: Up to 60 percent of funds raised could support care and health services for children, health care for uninsured or underinsured people, food aid including staffing for CalFresh eligibility workers in the county, in-home health services and affordable health care. Another 18 percent could back public safety services, wildfire prevention and crisis response.  

What’s next: The county Registrar of Voters has 30 business days to vet the signatures. The coalition needs at least 102,923 valid signatures to make the ballot but is hoping to automatically qualify with random sampling given the tens of thousands of additional signatures it turned in Monday.

Border Report: Mexico’s Dirty Beaches

The Tijuana River crisis isn’t just a San Diego problem. In Mexico, residents are also experiencing contaminated water and beach closures.

Water quality tests from late March reveal that Baja California is currently home to some of Mexico’s most contaminated water. It was the only state in a 17-state federal study to have beaches flagged as unsafe for swimming.

While federal health officials identified high bacteria levels at private beaches in gated communities further south of the border wall like San Antonio Del Mar, other studies are finding contaminated water in public beaches much closer to the border wall.

While some beachgoers and surfers monitor water contamination levels weekly, many other families remain unaware of the risk.

Read the Border Report here. 

LAFCO Calls Off Investigation Into Water Authority

No one is getting rid of the San Diego County Water Authority just yet. 

The San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, had planned to look into the possibility in what’s called a municipal service review, or MSR. But on Monday, LAFCO commissioners scrapped that process. 

Service reviews are a key piece of LAFCO’s work. LAFCO has the power to audit services provided by local government agencies — as well as form, combine and dissolve government agencies. 

LAFCO decided to initiate a municipal service review after two customer water districts successfully divorced themselves from the Water Authority for cheaper water elsewhere. 

San Diego City Councilmember (and LAFCO commissioner) Stephen Whitburn argued the Water Authority has made significant progress selling its excess water supplies recently — and so it wasn’t necessary to continue studying the possibility of disbanding the agency. (Whitburn also serves on the Water Authority’s Board of Directors.) 

“Arizona and Nevada are interested in buying water from San Diego County. Why at this moment… would the eight of us on this commission issue an MSR that raises the spectre of dissolving the San Diego County Water Authority?” Whitburn said. 

Not everyone was in agreement. San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre (another LAFCO commissioner) wanted to continue the investigation into the Water Authority’s ever-rising rates.

“South Bay families know what it means to stretch every dollar,” Aguirre said. “Lower income households should not bear an outside burden for regional decisions made without clear accountability.” 

Commissioners voted 5-3 to stop work on the municipal service review. 

In Other News

• The San Diego Police Department is using AI to help with police dispatch, including using AI agents to answer non-emergency calls and to classify calls by type. (Axios San Diego).
• San Diego planning officials will ask the City Council Thursday to consider delaying the implementation of SB 79 in lower income areas and neighborhoods with challenges like high wildfire risk. SB 79 is a new state law that requires San Diego to nearly double the number of housing units allowed near transit stops. (Union-Tribune)
• In Oceanside, the City Council will consider extending a program to move homeless people camped along State Route 78 into long-term housing. It’s currently funded by an $11 million grant through a state program called the Encampment Resolution Fund. (Union-Tribune)
• Related: You can read more about Oceanside and Carlsbad’s joint effort to move hundreds of homeless people from encampments into stable housing here. (Voice of San Diego)
• The San Diego Community College District is facing a major cyberattack, district officials announced Monday. It started on Saturday and led officials to take some of the college’s internet, email and registration platforms offline. (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt, MacKenzie Elmer and Tigist Layne. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: Tax Hike May Make Ballot appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Over a recent phone conversation, a friend conveyed her sense of disillusionment with how cities are being managed. The expression “tone-deaf” came up, and that warnings are all around us. Across the United States, cities are making budget decisions that reveal far more than their fiscal priorities. They reveal their values, their imagination, and their sense of responsibility to future generations.

In San Diego, the mayor’s proposed budget would virtually eliminate nearly the entire $12 million arts and culture budget, effectively dismantling the cultural ecosystem of educational organizations filling the gaps for student art education-based programming, artist support to produce works that attracts visitors and creates a livable and forward city to enjoy, visit and invest in. An ecosystem that extends across borders and has taken decades to build.

This is not simply a budget cut. It is a cultural alarm, a canary in the coal mine warning us about the direction of our civic life. Tough budget decisions need to be made but they should be in balance and proportion among city departments, given the arts and culture budget for San Diego represents less than 1 percent of the city’s general fund. This will not solve the deficit, and it is just not proportional to reductions in other departments. Simply put, these drastic cuts are draconian, shortsighted, and contradictory to prioritizing the community’s that city leaders claim to prioritize. 

For centuries, societies have understood that arts, culture, and the humanities are not decorative luxuries but foundational civic infrastructure. The ancient Greeks embedded theater, philosophy, and public art into the daily life of their cities because they believed that a healthy democracy required imagination, debate, and shared cultural rituals. Aztec empires and Renaissance cities invested heavily in artists and scholars because they recognized that creativity fuels innovation, economic vitality, and civic pride. Today, global cities that lead in technology, science, and economic competitiveness are the same cities that invest deeply in cultural life.

San Diego’s proposed cuts stand in stark contrast to this long historical arc. They also contradict the commitments we make on the international stage. Just recently the mayor signed a Sister Cities agreement with Marseille, France, a city that invests robustly in its cultural institutions and where arts and culture are one of the three central pillars of the partnership. Marseille understands what many global cities understand: cultural investment is a strategy for economic development, social cohesion, and international identity. To sign such an agreement while simultaneously gutting our own cultural infrastructure sends a confusing and, perhaps unintentional, message about our seriousness as a global city.

Doris Sommer of Harvard University, a leading literary scholar of civic culture, often reminds policymakers that Susan Magsamen’s statement “art is not the decoration of democracy, it is the engine” is apt for our times. Sommer’s research and practice demonstrate that cultural participation strengthens literacy, civic engagement, and problem‑solving, precisely the capacities a diverse democracy requires to function, and the skills cities need to navigate complex futures. When a city defunds its cultural sector, it’s not trimming fat. It’s weakening its civic muscle.

The consequences are not abstract. San Diego’s arts and culture organizations from youth theaters and community festivals to cultural centers and museums serve more than a million residents annually. They provide after‑school programs, mental health support, intergenerational learning, and spaces for young people to explore identity and belonging. They anchor neighborhoods, attract tourism, and generate economic activity. The arts sector contributes billions to San Diego’s economy yet receives a fraction of one percent of the city budget.

For decades, San Diego has failed to honor its own “penny for the arts” commitment, a 2012 promise that would have stabilized funding requiring the city to spend 1 percent, a penny, of all hotel room revenue on grants to cultural organizations, aligning  us with other major cities. Instead, we are now contemplating erasure: the disappearance of programs that help children see themselves as creators; the loss of cultural spaces that preserve immigrant histories; the silencing of artistic interventions that challenge us to question and imagine better futures.

Philosophers, economists, and urban theorists have long argued that a city’s cultural life is a leading indicator of its future. As Malcolm Gladwell might frame it, we are approaching a tipping point, a moment when small decisions accumulate into irreversible change. If we allow cultural defunding to become normalized, we risk becoming a city that cannot imagine itself forward. If this is not our tipping point, what is? San Diego stands at a crossroads. We can choose austerity, short‑term thinking, and the slow erosion of civic life. Or we can choose to honor the commitments we make to our children, to our communities, to our international partners, and to the generations who will inherit the city we shape today.

What does it say about a city’s leadership when it places zero value on the artistic and cultural contributions that shape civic identity? What does it say when we ignore decades of evidence that arts and culture are economic drivers, public health strategies, and youth development lifelines? What does it say when we invest more in law enforcement than in expression, more in reaction than in prevention?

The canary in the coal mine is singing loudly. The question now is whether we will listen and whether we will act before the silence becomes permanent. 

Linda Caballero Sotelo is a cultural policy strategist, scholar and advisor working at the intersection of arts, culture, democracy, and community belonging. She advises national and international institutions on cultural infrastructure, public policy and civic engagement. She is a research associate of Cultural Agents Initiative at Harvard. She is based in San Diego.

The post At Our Peril: Ignoring the Canary in the Coal Mine of Arts and Culture Defunding appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

It was quite a spectacular three-day weekend as the La Jolla Concours d’Elegance revved into Scripps Park.

The VIP Soiree Motorvault started the fun on Friday, followed by Porsches and Power on Prospect on Saturday, and wrapping up with the big competition on Sunday, with a beautiful 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster from The Lyon Collection winning Best in Show.

Chris Peterson and Michael Herman served as co-chairmen; G. Michael Dorvillier and Robert Kerner, Jr. as co-chairmen emeritus; and everyone’s favorite, the La Jolla Historical Society, was the lead beneficiary of the event.

The popular FlyBy was supported by Allen Airways Flying Museum and the San Diego Antique Airplane Association.

All in all, a win-win weekend for locals and visitors! 

El brillante concierto para violonchelo Dzonot, del compositor mexicano Gabriel Ortiz —que tendrá su estreno en San Diego el 9 y 10 de mayo a cargo de la Sinfónica de San Diego en el Jacobs Music Center— fue hecho a la medida de la chelista Alisa Weilerstein.

Literalmente. Ortiz, el compositor vivo más destacado de México, dijo que compuso la obra pensando en Weilerstein, el director Gustavo Dudamel y la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles. De manera figurada, la ambición, innovación, dificultad y el espíritu del concierto encajan con precisión en las múltiples fortalezas de Weilerstein, residente en San Diego.

Hablando desde Montreal, con su hija Ariadna, de 10 años, al alcance del oído, Weilerstein insiste en que el concierto de Ortiz está destinado a unirse a las obras maestras de Dvorák y Elgar dentro del núcleo del repertorio para violonchelo.
“Realmente va a perdurar y será parte del repertorio”, dijo Weilerstein. “Me impresiona lo claras y brillantes que son sus pinceladas de color. Incluso sin conocer el mensaje social, es muy evidente lo que la música está expresando y comunicando. Es simplemente una obra de arte maravillosa”.

El mensaje social de Dzonot (la palabra maya para “abismo”) es inequívoco. Los misteriosamente bellos cenotes —sumideros naturales llenos de agua— de la península de Yucatán en México están colapsando, en parte debido a la construcción. ¿Cómo capturar musicalmente la inquietante grandeza de este sistema único de cuevas subterráneas, el más grande del mundo, y las criaturas que lo habitan?

La partitura en cuatro movimientos, un auténtico tour de force de Ortiz —ganadora del Grammy a la Mejor Composición Clásica Contemporánea hace apenas tres meses— evoca vividísimamente el juego de luz, agua y sombra en las pozas acuáticas (“Luz Vertical”); comunica el delicado equilibrio ecológico del sistema de cenotes a través de su depredador apex, el jaguar, encarnado por el paso sigiloso del violonchelo (“Ojo de Jaguar”); conecta la fisicidad de los cenotes —los colores, sonidos, olores y refracciones brillantes del agua y las cámaras de piedra caliza— con el desastre ecológico amenazado por la marcha desalmada de la máquina (“Jade”); e imagina un futuro esperanzador mediante el símbolo mitológico del ave icónica del Yucatán (“El Pájaro Toh”), nuevamente encarnada por la chelista.

Desde pasajes extremos en el registro agudo y cadenzas repletas de armónicos y dobles cuerdas retorcidas, hasta demandas rítmicas y musicales agotadoras que exigen golpes de arco percutivos, una energía casi guitarrística y una coordinación intrincada con una orquesta equipada con 29 instrumentos de percusión distintos, Ortiz impone prácticamente todas las exigencias imaginables. Que haya dedicado Dzonot a Weilerstein lo dice todo sobre la confianza artística de la compositora.

“Hay muchísimos pasajes difíciles”, reconoció Weilerstein. “Técnicamente, ella empuja a todos al límite y, medio en broma, creo que disfruta hacerlo. Le gusta sacar a los intérpretes de su zona de confort. Así que tuve que tomarme mi tiempo con la obra, aprenderla, sentir que estaba completamente interiorizada. Es muy virtuosística —ya lo verán”.

Así como Dzonot es mucho más que su mensaje ambiental —también es una evocación de lo sagrado en la naturaleza y un canto a la riqueza de México—, su partitura es mucho más que un despliegue de orquestación deslumbrante. Tal como Weilerstein encontró el alma humana en el difícil concierto para violonchelo de Unsuk Chin el pasado mayo, su grabación de Dzonot en 2024 aporta continuamente calidez lírica y accesibilidad emocional al mundo sonoro ecológico y potencialmente abstracto de Ortiz. Basta escuchar sus líneas cantábiles suspendidas y evanescentes del primer movimiento, la “elegancia feroz” (en palabras de Andrew Farach-Colton) del segundo, o su fraseo amplio y ascendente en el final.

Aunque reconoce que la intención o el mensaje de una obra es “extremadamente importante”, al promover música nueva Weilerstein se enfoca en algo distinto.
“Busco gran música que, en mi opinión, hable más profundamente que un solo mensaje”, dijo. “Creo que (Dzonot) se refiere a mensajes más universales, sobre unirnos como seres humanos y conectarnos. Eso es lo que busco, algo con lo que yo conecte”.

La promoción constante de música nueva en la carrera de Weilerstein no es una crítica al repertorio central del violonchelo.
“El llamado repertorio estándar para violonchelo es muy pequeño, cinco, tal vez siete conciertos muy queridos”, señaló. “Son amados por una razón. Son obras maestras. Nunca me cansaré de ellos. Pero soy muy inquieta”.

Ve en el gran violonchelista ruso Mstislav Rostropóvich —para quien tocó a los 21 años— un modelo a seguir: alguien que honra el repertorio central sin ignorar la música de su tiempo.
“Es un gran ejemplo para mí para mantener la curiosidad y desarrollar relaciones con los compositores de nuestra época, y así crear un repertorio sólido para el siglo XXI”, dijo.

Ese interés por la música nueva siempre implica riesgo.
“Te enfrentas a una partitura que nadie ha tocado antes. Requiere una enorme confianza”, explicó Weilerstein. “El compositor tiene que confiar en mí para darle vida, cuidarla, dedicarle tiempo. De mi lado, no sé qué va a hacer realmente la compositora, hacia dónde irá. Existe el riesgo de haber malinterpretado lo que quería. Gracias a Dios, no fue el caso aquí. Ella quedó contenta”.

De hecho, existe un video en el que Ortiz le dice a Weilerstein, tras el primer ensayo de Dzonot, las palabras que todo solista espera escuchar:
“Escuché cosas que, honestamente, sonaron mejor que lo que yo tenía en la cabeza”.

Incluso para Weilerstein, hay un límite a cuánta música nueva puede asumir. En 2025 estrenó tres nuevos conciertos (Dzonot, Returning into Darkness de Thomas Larcher y The Recovery of Paradise de Richard Blackford), y para su innovador proyecto multimedia FRAGMENTS estrenó quince piezas cortas adicionales de compositores destacados para vincular las suites para violonchelo de Bach.

“Todo culminó con que presenté el proyecto FRAGMENTS completo, seis horas de música, en el Festival de Spoleto USA en una sola semana. Tres de los programas se tocaban por primera vez. Fue una locura”, recordó. “Ahora hay un pequeño respiro después de esta explosión de encargos”. Pero rápidamente agregó: “Me da gusto decir que en noviembre haré el estreno europeo del concierto de Wynton Marsalis”.

Con las funciones del 9 y 10 de mayo de Dzonot —apenas la octava y novena interpre­tación mundial—, el público de San Diego podrá disfrutar de un verdadero encuentro de mentes entre una compositora y una intérprete que colocan al ritmo en el centro de su creación musical.

“Si alguien te habla con pura emoción total, ni siquiera entenderás lo que dice”, explicó Weilerstein. “El ritmo es lo que da estructura, emoción y propósito a todo. Piensa en las piezas que realmente te conmueven y al mismo tiempo tienen sentido. Eso lo da el ritmo. Hay que saber dónde empieza una frase y dónde está su cima y su valle. Eso es ritmo”.

Pero el compromiso emocional no es una preocupación para ella.
“Hay muchas cosas en las que debo pensar al interpretar una obra, pero esa no es una de ellas”, dijo. “La música siempre me impacta de forma muy visceral. Expresar eso, canalizarlo, ha sido mi reto de vida: casar el corazón con la mente. Eso es en lo que siempre trabajo cuando estoy dando forma a algo por primera vez. Pero la inversión

Este artículo se publicó originalmente en Inside Climate News, una organización de noticias sin fines de lucro y no partidista que cubre clima, energía y medio ambiente. Suscríbete a su boletín informativo aquí.

IMPERIAL, California—El nuevo centro de datos propuesto para una tranquila ciudad a unas 115 millas al este de San Diego apareció en el radar de la gente de distintas maneras.

Para los clientes de la tienda de delicatessen en West Aten Road, fueron los letreros blancos de “Not In My Backyard” sobresaliendo de los jardines.

Para los trabajadores del distrito local de irrigación, fue algo llamado una “solicitud de servicio eléctrico”.

Para Margie Padilla, fue un desahogo en Facebook.

La madre de 43 años se topó con una publicación en línea la primavera pasada, cuando tuvo unos minutos para revisar las redes sociales tras pasar el día cuidando su jardín y atendiendo a sus dos hijos.

“Alguien se estaba quejando de este centro”, dijo Padilla. “Y pensé: ‘¿Qué está pasando aquí?’”.

Lo que está pasando es la construcción del segundo centro de datos más grande del estado, que estaría a menos de media milla de la casa de Padilla, en el corazón del Valle Imperial. Si se completa en 2028, como espera el desarrollador, el centro de datos de al menos 950,000 pies cuadrados y dos pisos podría convertirse en el más grande en operación en todo California, ocupando un terreno equivalente a 17 campos de fútbol.

El centro de datos, con un costo aproximado de 10,000 millones de dólares y una capacidad de 330 megavatios, requeriría 750,000 galones de agua al día para operar, dijo el desarrollador Sebastian Rucci, quien insiste en que los costos de electricidad y agua no aumentarán debido al proyecto.

“Tenemos estudios sobre el aire. Tenemos estudios sobre el agua. La electricidad se puede manejar”, dijo Rucci. “Hicimos la tarea”.

Los funcionarios de Imperial no han disipado las preocupaciones locales. Solo han señalado que el proyecto enfrenta litigios y que los impactos a largo plazo del centro sobre los servicios públicos aún no han sido determinados.

Además de la carga financiera de mantener la salud de su familia, los gastos de gasolina y alimentos, a Padilla le preocupa que un nuevo centro de datos solo incremente los costos del agua y la electricidad. Con el paso del tiempo, sus temores han aumentado, y no está sola.

Algunos residentes verían el nuevo centro de datos directamente desde sus patios traseros.

“Solo puedo imaginar que las tarifas van a subir una vez que ese centro de datos esté funcionando”, dijo, protegiéndose los ojos del sol intenso.

Este es uno de los dos docenas de centros de datos que se espera entren en operación en California en los próximos años.

Crece la preocupación y persisten los vacíos regulatorios

La mayoría de los encuestados en un sondeo nacional de la U.S. Water Alliance comparten las preocupaciones de Padilla: el 54% dijo estar extremadamente o muy preocupado por el efecto que los centros de datos tendrán sobre la calidad del agua, el suministro y los costos en su área.

En la primera pregunta sobre centros de datos incluida en la encuesta desde que comenzó en 2016, dos tercios de los votantes dijeron que era importante que su estado cuente con un plan para abordar los efectos de los centros de datos sobre el agua en los próximos años.

“Sospecho que, conforme los centros de datos sigan avanzando, estos números probablemente sigan aumentando”, dijo Scott Berry, asesor principal de política y asuntos externos de la U.S. Water Alliance, entrevistado este mes durante la Water Week en Washington, D.C.

Más del 90% de los centros de datos en Estados Unidos obtienen la mayor parte del agua que necesitan de los sistemas municipales, dijo Shaolei Ren, profesor asociado de ingeniería eléctrica y computacional de la Universidad de California, Riverside.

Durante los días más calurosos del verano, una instalación grande de 100 megavatios puede utilizar cerca de un millón de galones de agua para enfriamiento por evaporación, el equivalente al consumo diario de unas 10,000 personas en sus hogares, explicó Ren.

Sin embargo, señaló que estos centros requieren “cero agua durante muchos días del año cuando las temperaturas son frescas”.

Algunos centros de datos están explorando alternativas como el uso de aguas residuales tratadas o aguas grises en lugar de agua potable, lo que puede reducir la presión sobre los suministros locales.

California no exige que los centros de datos —incluidos los dedicados a inteligencia artificial— informen su uso de agua, y la Junta Estatal de Control de Recursos Hídricos no mantiene una lista específica de derechos de agua asociados a estos centros. Los intentos recientes por obligar a mayor transparencia han fracasado.

El auge de los centros de datos se suma a los desafíos que enfrentan los cientos de distritos de agua del estado, la prolongada megasequía del suroeste y la disminución del río Colorado.

“El agua no es únicamente un problema ambiental”, dijo Ren. “En muchos lugares, es esencialmente un desafío de infraestructura”.

Si bien un centro de datos puede construirse en dos o tres años, desarrollar nuevas fuentes de suministro de agua puede tomar hasta 20 años.

Infraestructura bajo presión

Según analistas de Cleanview, el proyecto del Condado Imperial es uno de los 24 centros de datos planeados para completarse en California de aquí a 2030.

Con base en los aproximadamente 1.7 gigavatios de electricidad que usarían los centros de datos propuestos, los costos de actualización de infraestructura hídrica en el estado podrían oscilar entre 200 y 800 millones de dólares, estimó Ren.

No existe una autoridad estatal única que otorgue permisos para centros de datos, y la mayoría son regulados por gobiernos locales, según la Comisión de Servicios Públicos de California. El sitio Data Center Map registra actualmente 286 instalaciones en operación en el estado.

Aunque California solo está detrás de Virginia y Texas en número de centros de datos, sus instalaciones suelen tener menor capacidad eléctrica nueva, lo que puede traducirse en una menor demanda total de agua, según la Data Center Coalition.

A nivel nacional, los centros de datos utilizan alrededor de 39,000 millones de galones de agua al año, de acuerdo con la investigación citada por la coalición.

Como comparación, solo la irrigación de alfalfa en el Valle Imperial consume más de 800,000 millones de galones anuales, destacó un ensayo publicado recientemente en la revista Outside.

El dilema de Imperial

El terreno en West Aten Road no revela nada del colosal centro de datos que algún día podría levantarse allí. Rucci espera que el proyecto esté en funcionamiento para el verano de 2028.

Antes de comenzar la construcción, un juez deberá decidir sobre la demanda interpuesta por la ciudad de Imperial, y el Imperial Irrigation District deberá concluir su evaluación del impacto en agua y energía.

Padilla, por su parte, observa su jardín con inquietud. Actualmente paga entre 90 y 130 dólares mensuales por agua, drenaje y basura, más del doble que hace seis años.

“También temo que nos impongan restricciones de agua a los residentes”, dijo. “Eso sería devastador para mí, sobre todo por mi jardín. Cultivo mi propia comida”.

Inside Climate News es la sala de redacción especializada en clima más antigua y grande del país.

A total of 6,275 seniors are expected to graduate from San Diego Unified School District high schools this year, a 1% increase compared to last year, district leaders said Monday.

The students will matriculate from 25 district high schools, including 157 in the inaugural graduating senior class from Logan Memorial High School.

Superintendent Fabi Bagula, Board of Education President Richard Barrera, and campus administrators touted the graduating class’s career readiness at an appearance on Monday.

They also spoke of the district’s graduation rates.

“Graduation is a testament to the resilience, talent, and determination of our students,” Bagula said. “Our seniors leave San Diego Unified not only with academic knowledge, but with the skills to thrive in a complex world.

“We are deeply committed to ensuring every student is prepared and empowered to pursue their dreams. This graduating class is ready to live a choice-filled life.”

San Diego Unified estimates that 91% of its seniors will graduate on time.

Additionally, 732 graduating seniors are on pace to earn the State Seal of Biliteracy, awarded to high school students who demonstrate proficiency in English and at least one other language, a 6% increase over last year’s 687 recipients.

“Today we celebrate the extraordinary achievements of our graduating seniors and the journeys that brought them here,” Barrera said.

“San Diego Unified has worked to create opportunities that open doors. These graduates are stepping into the next chapter with confidence, purpose, and a strong foundation. We are proud to have helped prepare leaders who will contribute meaningfully to their communities and beyond.”

Estudiantes de todo el condado de San Diego tendrán la oportunidad de extraer lecciones de uno de los periodos más oscuros de la historia humana gracias a un nuevo museo digital sobre ruedas.

Un semirremolque expandible construido especialmente, que puede reservarse en línea y trasladarse a escuelas y centros comunitarios, ofrece una experiencia museística inmersiva para explicar el Holocausto: cómo el régimen nazi asesinó sistemáticamente a seis millones de judíos europeos durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

El proyecto, llamado Spark Interactive, es una iniciativa del Legacy of Light Goldberg Institute for Holocaust Education y de la Federación Judía de San Diego.

El museo móvil fue presentado el domingo durante una ceremonia realizada dentro de un hangar en Montgomery Field, a la que asistieron el alcalde Todd Gloria y líderes comunitarios. Entre el público se encontraban sobrevivientes del Holocausto de edad avanzada que ahora viven en San Diego, tras los horrores que enfrentaron en su juventud en Europa.

Darren Schwartz, director fundador del Goldberg Institute, reconoció a esos sobrevivientes mientras explicaba por qué la educación sobre el Holocausto es importante.

“Tenemos que preguntarnos: ¿cómo entenderán realmente las futuras generaciones lo que ocurrió? ¿Cómo comprenderán lo que sucede cuando el odio queda sin respuesta?”, dijo Schwartz.

El museo móvil, que se expande hasta alcanzar 560 pies cuadrados y cuenta con muros interactivos de video, está diseñado para llevar la historia del Holocausto a los estudiantes y ayudarlos a comprender las consecuencias del odio, la desinformación y el colapso de las normas democráticas.

“Los estudiantes no solo aprenden qué sucedió durante el Holocausto”, dijo. “Exploran cómo sucedió y qué significa para el mundo en el que viven hoy. Porque no se trata solo de historia; se trata de responsabilidad”.

El proyecto cuenta con el respaldo de una donación principal multimillonaria de Lee Goldberg, la familia Goldberg y otras organizaciones judías, así como de la Fundación Prebys, la fundación privada independiente más grande de San Diego.

“Como la primera organización no judía en apoyar este esfuerzo, participamos de manera muy intencional. Porque el Holocausto no es solo historia judía; es historia humana. Sus lecciones nos pertenecen a todos”, dijo Grant Oliphant, director ejecutivo de la fundación.

“En un momento de creciente división, distorsión y normalización del odio, este tipo de educación no es opcional. Es esencial si nos importa una sociedad democrática sana y pluralista”, añadió Oliphant.

El alcalde Gloria recordó que la bibliotecaria de su escuela primaria era una sobreviviente del Holocausto que tenía un número tatuado en el brazo.

“Ella prestaba los libros y los sellaba, y yo veía la marca en su brazo”, dijo. “Me pregunto cuántos de nuestros niños van a tener esas mismas experiencias para entender lo horrendo que fue esto”.

Elogió el proyecto Spark Interactive porque “nos ayudará a cumplir la promesa de nunca olvidar e inspirará a todos para asegurarnos de que nunca vuelva a ocurrir”.

The president of the San Diego Police Officers Association is out less than a year after he was installed. 

That’s because Police Chief Scott Wahl is trying to fire him, reports Will Huntsberry. 

What happened: Earlier this year, Sergeant Jeremy Huff took to Facebook and brashly defended the actions of an officer caught on video beating a man who had his hands behind his head. The police chief had suggested the cop could have reacted better. Two months later, Huff received his termination papers. He had opportunities to challenge his firing. But he didn’t.

Huntsberry delved deeper into Huff’s record on the force, shedding more light on why Huff might have been at odds with the chief. 

Huff himself got a written warning for using unjustified force when he excessively punched a homeless person in 2020. He was also charged with falsifying his vehicle registration. And he participated in the shooting of a homeless man during an encampment cleanup, though that shooting was later ruled justified. 

Read the full story here. 

State Validates Midway Rising Theory on Height Limit

We reported in November that the developers of the ambitious Midway Rising project were not sweating a court ruling that struck down the second ballot measure voters approved to lift the building height limit in the Midway area.

The developers insisted it didn’t halt their project because they could rely on the state’s density-bonus law. It essentially allows builders to waive local restrictions on things like height if they are building affordable housing.

But the city’s leaders — in particular Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Heather Ferbert — were conspicuously unwilling to say they agreed.

Now, the state has sent a letter to the city validating the theory. We have it in the Politics Report.

Also in the Politics Report: Supporters of a new half-cent sales tax for the county of San Diego are turning in signatures.

Normally this Politics Report is for Voice members only but this one has some breaking news worth sharing more broadly.

Read the Politics Report here.

Point-in-Time Count Shows Drop in Street Homelessness

San Diego’s latest homeless census found a 11 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness and a 12 percent spike in people staying in shelters.

The bottom line: A 1 percent year-over-year drop in homelessness countywide.

Our Lisa Halverstadt broke down the results of the January census overseen by the Regional Task Force on Homelessness and shared year-round numbers that shed more light on the much larger scope of the crisis.

Read the full story here. 

Sacramento Report: State Supreme Court Deals Blow to Coastal Commission

The powerful state commission charged with preserving California’s natural coastlines and access to them lost another battle to housing developers. 

The state Supreme Court unanimously overturned the California Coastal Commission’s vote to block four homes from being built in Los Osos over habitat and water quality concerns. While the decision doesn’t impact the commission’s authority, it comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom re-stacked the commission with pro-development appointees. Critics have said the commission has been overstepping its mission to enforce the 1976 Coastal Act. 

Our Nadia Lathan gets into the weeds on the battle between coastal preservation and housing interests in her Sacramento Report.

Read the full newsletter here.

In Other News 

• This week on the Voice of San Diego podcast, the hosts discuss the meteor heading for the city of San Diego’s budget, plus the fight of a plane on top of a house in Coronado.
• San Diego Humane Society embarked a massive rescue operation at a supposed animal sanctuary near Julian on Friday. (Fox 5)
• As California prepares to share driver’s license data with a private nationwide network, privacy advocates worry the move will give federal agencies access to drivers’ immigration status. (NBC 7)
• Following criticism of its pyrotechnics, SeaWorld’s first fireworks-replacing drone show will debut May 22. “Oceans of Dreams” will run nightly throughout the summer featuring 600 fully synchronized drones forming the shape of marin animals. (Fox 5)
• A former graduate student at the University of California-San Diego is suing the university and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office alleging her arrest at a crack-down of a pro-Palestinian protest violated her civil rights. (Union-Tribune)

The post Morning Report: The Downfall of Police Union Leader appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Diego Armando Acosta goes to the beach with his father almost weekly to surf along the Baja California coast.

Though they live in Tijuana, the father and son said they often choose to head to beaches further south around Rosarito to look for cleaner water.

“It’s better,” the father, Diego Acosta, told me in Spanish. “You can see the difference.”

A nationwide study from the Comisión Federal para la Protección contra Riesgos Sanitarios of water quality in Mexico’s beaches at the end of March found concerning water contamination in several areas just south of the border. Of the 17 states with beaches, only Baja California had water contamination levels that meant some of its beaches were not safe for swimming.

Last year, the commission found that three states had beaches with concerning levels of contamination — Baja California, Guerrero and Nayarit.

Sewage contaminating ocean waters has led to long-term beach closures and even political careers on the U.S.-side of the border, particularly in Imperial Beach. But the contamination also affects beaches along Mexico’s shoreline.

Officials from both sides of the border met last week in Tijuana to announce another large investment in infrastructure work to try to fix the issue.

The beaches flagged in Mexico’s nationwide study as not suitable for water activities were not those closest to the border wall itself. The study found elevated levels of bacteria associated with fecal matter in San Antonio Del Mar, Baja Malibú and Playa Blanca, which are a short drive south of the main Playas beaches on the way to Rosarito. The three locations are private beaches controlled by gated communities.

But, a separate study published at the end of March by Proyecto Fronterizo de Educación Ambiental found unsafe levels of those bacteria in beaches much closer to the border wall including El Vigía, Cañada Azteca and Parque México. (The part of the beach closest to the border wall, known as El Faro, appeared safe.) 

Proyecto Fronterizo, a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, monitors water conditions weekly with tests on Thursdays and posts on the organization’s social media channels on Fridays.

April studies showed downward fluctuations in contamination levels, but as recently as April 16, Cañada Azteca still showed signs of high contamination.

I met the Acosta family between Parque México and Cañada Azteca on a Sunday afternoon soon after Proyecto Fronterizo posted those test results. Along the beach, people swam, lounged under umbrellas and listened to the tunes of roving musicians.

The majority of beachgoers clustered closer to El Faro, where vendors circulated with sunglasses and an array of snacks. The vendors I spoke with didn’t seem to have much sense of whether the beach crowds change depending on the water contamination levels.

But, the younger Acosta, standing with his surfboard, said he keeps a close watch on the water contamination level testing and avoids the beach when the bacteria get too high. He said that when he surfs closer to the border in Playas de Tijuana, the water irritates his eyes. But sometimes he surfs there anyway because he doesn’t want to make the drive to Rosarito, he said.

A little further north along the beach, a family of five played in the edge of the surf. 

Alex Briseño, the father, said that the family didn’t know anything about the water contamination. 

“We don’t worry,” Briseño said. “The Mexican stomach is very tough.”

He said they live in Tijuana, but they don’t come to the beach very often. They had spent the whole afternoon there, playing in the waves and eating snacks from the vendors who walked up and down the sand. As he spoke to me, his daughter buried his feet in wet sand.

Thank you for reading. I’m open for tips, suggestions and feedback on Instagram @katemorrisseyjournalist and on Bluesky @bgirledukate.

In Other News

Lawyers in training: Gustavo Solis reported for KPBS that University of San Diego has a law clinic where student lawyers can help immigrants at Otay Mesa Detention Center.

Gun range: Federal immigration officials have been renting out the San Diego sheriff’s firing range training facility for years, Sofía Mejías-Pascoe reported for inewsource. That includes both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officials, who have collectively paid about $235,000 to the San Diego Sheriff’s Department since 2024.

Body cameras: Some Tijuana police officers have started wearing body cameras, particularly in tourist areas, Alexandra Mendoza reported for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Steel imports: Adelina Dayebi Pazos reported for El Sol de Tijuana that Tijuana’s construction industry depends on U.S. steel, though Mexico is looking for ways to bolster its own steel production in light of U.S. tariffs.

Lawsuit threats: Punto Norte reported that the mayor of Tecate has threatened to sue the digital publication over reporting related to a removal of a 90-year-old woman and her family from a ranch.

Sanctuary lawsuit: The city of El Cajon sued the state of California over its laws limiting police interactions with federal immigration officials, Alex Riggins reported for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The post Border Report: Mexico’s Dirtiest Beaches appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The average price has risen 12 consecutive days, increasing 28.9 cents, including 2.2 cents Saturday, according to figures from AAA and Oil Price Information Service. The streak of increases follows a 13-day streak of decreases totaling 11.7 cents.

The average price is 15.4 cents more than one week ago, 20.3 cents more than one month ago and $1.403 more than one year ago. It has risen $1.455 since the joint U.S./Israel attack on Iran Feb. 28, moving within 29.4 cents of the record $6.435 set on Oct. 5, 2022.

“California’s gasoline supply is significantly affected by the Strait of Hormuz closure,” Kandace Redd, the Automobile Club of Southern California’s senior public affairs specialist, said in a statement released Thursday.

“According to the California Energy Commission, in 2025 the state relied upon Middle East countries for 29% of the oil it used in the state’s refineries to produce gasoline. Additionally, the gasoline that California imports from refineries in other countries is also heavily reliant on oil from the Middle East.”

The national average price rose 1.3 cents to $4.446, its highest amount since July 20, 2022. It has risen 11 consecutive days, increasing 42.6 cents, including 4.1 cents Saturday. The national average price is 34.7 cents more than one week ago, 35.5 cents more than one month ago and $1.275 more than one year ago. It has risen $1.464 since the attack on Iran, moving within 57 cents of the record $5.016 set June 14, 2022.

The House passed a sweeping five-year farm bill on April 30 after years of congressional deadlock and a chaotic week of procedural fights, last-minute negotiations and a near collapse of the deal.

The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 passed 224-200, with 14 Democrats joining Republicans to push the margin beyond the slim Republican majority. The bill’s fate remains uncertain in the Senate, where it will need bipartisan support to reach the 60-vote threshold.

“They’re going to have to make some modifications to get 60 votes,” House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson told reporters after the House vote.

This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS — a publication from the nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute — and NEWSWELL, home of Times of San Diego, Santa Barbara News-Press and Stocktonia.

Mindgruve, a San Diego marketing and data technology agency, has announced the appointment of Spencer Lian-Thornton as VP of growth and partnerships.

A Mindgruve statement said Lian-Thornton will play a key role in accelerating Mindgruve’s growth, deepening enterprise partnerships and advancing the agency’s leadership in retail media and commerce-driven marketing.

Lian-Thornton spent the past 12 years at Amazon, where he helped build and scale strategies for several of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Wrangler, Hanes, New Balance and The Children’s Place. His experience spans apparel, footwear and consumer brands with a focus on helping brands succeed on Amazon, along with the broader commerce landscape, said Mindgruve.

“Retail media is transforming how brands grow, and Spencer brings a rare combination of platform expertise, strategic vision, and brand stewardship,” said Chad Robley, CEO of Mindgruve. “Having spent more than a decade at Amazon during the rise of retail media, Spencer has been at the forefront of this evolution. He deeply understands how marketing, media and commerce intersect and how to help brands win in today’s retail ecosystem.”

“I’ve always believed the best marketing feels like advice from a trusted friend, and to deliver, you need a trusted agency,” said Lian-Thornton. “For nearly a decade, I had Mindgruve on my radar and recommended the agency to clients because they were early leaders in retail media, delivered real results, and built trusted partnerships, not transactional engagements. That philosophy has only become more important as retail media evolves.”

NOTUS to rebrand as ‘The Star‘

NOTUS, a Washington D.C.-based political news website that provides content to Times of San Diego, will be renamed The Star and relaunched the first week of June, announced Tim Grieve, editor in chief.

Founded in 2023, NOTUS was initially funded with a $20 million grant from the Allbritton Journalism Institute, an entity of Robert Allbritton, 92, the billionaire founder and former publisher of Politico, a left-leaning, Beltway-centric news outlet.

The NOTUS name stands for News of the United States, a play on the common abbreviation for the President of the United States, or POTUS.

The renaming is designed to appeal to a broad audience, as reported by The New York Times. Also, Allbritton’s father, Joe Allbritton, once owned The Washington Star, a daily afternoon newspaper that stopped publishing in 1981.

According to news reports, The Star is hoping to fill a void it says was left by deep newsroom cuts at the Washington Post. Earlier this year, the Post laid off more than 300 of its 800 journalists, ended most of its sports coverage and reduced its local focus.

In recent months, several former Post reporters have joined The Star, including political reporters Paul Kane and Kadia Goba, columnist Dana Milbank, sports reporter Sam Fortier and economics reporter Jeff Stein.

The Star reportedly plans to increase its coverage of Congress and the White House, along with local news and sports, with a focus on both “political Washington and `normal’ Washington, as The Post retreats on that front,” said Grieve in news reports.

The Star newsroom, which began the year with about 45 employees, is expected to double its staff to 95 total journalists by the end of the year.

NPR Asks `How To Start a Nuclear War’ and Other Existential Threats

National Public Radio (NPR) has launched a new weekly podcast with an interesting question as a title: “Are We Doomed?”

An NPR statement said the podcast will investigate the threats that haunt humanity, helping listeners separate real dangers from wildly over-hyped fears. Each episode takes on a different existential threat, whether urgent, galactic or pop-culture obsession, and what we’re actually doing about it.

The show combines narrative storytelling with interviews with scientists, historians and journalists, said NPR.

Recent titles include “Let’s Design the AI That Kills Us All” and “How to Start a Nuclear War.” Upcoming titles include “Are We Going the Way of the Roman Empire?” and “Dooms that Didn’t Happen.”

Host is Ben Bradford, a former consultant for Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental organization that investigates human rights abuses.

Bradford also is a former press secretary for retired Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, who spent 30 years representing Silicon Valley. He also previously covered state politics for NPR stations across California as a reporter for Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, but he did not work at KPBS in San Diego, a KPBS spokesperson said

“There are real threats facing our species,” said Bradford. “I’m fascinated by how we as individuals, a nation, and as a species prioritize them and how we’ve made it this far.”

Bradford is known his award-winning “Landslide” podcast series produced in partnership with WFAE, public radio station in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

“Despite the dark subject matter, the show is lively, curious and unexpectedly hopeful,” said Daniel McCoy, NPR’s senior director of network growth. “Narrative, sound-rich podcasting has become increasingly rare. ‘Are We Doomed?’ leans into that tradition with highly produced storytelling and immersive sound design.”

Rick Griffin is a San Diego-based public relations and marketing consultant. His MarketInk column appears weekly in Times of San Diego.

The San Diego Rescue Mission celebrated the graduation of 46 participants from its rehabilitation and recovery program Saturday, helping them overcome homelessness.

The 12-month Mission Academy Residential Program provides men, women and single parents the tools and resources they need to overcome homelessness and rebuild their lives, according to SDRM officials.

“Today is about more than graduation. It’s about hope and transformation,” Donnie Dee, President and CEO of the San Diego Rescue Mission said. “Over the past 12 months, each one of these Mission Academy graduates has done the hard work to change the trajectory of their lives by addressing the root causes of their homelessness while gaining life skills, education, job training and stable housing. We’re incredibly proud of their achievements and this is how we create real change in the state of homelessness in San Diego.”

The graduation ceremony was held Saturday at First Presbyterian Church in downtown San Diego and brought together family members, staff and volunteers to commemorate the graduates’ journeys from crisis to stability, officials said.

Mission Academy graduates will continue their journey through SDRM’s alumni program, which provides ongoing support to help them maintain long-term stability and success, according to officials.

As of December 2025, 93% of surveyed alumni remained in stable housing and 60% had stable income.

As part of its 70th anniversary, SDRM is expanding its Mission Academy program to serve more women and families in need, SDRM said.

The organization welcomed additional participants in April as part of an expansion of its Women’s Program. SDRM is increasing the number of beds dedicated to women from 52 to 88 and adding eight new rooms for single mothers, bringing the total to 17.

“The expansion will help ensure more women and families have access to holistic recovery support, safe housing and long-term stability,” according to a statement.

Students throughout San Diego County will have an opportunity draw lessons from one of the darkest periods in human history thanks to a new digital museum on wheels.

A specially built expandable semi-trailer that can be booked online and towed to schools and community centers offers an immersive museum experience to explain the Holocaust — how the Nazi regime systematically murdered six million European Jews during World War II.

Called Spark Interactive, the project is an initiative of the Legacy of Light Goldberg Institute for Holocaust Education and the Jewish Federation of San Diego.

The mobile museum was unveiled on Sunday at a ceremony inside a hanger at Montgomery Field attended by Mayor Todd Gloria and community leaders. In the audience were elderly Holocaust survivors who now live in San Diego after the horror of their youth in Europe.

Darren Schwartz, founding director of the Goldberg Institute, recognized those survivors as he explained why Holocaust education is important.

“We have to ask ourselves: How will future generations truly understand what happened? How will they grasp what occurs when hate goes unchallenged?” Schwartz said.

The mobile museum, which expands to 560 square feet and features interactive video walls, is designed to bring Holocaust history to students to help them understand the consequences of hate, misinformation and the breakdown of democratic norms.

“Students don’t just learn what happend during the Holocaust,” he said. “They explore how it happened, and what it means for the world they live in today. Because it isn’t about history; it’s about responsiblity.”

The project is backed by a multi-million-dollar lead gift from Lee Goldberg and the Goldberg family and other Jewish organizations, but also the Prebys Foundation, the largest independent private foundation in San Diego.

“As the first non-Jewish organizational supporter, we stepped in very intentionally. Because the Holocaust is not only Jewish history; it is human industry. Its lessons belong to every single one of us,” said Grant Oliphant, CEO of the foundation.

“At a time of rising division, distortion and normalization of hate, this kind of education isn’t optional. It’s essentinal if we care about a healthy, pluralistic democratic society,” Oliphant said.

Mayor Gloria recalled that the librarian in his elementary school was a Holocaust survivor with a number tattooed on her arm.

“She would check out the books and stamp them, and I would see the marking on her arm,” he said. “I wonder how many of our children are going to have those same experiences to understand how horrific this was.”

He praised the Spark Interactive project because it “will help us keep the promise to never forget and inspire all of us to make sure never again.”

Here’s how I picture the planning for Chula Vista’s State of the City went down: Mayor John McCann in a room shooting down ideas like Miranda in the “Devil Wears Prada.”

How about you just give a speech from a podium? No, we did that last year. What if you just talk about the city’s accomplishments? No.

What if we play a Mission Impossible-style video and then a plane flew over the crowd and a skydiver parachuted down while the mayor walked up to the podium in a tux?

A skydiver for the State of the City? Groundbreaking.

In all seriousness, we’ve watched a lot of mayors address their cities, but Mayor McCann definitely shook things up this week with his flashy speech.

South County reporter Jim Hinch was in the audience and witnessed all the wild moments. Here’s what he had to say about it:

At what moment did you realize this wasn’t going to be your run-of-the-mill state of the city speech?

The minute it started. An emcee told everyone to take their seats and, boom, a Hollywood-style movie started up on screens behind the podium. Mission Impossible music played while the mayor, in the film, raced to get to his speech on time, taking an increasingly outlandish series of vehicles.

Culminating, of course, in the mayor donning a flight suit and filming himself leaping out of a airplane. At which point, a real airplane appeared overhead and a skydiver parachuted down.

Not run-of-the-mill, to say the least.

Chula Vista actually does have a lot to celebrate. What’s something that surprised you and that you will be following in future stories?

The mayor is up for re-election this year, so it’s no surprise he staged a splashy speech.

The city has done well during his first four years as mayor. His opponent, Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Francisco Tamayo, says the mayor hasn’t done enough to support the city’s immigrant community.

I’ll be watching to see which matters more to voters: Growth and fiscal stability or a full-throated defense of undocumented immigrants.

Read more about what went down here.

The Cop Statement War Goes Further

Remember when I told you San Diego’s top cop was fighting with the police union’s new president? They were beefing it over a statement Chief Scott Wahl made about an officer who punched a man in the face during an arrest.

Wahl spoke up about the incident and said it’s complicated but that “there are things we could have done better.”

San Diego Police Officers Association President Jeremy Huff didn’t appreciate the chief’s comments and said the chief’s words could harm officers. But then the chief clapped back saying weighing in is part of being a leader.

The news! Will Huntsberry reports that Chief Wahl is trying to fire Huff. The police department wouldn’t comment and neither would Huff, but Huntsberry goes through Huff’s somewhat troubled history in a new story. Read more here.

Trash Fee Repeal Scaries

There’s an effort afoot to repeal the city of San Diego’s trash fee. We wondered, just how hard would the city’s budget be hit if the repeal were successful?

City Hall reporter Mariana Martínez Barba reports that city leaders would be forced to cut up to $150 million from city services.

To put things into perspective, one source told Martínez Barba that the money generated from the fee is about 5 percent of the city’s budget. That’s more than what the city spends on the entire library system in a year.

Martínez Barba asked former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who is leading the repeal effort on behalf of the Lincoln Club Business League, what he thought about the potential impact.

He said people are angry that the fee turned out to be higher than what city officials promised when voters allowed the city to charge for trash collection.

“This city survived for a hundred years without having to charge people for trash or having to charge families to go to Balboa Park. It’s about priorities,” he told Martínez Barba. He also said city officials can invest in public safety and employees “without having to fee and tax San Diegans to death.” 

Read the full story here.

What do you think? Send me a note at andrea.sanchez@voiceofsandiego.org

More Chisme to Start Your Week

• Hinch wrote about how the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown is impacting South County residents. It’s worth a read.
• Speaking of the trash fee, city officials say the city expects to bring in less revenue from the fee because residents are choosing smaller, lower-cost bins. Read more here.

The post Cup of Chisme: A Skydiver for the State of the City? Groundbreaking. appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

For actor Jordan Markus, San Diego has become a jumping off point for new opportunities. 

He filmed an audition tape to play Michael Jackson in the Tony-winning “MJ: The Musical” from a downtown San Diego apartment. After successfully nabbing the role, first as standby, then the lead on Broadway, he joined the first national tour of the musical, which had a stop in San Diego in 2024. 

This week, he is back in downtown, and ahead of the national tour’s new slate of shows at the Civic Theatre, he sang the national anthem before a Padres game on Wednesday. 

“I know how big baseball culture is in San Diego. So this is kind of where I first learned a little more about baseball,” said Markus, who grew up in New Orleans. 

This was his first time singing the national anthem for an event – just another example of San Diego being a place of growth for him. 

Markus initially moved to San Diego from Atlanta, a couple years into being a professional musical theater artist, as a way to hone his craft and find new opportunities. 

“It just felt like the next step to move out here and do the thing over here,” Markus said. “I wanted to go to the West Coast and see what it had to offer. Luckily, it was a lot.”

While here, he had roles at the San Diego Musical Theatre including Benny in “In The Heights” and Sonny Malone in “Xanadu.” He impressed Jill Townsend, SDMT’s artistic director.

“With his incredible talent and his beautiful, kind soul, we knew it was only a matter of time before he would hit the big time,” she said. “And he did just that when he booked ‘MJ: The Musical.'”

His SDMT roles, though, were fictional, so Markus had the chance to bring more of himself and his own interpretation to the stage. As the King of Pop, the assignment is the opposite. As much as possible, Markus disappears so the audience can see the legendary singer and dancer in his stead. 

“These are humans that have walked the earth and some of the most famous and notable humans at that,” Markus said. “So the pressure to be as accurate as possible is definitely there, but that came through all the work.”

He drilled for a year before stepping foot on the stage. He watched music videos on repeat and devoured every interview, learning as much about Jackson in 1992, when the musical’s present day is set, as possible. Markus trained with former Jackson dancers and choreographers Rich and Tone Talauega. 

He developed an extreme attention to detail in order to embody the entertainer. After being in the role for years and bringing that level of care to the performance, it can be difficult to come back to himself after each night’s show. 

“It sort of does seep into your life a bit,” Markus said. 

But bringing his dog on tour helps him stay grounded. “He reminds me of real world things and just keeps me, me.”

Despite that challenge, the role has been fulfilling for Markus, who grew up loving everything Michael. And his hard work and sacrifices show, said Townsend.

“Jordan’s unforgettable performance as the King of Pop is outstanding, and his performance is not to be missed,” she said. “We are so proud to have been a small part of his journey.”

Then there’s the “Michael” movie. Its release has reinvigorated the tour cast. Audience members have taken to watching the film before heading to the musical, making it a whole day dedicated to Jackson. 

“Michael’s music really brings people together in that way,” Markus said. 

See Markus in the national tour of “MJ: The Musical” at the Civic Theatre, opening Tuesday and continuing through May 10. Find tickets at broadwaysd.com. 

The San Diego Padres confirmed on Saturday that they would be sold to a new ownership group led by billionaire José Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones.

“This is about more than baseball,” the couple said in a statement. “It’s about boosting the pride, energy, and connection that define the Padres, investing in community, deepening belonging, and ensuring this team remains accessible and endures for generations. We are all in — with the goal of bringing a World Series championship to San Diego.”

The sale must still be approved by Major League Baseball. Feliciano and Jones’ group had reportedly offered a record-setting $3.9 billion to acquire the team. The Padres have been valued at around $3.1 billion.

By comparison, the ownership group that included the Seidler family had bought the team in August 2012 for around $800 million. Current team chairman John Seidler’s brother, Peter, served in that position until his death in November 2023. Two years after his passing, the family announced that it would explore selling the team, which touched off a legal fight that was resolved in February 2026.

“This is a bittersweet moment for us as we reflect on what the Padres have accomplished since my brother Peter became the steward of the franchise,” John Seidler said in a statement. “I congratulate Kwanza, José, and the Padres, and wish them nothing but success. We look forward to a smooth transition.”

Feliciano is also part of the ownership group leading the English Premier League squad Chelsea FC. Jones has a history of philanthrophic efforts, including serving on the board of directors for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.

After a lifelong career in social work and as a family court services mediator, Diana Figueroa never thought her path would end as a nonprofit founder. That is, until she had to fill a service gap in her own family.

In 2023, Figueroa founded Casa de Mosaic, a day program for adults with autism located in Rolando Village. 

The idea came after struggling to find a program that fit the high-support needs of her son with autism, who, at the time, was aging out of high school.

“When I was looking for a program for him, I wasn’t finding anything that would have him be out in the community for even part of the day. He would be indoors and just kind of watched for the day, and that wasn’t acceptable to me,” Figueroa said. “So, I decided to make my own program. That’s how it got started. It got started with him, and then just other parents were sort of in the same situation.”

Casa de Mosaic is one of more than 200 adult day service programs in San Diego County, all differing in size and the variety of services provided.

A key facet of Casa de Mosaic, thanks to Figueroa, is to get the participants outside working in the community and making their own healthy meals. All this is to hopefully prepare them with necessary skills to be successful adults in their own right.

“I think what I like is that they’re out in the community, they’re getting sunshine, they’re eating good food. They’re able to do things that their peers are doing; we just adapt it ’til it works,” Figueroa said. “And that’s what I like. I like that they’re getting sunshine, they’re with community. I think that’s what a good life and good health include.”

The transition out of high school is a difficult one for many individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Research varies, but one Drexel University study reported that one-third of adults with autism did not find a job or continue with their education after high school. A total of 36% attend postsecondary education, 19% live independently and 32% found a job within two years of their high school graduation.

Casa de Mosaic offers another option, and three years in, Figueroa has developed a successful weekly routine that no longer requires her to be there 60 hours a week.

“First year was a lot of ‘What did I do?’ And second year, we were growing … We were getting more comfortable with, ‘Okay, now we have a routine,’” Figueroa said. “We had collaborations with the community. We started a collaboration with the elementary school. Communities were starting to reach out to us, and we were starting to have a little following.”

Now, these community collaborations are weekly programs nearly set in stone.

Work and fun go hand-in-hand

Every week, the participants water plants at a coffee shop, clean and restock Barlando, another local business, and help with school lunches and collect compost at Rolando Elementary School.

There is also plenty of room for non-work activities, between exercising with an occupational therapist at Copley-Price Family YMCA, participating in adapted storytime at the College-Rolando Library and taking adventurous day trips, such as to SeaWorld or kayaking.

“I’m not sure which [activity’s] my favorite. I like the collaboration with Rolando [Elementary], I think that’s really cool. They’re so supportive. We have our own space to work there. They have meaningful jobs for us to do there. I like [Barlando] as well. I don’t know. It’s hard to pick. I think there’s something about every day that I like,” Figueroa said.

‘A win-win’

With all the support Casa de Mosaic provides for the community, Figueroa says she definitely feels it’s reciprocated.

“Everyone’s impacted by autism in some way, in their family or friends … And I think we bring so much to the community between all the cleanups that we do and the partnerships that we have,” Figueroa said. “The building that we are housed at used to be at one point, and this was a city worker that told me, I guess it was like a drug house … And so I think the community is just, like, really happy we’re there. It’s like a win-win.”

With the expansion of autism spectrum disorder research and diagnostic criteria, autism is becoming much more prevalent. Among babies born in California from 1987 to 2013, the California Department of Public Health reported that autism diagnoses increased tenfold, from 0.11% of total births to 1.1% of births. In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 1 in 26 eight-year-olds in California had been diagnosed with autism.

While Figueroa is not currently planning to expand the program – it has six participants, seven staff members and one volunteer (herself) – to meet the growing need, she hopes to soon get a grant for a program manager who can continue her hard work.

“Our goal is, at the five-year mark, that the program will be self-sufficient, that it will, even when I step out and maybe I’m not as involved, that the things that I’ve started will continue. Especially the cooking,” Figueroa said.

“I want this to continue forever, and that’s what I want my legacy to be. I plan to donate the building space and to keep it so it’s self-sustaining. And hopefully, if it will have growth, someone else can take that on. I would support that as well.”

Observers have for years expressed concern about death rates in the seven adult facilities the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office supervises.

A new report delves into 179 of those deaths over the course of a dozen years, but zeroes in on one facility – the downtown San Diego Central Jail.

The report, from a Seattle firm, Mountain-Whisper-Light: Statistics & Data Science, describes the central jail as a “universe of its own,” with the county’s jail deaths concentrated disproportionately behind its bars. 

From Dec. 27, 2011 through April 2, 2024, 91 inmates died at the Front Street facility, accounting for half of all the local jail deaths, the firm found.

The county Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board commissioned the independent report, and will hear from the team of researchers at Thursday’s CLERB meeting. 

One key goal for the panel is finding when incarcerated people are most vulnerable to in-custody death, whether natural, by accident, suicide or another’s hand. 

Central jail is particularly violent. It had nearly all in-custody homicides and the highest rate of assaults on staff “by a significant margin.” 

“SDCJ has by far the highest rate of assaults on staff, 63% higher than the next facility,” the report reads. 

Twelve of the county system’s 15 total homicides were at SDCJ. Every other facility had one homicide at most in the 12-year study period. 

The North County booking facility, Vista Detention Facility, primarily for males, was half as deadly as the central jail. The female booking and male non-booking detention centers had even lower death rates. 

One possible factor is crowded conditions. Central Jail books 69,000 male inmates per year in a facility opened in 1998 that can accommodate 945 inmates at a time. In a 2018 report, a county grand jury found that during a visit in August 2017, the facility housed 1,080 inmates; its average daily population at the time, 944, was just under capacity. 

The Sheriff’s Office noted other factors that make operating Central Jail more challenging. Over 50% of total bookings across the county occur there. It’s the only detention center in a metropolitan area, so it sees more homeless individuals and those with mental and behavioral health issues. Plus, it’s the closest booking facility to the border, so it draws inmates arrested for international drug smuggling who may try to bring contraband inside. 

“These factors introduce unique operational complexities,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement responding to the CLERB report. 

For the researchers, the more inmates at Central Jail, the more dangerous the conditions became for everyone. “Simply by having more incarcerated people present (in SDCJ), everyone’s chances of dying worsened,” according to their report. 

On the other hand, the more staff at the jail, the lower the death rate. That was particularly true when it came to having supervisors and leadership on site to oversee deputies and other personnel. This was not universally the case at all facilities, but a major factor downtown. 

The deaths are, of course, tragedies, but they have funding and policy ramifications as well. The county has spent millions in settlements with loved ones of the deceased, while state officials conducted an audit of the jail system and elected officials passed laws to increase transparency. Journalists followed the developments closely, even before the release of the 2022 audit.

Former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, for instance, authored a bill, passed by the legislature in 2023, to evaluate inadequate healthcare provisions for inmates and provide more transparency to the public around jail death investigations. 

But in the case of the report prepared for CLERB, researchers could not access all the information they sought in the 14-month study period. The county did not provide all the requested public records in time for a true look at deaths labeled as “natural” in the jails, among other issues. Without those records, the April report could not verify if any deaths ruled as natural might have been preventable with better medical care.

But the report does provide an analytical look at what makes San Diego’s jails so lethal – along with the timing of when they are most dangerous.

Yet the deaths can’t solely be blamed on the raw number of inmates or overcrowding. George Bailey Detention Facility, with a capacity of 1,380 people, can accommodate nearly 50% more inmates than the central jail. And pre-Covid, the South Bay facility, on average, housed hundreds more inmates than that.

Still, it accounted for just 25 deaths in the same 12-year period when SDCJ had nearly 100. 

Researchers also factored in the amount of days inmates were incarcerated when looking at the facility death rates. 

“SDCJ clearly stands out,” researchers wrote. 

Some of the danger comes from the timing.  Suicides are more likely to occur within the first two days of booking. Plus, booking facilities are more prone to ‘accidental’ deaths, a category that in almost all cases means deaths from overdoses and withdrawals. Those types of fatalities also usually occur within the first two days of being booked, according to the analysis. 

The researchers recommended that the sheriff institute new booking procedures that screen better for intoxicated individuals so those at risk of dangerous withdrawals may be sent to detox and medical facilities, rather than suffering symptoms in jail without medical supervision. 

The Sheriff’s Office responded to the findings by stating that some of those changes have been implemented since the study period ended. Medical doctors were added to booking facilities in 2025 to enhance screening. The office said overdose deaths decreased by 65% between 2024 and 2025. 

Overall though, researchers urged officials to focus death prevention efforts on SDCJ, and to a lesser degree, Vista Detention Facility, the second-deadliest jail. 

“These findings suggest that the problems of deaths in custody and violence are not systemwide issues, but rather problems concentrated in two specific facilities,” the report reads. “The implication is that the (Sheriff’s Office) should focus its prevention efforts most urgently in SDCJ and secondarily in VDF.”

The report will be presented in a meeting starting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday in room 310 at the County Administration Center at 1600 Pacific Highway. For more details about monthly meetings, visit the CLERB website.

The soccer coach had blocked himself from sportsbooks by the time he found prediction markets.

The tax accountant said he “got the same high” on those platforms that he got from gambling. “That was how I relapsed — with Kalshi and Polymarket. I lost a bunch of money.”

The rapid growth of prediction markets has sparked a high-stakes debate that is playing out in courts and legislatures all over the country. Operators of those companies believe they should be regulated like the stock exchange because of federal law and their customer-to-customer structure, while sportsbooks and state officials think they should be supervised the same way as sports gambling platforms.

While that argument continues with no sign of resolution, the clinicians who treat gambling disorders are more concerned about what they are seeing with their patients. In their spaces, when it comes to sports gambling and prediction markets, the end result is virtually the same.

Two gambling addicts who spoke to The Associated Press — the soccer coach and tax accountant — say they had relapses on prediction markets after they took legal action to protect themselves from the allure of sports betting. They are being identified by their occupations because of the sensitivity of their situations. Their stories reflect what experts say they see with some of their clients.

“There may be real differences in how these products are defined or regulated, but in the therapy room, we are often seeing the same cycle of anticipation, action and reaction play out again and again,” said Dr. Cynthia Grant, the vice president of clinical for Birches Health, which operates a national network of providers for treating gambling addiction.

“I sometimes think of it like different doors into the same room. The label on the door may change, but once someone’s inside, the experience can feel very familiar.”

The road from sportsbooks to prediction markets

Sportsbooks and prediction markets offer a lot of similar options. Wagers on games, individual performances and other possibilities. But the format is different.

Sportsbooks have in-house experts who set odds that dictate payouts for winning bets. It’s the house versus the gamblers. Traders on predictions markets swap contracts of yes-or-no questions, and profits and losses are dictated by the market. Win a “yes” holding on an event contract where most of the market guessed “no,” and the payout is bigger. Prediction markets generally make money through fees on contracts.

For addicts, they are two paths to the same result.

The soccer coach who spoke to the AP started gambling when he was 16. Small bets against friends in his New York neighborhood, everything from cards to basketball and tennis. When he turned 18, he started going to casinos and making bets at sportsbooks. Amid mounting losses, he turned to prediction markets.

“I would be in all this debt and get a paycheck for $2,000 on a Friday and it would be gone by Saturday or Sunday,” said the coach, 21. “I wouldn’t have money to fill up my gas tank.”

He was struggling with loans and maxed-out credit cards while working and going to college before he stepped away in January to confront his addiction problems, which also included smoking marijuana.

He joined Gamblers Anonymous, and he was told he had to stop associating with people who gamble.

“For a younger crowd, that’s difficult because it’s everywhere,” the coach said. “My friends from childhood — most of them all gamble.”

The coach and the tax accountant had formally self-excluded from sportsbooks before they started trading on prediction markets. Self-exclusion programs provide an opportunity for gamblers to ban themselves from gambling facilities and betting apps. They are offered in many states as part of gambling regulations, but there is no widely adopted national system.

The landscape for self-exclusion programs becomes even more fragmented when predictions markets are included. Kalshi started a voluntary opt-out program when it launched a customer protection hub in March 2025, and it’s one of several platforms — including Polymarket — collaborating on a national self-exclusion program for prediction markets. But it’s not clear if that program would ever overlap with the systems used by state gambling regulators.

The accountant, 33, said his gambling problems started after New York launched legalized mobile sports betting in January 2022. He had “a boatload of debt” in August 2023 when he told his then-fiancée about what was going on with him.

She married him anyway. Looking to save money after the wedding, they moved into a rental house owned by his parents. He self-excluded from sportsbooks. Then, after the couple lost their first pregnancy, the accountant started day-trading before signing up for Kalshi.

“Prediction markets are the same thing packaged in a different way,” the accountant said. “It’s a dangerous loophole. … How can you do all that and say you’re not a sportsbook?”

Tennis was his go-to sport — he liked the speed of the matches — before he went to rehab in Virginia last year.

He had a relapse in December when he downloaded Polymarket and made a free $10 wager. He was confronted by his wife, who had his email connected to her phone and reached out to his sponsor.

While there has been no substantive research into the effect of prediction markets on sports gambling addiction, the experiences of the coach and the accountant are not uncommon for treatment experts.

“You’re seeing a lot of the same behaviors, whether it’s a prediction market or it’s gambling,” said Jody Bechtold, the CEO of The Better Institute, a Pennsylvania practice that works with people impacted by gambling disorders. “You’re seeing, you know, wagering more and more. Chasing losses, so ‘Oh, today was a bad day, I have to work tomorrow at the prediction markets to get my money back.’ … The lies, the secrecy, and that it’s impacting everyday life.”

Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana highlighted its programs for responsible trading — such as trading breaks and self-limits — and said it’s working on other measures to further facilitate healthy trading behavior.

Compared to casinos, Diana said, Kalshi is “fairer, more transparent, and less predatory.”

“There is no house that wins when customers lose,” she said. “This means that Kalshi doesn’t hook losers and penalize winners.”

A message was left seeking comment from Polymarket.

Event contracts are increasingly popular on prediction markets

Sports have become a major category for prediction markets. Kalshi had more than $2 billion in total trading volume on this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, according to Diana. Michigan’s 69-63 victory over Connecticut in the championship had $10.6 million in volume on Polymarket.

The U.S. market for sports-focused event contracts could grow to approximately $1.1 trillion in annual volume, according to a Bank of America report.

“A year ago, if you said prediction markets, I mean I don’t know what that is, I don’t see it,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. “Now we’re starting to see it more and more in our patients that come into the clinic. And it’s usually not one, it’s multiple platforms they’re betting on, right? … When you have something that’s available, that’s accessible, that’s anonymous, is super easy to use, multiple times in a day, of course that’s going to raise the risk of addiction for any human on Earth.”

There are multiple ongoing lawsuits involving states and prediction markets, and the ramifications of the legal dispute are being felt on a variety of levels.

Marlene Warner, the CEO of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health — a private nonprofit health organization that provides educational programs on gambling along with other services — said the situation with prediction markets “feels a bit like the wild, wild west right now.”

“We’re very used to like going to our state regulator or, you know, seeing a process go through where all of a sudden now you’re like, ‘OK, a piece of legislation has outlined what is appropriate for a licensed sports betting operator to do,’” Warner said. “And then you see the regulation come into place. And so you can track it. But right now, nobody knows kind of what the limits are.”

In most states with legal sports gambling, it is limited to ages 21 and older, while prediction markets are open for 18- to 20-year-olds with some exceptions. Prediction markets also have a presence in states where sports betting is illegal, including Texas and California.

“I don’t know enough frankly, we don’t know enough, nothing’s been studied about them, I can’t tell you whether they’re more less or exactly the same in terms of risk level,” Warner said. “But what I do know is they’re in a very gray, unregulated space and that alone makes it difficult.”

Prediction markets fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has a regulation that prohibits an event contract “that involves, relates to, or references terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any state or federal law.”

CFTC chairman Michael Selig is backing prediction markets in their legal proceedings against several states, asserting the commission’s “exclusive jurisdiction over these markets.”

While that argument continues, the soccer coach and tax accountant are rebuilding their lives — while doing their best to stay vigilant with their addictions.

“You have to face this stuff or it just keeps getting worse,” the coach said.

The state of California has officially assured the city of San Diego that the Midway Rising project can build an arena and other buildings higher than the 30-foot coastal height limit because it includes affordable housing.

After a Court of Appeal threw out the second ballot measure voters approved eliminating the 30-foot height limit for building along the coast for the Midway area, the developers of Midway Rising have insisted that the state’s density-bonus law would allow them to build higher, regardless. City leaders, though, has been conspicuously less confident. Now the state has told the city to roll with it.

In a letter to the city’s director of development services, Elyse Lowe, an official with the state Department of Housing and Community Development, answered a series of questions, including this one.

“The City’s question in this case is not whether it can grant an exception to the 30-foot height limit, but to what extent it may do so, particularly for the non-residential portions of the Project, including the sports arena,” reads the letter.

The answer is yes. If waiving the coastal building height limit helps the project make money that will be used to provide affordable housing, it can be built taller.

A main question though was whether separate buildings, in particular the new arena, were actually part of the project that needed to be taller. The state again said yes.

The letter, written by Melinda Coy, the chief of housing accountability for the state agency, concludes that the project as a whole could not go forward if the height limit was enforced. Thus the whole project must be allowed to go higher to ensure we get the housing.

“In sum, based on HCD’s understanding of the information presented by the City and Applicant, the Midway Rising Project qualifies as a ‘housing development’ for purposes of the SDBL, which makes the Project eligible for concessions and waivers as described above.”

Why this matters: Someone could still sue but this is the clearest validation yet of the developer’s theory that they never needed the lifting of the height limit at all to proceed with the project.

Related: You might have seen a story this week in the Union-Tribune about a dramatic change to the bill that state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson had put forward to exempt the Midway Rising project from CEQA. It had been re-written. The U-T wrote: “If signed into law, the bill would override the court-imposed height limit in San Diego’s Midway District, making the project’s 165-foot-tall sports arena and 105-foot-tall residential buildings legally permissible.”

But it’s hard to see how the bill does that. It’s written for the future and doesn’t change the voter imposed height limit or the court ruling that it is still in place. It says that if your building a project and studying it’s environmental impacts “… the environmental impacts of a project that are associated with increased building height alone, including, but not limited to, air circulation, noise and light refraction or reflection, the potential to attract wildlife, or geotechnical or hydrological effects, shall not be considered significant impacts on the environment…”

In other words, if someone sues to stop a project like Midway Rising, for not adequately studying and mitigating its environmental impacts, they would not be able to cite the impacts of higher buildings. The court cited those things when it through out the voter-approved removal of the height limit.

We don’t know why the city and the senator are pursuing this. We fully expect the developers and the city to still pursue a state law that would essentially validate their environmental impact report and plans and prohibit people from suing to stop it based on the California Environmental Quality Act.

County Sales-Tax Coalition Submitting Signatures Monday 

Dispatch from Lisa Halverstadt: A coalition of labor unions and advocacy groups plan to submit signatures Monday in hopes of getting a countywide sales-tax hike on the November 2026 ballot. 

Dave Lagstein of Service Employees International Union Local 221, a leading force behind the initiative, said Friday that the coalition would turn in more than 167,000 signatures. 

The San Diego Health & Safety Act will need at least 102,923 valid signatures to make the ballot – and the coalition has sought more in hopes of automatically qualifying with a random sampling by the county registrar’s office. 

The proposed half-cent sales tax measure – which would raise a projected $360 million annually – aims to fund healthcare, child care, solutions to the Tijuana River sewage crisis and public safety.  

If approved, up to 60 percent of the tax hike – the equivalent of $261 million annually – could back child care and health services for children, health care for uninsured or underinsured people, food aid including staffing for CalFresh eligibility workers in the county, in-home health services and affordable health care.  

Nearly 23 percent – or roughly $81 million annually – would go toward combating the Tijuana sewage crisis. Proponents have made this line item a central argument for the measure but have yet to share specific plans for this funding. In the initiative filed late last year, they simply wrote that , at least 20 percent of this share of funds directed toward infrastructure projects to “stop sewage flows from Tijuana into the United States or through the Tijuana River Valley.”  The measure says the funding could also address related health issues and protect local waters from pollution.  

Nearly 18 percent – or almost $63 million annually – could back public safety services, wildfire prevention and crisis response.   

City with Less Water Power in the Future?

Dispatch from MacKenzie Elmer: Over bowls of soup at a meeting of the Albondigas South County club, I asked a panel of San Diego County Water Authority board members whether the city should retain the same amount of voting power once its huge wastewater to drinking water project comes online. The project would mean the city would be buying significantly less water from the Water Authority.

Otay Water District’s board president, Frank Rivera, was the only one to say, “no.”

The lunch room erupted in laughter and applause. Someone shouted, “hey Frankie, alright!” from the back. The panel, which also included Nick Serrano, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s deputy chief of staff and the chairman of the Water Authority board, and Frank Hilliker, from Lakeside Water District and Serrano’s vice chair.

Up until that point, none of the panelists disagreed on much while discussing rising water rates and the Water Authority’s recent sales of its surplus to other parts of California. The crowd goaded them to argue about something.

Rivera’s resolute defection from supporting the city of San Diego represents growing cracks in the city’s ability to maintain power over the Water Authority as it rolls off its reliance on them. Smaller water districts have been complaining about San Diego’s advantage for years, and even tried to ask the state Legislature to get involved.

Right now San Diego gets 10 directors on the Water Authority’s board, far more than any of the other water districts. They represent 40 percent of the total vote on the board, which means San Diego can swing most decisions their way with the help of just one other water district.

The amount of water a district purchases from the Water Authority determines their voting power. But once San Diego’s Pure Water project starts churning out recycled water in early 2027, the city will have to buy a lot less from the Water Authority.

And maybe, they’ll have to relinquish some of their power, too. 

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.

The post Politics Report: State Validates Midway Rising Theory appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

SAN DIEGO – A county grand jury has indicted an Old Town man for murder in the death of another man at a Hillcrest service station after two separate judges dismissed the case against him.

A grand jury is not often used as a vehicle for refiling charges, but prosecutors questioned witnesses in the closed forum, and they issued the indictment.

Deputy District Attorney Melanie Guillen confirmed on Wednesday that Solomon A. Guerrero once again faces a murder charge in the 2025 beating and strangulation of Jerry Puerile, 61, of Clairemont.

Guerrero, 57, is accused in the March 1, 2025 death of Puerile, who had been strangled and hit his head on the ground at the Shell service station at 330 Washington St. in Hillcrest.

The incident occurred at 4:54 p.m. Police officers found Puerile unconscious and he was rushed to a hospital, where he died. Guerrero was later arrested on West Washington Street.

Guerrero had a preliminary hearing before Judge Laura Parsky on Oct. 23, 2025, and Parsky declined to order him to stand trial for murder. She did order Guerrero to trial on other charges of making a terroristic threat to a 35-year-old man and failure to register as a sex offender.

The prosecutor then refiled the murder charge against Guerrero, but another judge dismissed it.

Guerrero was never released from jail, where he was being held without bail on the other charges, and he was sentenced on Tuesday to a year in jail after pleading guilty. The criminal threat charge was reduced to a misdemeanor over the prosecutor’s objection.

The court did hear questions about the victim’s health. A medical witness at the hearing before Parsky said Puerile suffered from an 85% blockage of some arteries to his heart, which was enlarged, and also had a high level of methamphetamine in his system.

Donkeys, alpacas, geese, chickens, roosters, turkeys and goats are among an unknown number of farm animals the San Diego Humane Society stepped in to care for Friday.

Regional animal welfare partners joined the Humane Society in what was described as a “mass rescue” that included 100 cats, 30 dogs and at least 150 horses at a sanctuary in Julian.

The animals are receiving emergency care from the welfare groups after the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office and Humane Law Enforcement served a search warrant at the property on Friday.

The rural area is outside the Humane Society’s jurisdiction, but the large scale of the rescue operation spurred San Diego County Animal Services to transfer the case to the Humane Society on April 24. 

Humane Law Enforcement Chief Jace Huggins said, “we’re just really focusing on assessing these animals, getting any sick animals out of here that need to get out of here, and then figuring out how to make sure that all of these animals get the care that they need from this moment forward.”

Even for the Humane Society, the rescue is a “massive undertaking,” especially while its shelters are far over capacity. 

“Now, more than ever, we need the community’s support through adopting, fostering, volunteering or donating,” SDHS spokesperson Nina Thompson said in a statement. 

Regional animal welfare groups throughout the state are stepping up to assist too, including Pasadena Humane Society, LA County Animal Care & Control and Marin Humane. 

The Humane Society did not release information about property’s owners or residents, but it was later identified as Villa Chardonnay in the 4500 block of Boulder Creek Road.

Other criminal animal abuse situations have strained the Humane Society recently, including a hoarder at a La Mesa apartment. 

The situation also comes after the city of San Diego slashed funding for SDHS in 2025, including its Humane Law Enforcement branch which previously policed city parks and joint-use fields. 

City News Service contributed to this report.

Updated at 6:45 p.m. May 1, 2026

Homelessness has declined only slightly in San Diego County, according to the results of an annual count released Friday, and shifts within the numbers offer reasons for both hope and despair.

The 2026 Point-in-Time Count, or PIT Count, is an annual census that tracks homelessness across America. Locally, approximately 1,700 volunteers assembled at over 50 sites throughout San Diego County in late January to touch base with people where they could be found – sleeping on the streets, in shelters, cars and more. 

Overall, they found that homelessness stayed almost level in 2026, with the total only falling by 1% after a 7% drop in 2025.

Yet positive developments can be found within the data. Unsheltered homelessness dropped, as shown by the 12% increase in people finding shelter. In the city’s central areas, there has been a 7% drop in people living unsheltered.

Tamara Kohler is CEO of the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, the organization that oversees the census. As a longtime resident of downtown, she finds this year’s results encouraging.

“It’s great to see fewer people on the streets — that’s where we see the greatest vulnerability,” Kohler said. “Shelter utilization increased from the mid-80s to about 92%, which is a positive. Our providers have been really intentional about filling every space. That’s made a difference.”

As far as the unsheltered population, 30% live in outdoor encampments, but there have been reductions in high-risk areas, such as highways. For Kohler, this indicates that targeted efforts are working.

“Where we’ve invested resources – whether state, federal or local – we’ve seen meaningful reductions,” she said.

Ahead of the 2026 census, organizers were optimistic about interventions through the VA Medical Center to help homeless veterans. There has been a 12% reduction in unsheltered veterans, and a 23% increase in those who are sheltered. 

San Diego is close to a “functional zero” for veterans, where the number newly experiencing homelessness matches the number gaining housing. They are connected not just to housing, but healthcare and other support services.

“Veterans have one of the most intentional and well-resourced systems to end homelessness. It’s the most successful model with the greatest outcomes in the nation,” Kohler said. “If we had this kind of system for every population, we would significantly reduce homelessness overall.”

On the downside, though, are outcomes for seniors. More are becoming homeless, with over half experiencing the situation for the first time.

Deacon Jim Vargas, CEO of Father Joe’s Villages, expressed his disappointment that overall progress on homelessness has stalled and pointed to the risks for seniors.

“This year, even more seniors fell into homelessness for the first time, continuing a troubling trend,” Vargas said Friday in a press release. “This is a challenge for which our community is not prepared. Today, one in three people living unsheltered are over the age of 55. As our population ages, we must act swiftly to prevent seniors from losing their homes and to provide targeted services that meet their unique needs.”

A third of San Diego’s unsheltered population is above age 55. California has an aging population, with many living on fixed incomes that cannot keep pace with the rising cost of living.

“They’re facing not just housing challenges, but food, utilities, and medical costs,” Kohler said. “We have to be really intentional about prevention. Seniors make up a large portion of the population, so focusing there can increase the numbers in a meaningful way.”

The challenge for next year is funding – organizers are losing both federal and state funding, while local governments consider budget cuts. Without at least the same level of funding, Kohler foresees a struggle to make progress and restore 2025’s momentum.

The city of San Diego released a statement highlighting the city’s use of local, state and federal funding to achieve a 6.6% decline in unsheltered homelessness. Officials estimate that $30 million will go towards the issue over the next year.

“The data make clear our strategy to reduce homelessness is delivering results,” Mayor Todd Gloria said. “We’ve expanded shelter, increased access to services, and built more housing – and more people are moving off the streets and into safer, more stable situations…we’ll stay focused on what works – getting people off the streets and on a path to housing.”

The suburbs, though, saw sharp declines in the number of unsheltered homeless people: 11.7% in Escondido, 29.7% in Encinitas, 25% in La Mesa, 25.4% in Chula Vista and all the way up to 39.5% in El Cajon – where the total fell from 344 to 208.

That follows the 2025 results, which El Cajon mayor Bill Wells protested, arguing that a 21.6% increase in unsheltered individuals was inaccurate because it included people living outside of the city limits. The map was updated to include nearby unincorporated communities, and officials adjusted the 2025 results. El Cajon’s total still rose, but only by 13.07%.

San Diego Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, who joined volunteers in the early morning on Jan. 29, expressed mixed feelings Friday about this year’s results. While a slight county-wide reduction is positive, he said, he feels like “we need to do better.”

“I have significant concerns about the continuing increase in the number of seniors experiencing homelessness. That is a flashing red light on a number of fronts, from how well we are taking care of the people who are most vulnerable to becoming homeless, and the people who are most vulnerable when they become homeless,” said Elo-Rivera. “It just does not speak well of how we take care of people as a society.”

The mayor’s proposed budget maintains funding for the Housing Instability Prevention Program, which targets support for seniors, families with children and people with disabilities.

“On an issue like this, each person who is counted in that count is someone who is not having a basic need in their life met, and that’s having safe, decent housing … I think we should invest even more in prevention and diversion.”

An El Cajon man who forced a 15-year-old girl engage in commercial sex acts for his benefit was sentenced Friday to just over 10 years in federal prison.

Samuel Melvin Cooper, 21, trafficked the girl in San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which said Cooper “intended to leave the 15-year-old victim stranded in Arizona if she did not make enough money through commercial sex work.”

According to investigators with the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force, Cooper was also trafficking another 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old woman.

Cooper, who pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking through force, fraud or coercion admitted in his plea agreement that videos found on his cell phone showed him engaging in sex acts with one of the 15-year-old victims and that he was aware she was underage because her date of birth was the unlock code on his phone.

Cooper was sentenced to 121 months in prison.

“We won’t allow children to be bought and sold,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon after the sentencing. “This sentence reflects the profound harm caused when predators exploit minors for profit.”

In the government’s sentencing memo, prosecutors noted that when task force officers tried to interview the first 15-year-old victim after the defendant’s arrest, she was crying hysterically, denied any involvement in prostitution and refused to cooperate with the investigation.

The victim’s mother has written a victim-impact statement to the court about how the girl is still a runaway and lost to her and her family. 

“That letter speaks more powerfully to the lasting trauma of living on the streets and being conditioned at such a young age that your worth is tied to commercial sex than any attorney can capture in words,” the government’s memo said.

City News Service contributed to this article.

A former UC San Diego graduate student who was arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment has filed a lawsuit in which she alleges she was unlawfully arrested, then put through an “adversarial” disciplinary process by the school.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of Emily Lucas, states she attended the May 2024 on-campus demonstration as a medic, rather than a protester, but was arrested with dozens of other people when police cleared the encampment five days after it began.

The lawsuit, against against San Diego County and the Regents of the University of California, alleges that officers did not assess whether she had committed any crime and “arrested her based solely on her presence in the encampment area.”

Once in jail, she was allegedly prevented from accessing her prescribed daily medication, despite appearing “clearly ill” and making repeated requests from jail staff to provide her with it.

Allegedly unsafe conditions after UCSD arrest

The lawsuit alleges she contracted Hepatitis A as a result of the “overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe” conditions within the jail “that increased the risk of transmission of communicable disease.”

Genevieve Jones-Wright, one of the attorneys representing Lucas, said San Diego County has routinely engaged in practices “that violate pre-trial detainees’ rights like our client, Ms. Lucas, subjecting them to crowded quarters in small, confined spaces where there are not hygienic practices or protocols.”

A spokesperson for San Diego County said they could not comment on pending litigation.

Lucas was released after 13 hours in custody and no criminal charges were filed against her.

She was however charged by UCSD for violations of its standards of conduct.

Her attorneys described the disciplinary proceedings that followed as a “quasi-criminal `trial”‘ in which she was not allowed to have her attorney participate, call witnesses or submit evidence on her behalf.

The lawsuit alleges the people in charge of the hearing were UCSD administrative staff and students who “lacked the training and authority typically associated with fair decision making in proceedings carrying significant consequences.”

She was found guilty of failure to comply and participation in an unlawful assembly and as a result placed on probation for a year and required to take a course on “practical decision making.” Additionally, attorneys say her diploma was withheld for nearly a year, which the attorneys allege cost her a potential professional opportunity because she could not provide proof of her degree.

UCSD responds

Kylee Belanger, another of Lucas’ attorneys, said in a statement, “When individuals are punished, endangered, or silenced through unlawful arrest and broken disciplinary systems, it raises serious constitutional concerns that demand judicial intervention.”

A UCSD spokesperson said in a statement, “While UC San Diego is unable to comment on pending litigation, dialogue, free speech and academic freedom are cornerstones of our university. We fully support the right to peacefully protest and express views on campus. Per the University of California guidelines on determining disciplinary action, all members of the UC community remain subject to all applicable laws and relevant codes of conduct.”

San Diego’s recently implemented trash fee has politicos and residents down in the dumps. But a new effort to repeal it could lay waste to the city’s already busted budget.

The chief complaint of the anti-fee crowd is the claim that the fee was a bait and switch. When voters approved the concept of a fee in 2022, city officials gave them an estimate of how much it would cost a month. What they ended up charging, though, was nearly twice as much as the original estimate. 

Some groups have seized on that opening, launching campaigns to repeal the tax altogether. There’s just one problem – the fee is bringing in a lot of dough. If the repeal-heads get their way, the trash fee’s nixing would blow an entirely new hole in the city’s budget, even as leaders try to dig out of an already massive deficit. 

Just how big a hole would it leave? Currently, the trash fee accounts for about 5 percent of city revenue. To put that into perspective, that’s equal to the entire city budget for libraries. 

Charles Modica, San Diego’s independent budget analyst, was blunt about the potential impact of the fee’s repeal: “The city would need to really have a real conversation about just picking a service that it is currently providing and not providing that service anymore.”

Read the full story here. 

Related: When city officials originally pitched the fee, they estimated it would cost voters between $23-$29 a month. But they didn’t chain themselves to that number. 

One reader pointed out some fine print on the item’s fiscal impact statement:“Given that a Cost of Service Study could take several years to complete, and the costs to provide this service may increase over the next several years, the actual fee levied could be higher.”

South County Report: About that State of the City

How much can $28,000 get you nowadays? Apparently, a fully-catered extravaganza featuring an opera singer, a Mission Impossible-themed intro video and a skydiver. 

Just ask Chula Vista Mayor John McCann, who on Tuesday rang in the State of the City with all of the above. And McCann, who’s running for re-election, has some things to celebrate. After all, it’s not just his State of the City that puts San Diego’s to shame. Unlike their neighbor to the north, Chula Vista’s finances are in good shape. It’s yet to be seen if that will be enough for voters in November.

Plus: County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre has built her political career on bringing attention to the Tijuana River sewage crisis. And boy, has she been bringing attention to it this election season.

On Wednesday, former United States Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra became the sixth wannabe-governor to visit the area to get a gander at the health hazard. 

Read the full story here.

Candidates Clash

It’s clashing season in local politics, as candidate debates begin to heat up in earnest. That means local newspapers will begin to fill with one of our favorite words: clash.

On Monday night, six candidates vying to replace District 2 City Councilmember Jennifer Campbell clashed over Mayor Todd Gloria’s Midway Rising plan and long-term plans for Liberty Station. 

Last week, four candidates running to represent City Council District 8, which represents San Diego’s southernmost neighborhoods, clashed over the Tijuana River sewage crisis and the need to revamp the San Ysidro border crossing. In District 4, Councilmember Henry Foster clashed with two challengers over the city’s lightning rod trash fee and homelessness. 

If you have deja vu, it’s likely because local candidates for decades have clashed over issues important to constituents. They’ve clashed over labor unions, they’ve clashed over jobs, they’ve clashed over vacation rentals and they’ve clashed over cops. They’ve clashed over graffiti and even clashed over trees and you better believe they’ve clashed over fees.

Heck, if the clash is quite fierce and the clashers like the bright lights, they may not only clash once, they may just clash twice. 

In Other News 

• Correction: Wednesday’s Learning Curve incorrectly identified Akila Weber Pierson as a California Assemblymember. She is a state Senator. D’oh.
• In 2022, Measure H passed with more than 68 percent support by San Diego voters. Four years later, the measure, which would have helped address a shortage of available child care, has hardly seen momentum. (Union-Tribune)
• April weather conditions across San Diego County have been warm and dry, making regions more prone to wildfires as summer draws near. Even with a wetter winter, firefighters hoped the region would receive more heavy rainfall. (Union-Tribune) 
• On May 17 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Coast Highway 101 will be car-free and open for cyclists, pedestrians and more as Cyclovia Encinitas partners with the city of Encinitas’ Environmental Commission and Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission for a free event to explore Encinitas in a new way. (The Coast News Group)
• Senate Bill 958, is a bill currently being ushered through the state Legislature that focuses on making the proposed height for the Midway Rising mega project permissible. Plans for the project aim for a 165-foot-tall sports arena and 105-foot-tall residential buildings. (Union-Tribune) 

The Morning Report was written by Jakob McWhinney and Rami Alarian. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.

The post Morning Report: Trashing the Trash Fee appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Sergeant Jeremy Huff left the presidency as he entered it: quietly. 

The rank and file of San Diego Police Department elected Huff as the president of their union less than a year ago. But already, Huff has resigned. 

That’s because Police Chief Scott Wahl — who had a public feud with Huff — is trying to fire him, multiple sources in the department confirmed. 

Huff’s file with the department isn’t exactly clean. 

In 2021, he received a written warning for using unjustified force when he excessively punched a homeless person a year earlier, according to an internal affairs report. He also received the warning for not turning on his body worn camera.

More recently, Huff was also charged with falsifying his vehicle registration and lying to the Department of Motor Vehicles. It’s unclear exactly what led to the charges, but eventually the more serious of them were dismissed. Huff was convicted of a simple infraction for not having a registration and paid a $25 fine.

But Huff’s potential firing is also noteworthy for his public beef with Wahl.

The feud started after a video emerged in January showing an officer beating a man with his hands behind his head, who appeared to be offering no resistance.

The video quickly sparked outrage. 

During a radio interview, a host asked Wahl about the video. 

“In this particular case, I think there are things we could have done better,” he said. “We do have options that we could, and should be using at that point other than what was used.”

Huff responded to Wahl’s comments with outrage.

“Police use of force is always a reaction to someone’s actions. When someone complies with lawful orders, they get arrested or detained without incident,” Huff wrote. “[Wahl’s] statements have the potential to cause our members to second guess themselves during critical incidents where they only have a split second to make a choice. This doubt leads to bad decisions which can leave our members injured or dead.”

The statement war, as my colleague called it, didn’t stop there. Wahl shot back.

“Responding to a use of force incident by reaffirming my commitment to give officers the training, resources, and support they need to consistently meet the highest standard is not placing blame. It is part of being a leader,” he said.

Wahl added: “It is disappointing that the new [union] president chose to spend his first few days in office misconstruing my intent instead of working with me to better support our officers.”

Around two months after that statement, Huff received his termination papers. But the firing isn’t final. As with most public employees in California, Huff is entitled to multiple stages of due process.

I asked department officials whether Huff’s firing had anything to do with he and the chief’s public fight.

“The San Diego Police Department cannot comment on personnel matters. All Police Department employees are afforded due process regarding personnel issues,” wrote spokesperson Ashley Nicholes.

Huff also declined to comment.

During the incident that led to Huff’s written warning, he and another officer approached a man sleeping on a pedestrian bridge in Mira Mesa. This was in late February 2020, just weeks before the pandemic began.

Huff discovered the man had a warrant out for his arrest.

The man tightened his arms and tried to turn away when the two officers tried to arrest him. Huff believed the man hit him and Huff punched the man three or four times, according to an internal affairs report.

Huff wrestled the man to the ground and the man “refused to present his arms,” according to the report. Huff hit him in the face again.

That punch, not the earlier ones, counted as unjustified force, the report found.

Huff was also reprimanded because he did not turn on his body camera before or during the incident.

More recent court documents do not say exactly why Huff was charged with falsifying his vehicle registration.

A common version of that crime is for residents in California to register their cars in much cheaper states like Montana.

Eventually, city prosecutors dropped the charges against Huff — and he caught an infraction for not having a registration.

On its face, that would be a surprising reason to fire a cop.

In 2019, a statewide reporting project found that more than 80 cops were still working in California, despite having been convicted of many crimes ranging from animal cruelty to manslaughter and domestic violence.

One San Diego officer was charged with knocking his wife unconscious and kept his job, Voice of San Diego reported.

Since 2019, however, California’s laws have changed. A new law in 2021 established a process (one did not exist before) for revoking an officer’s certification.

Some of the reasons an officer’s certification can be revoked seem obvious, like abuse of power, physical abuse or sexual assault.

Another category of serious misconduct established by the law is dishonesty.

“Dishonesty relating to the reporting, investigation, or prosecution of a crime” all count, according to the commission on police training. “Intentionally filing false reports” is also mentioned.

During his time in the department, Huff was also involved in a shooting that prosecutors deemed justified.

Just days after the incident in which Huff beat the homeless man in Mira Mesa, he and another officer shot a different homeless man.

They were involved in an operation to clear an encampment in a park in the Otay Valley riverbed.

Huff ordered a man to exit his tent. When he made contact with the man he saw that he had a gun in his pocket. Huff ordered him to get down on the ground. Instead the man stuck his hand in his pocket.

Huff appeared to have fired one shot and the other officer 11, according to prosecutors.

The man sustained just three gunshot wounds, two to his arm and one to his leg, and lived.

Because the man reached for his gun, rather than getting on the ground, prosecutors deemed the shooting justified.

Officers recovered the man’s gun after the shooting. It was not an actual firearm; it was a BB gun.

Lieutenant Jared Wilson, the previous president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, was re-appointed to the post after Huff’s resignation.

The post Police Chief Tries to Fire Union Boss He Beefed With appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Street homelessness fell 11 percent year-over-year across the county, according to the region’s latest annual census. 

The Regional Task Force on Homelessness, which oversees the annual point-in-time count held each January, also tallied a 12 percent increase in people staying in shelters.

This translated into an overall 1 percent decrease in homeless San Diegans counted during this year’s January census. 

The Task Force also reported a 6.6 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city of San Diego. The group also cheered overall decreases in cities including Lemon Grove, Santee, La Mesa and the Encinitas area – and regionwide drops in unsheltered veterans, youth between 18 and 24 and people living in vehicles. 

In a statement, Task Force CEO Tamera Kohler attributed the reduction in unsheltered homelessness to efforts including state-backed Encampment Resolution Grant projects in communities including Lemon Grove, increased shelter options and a regional focus on diversion strategies to help people avoid or limit their reliance on the homeless service system. 

“This is what progress looks like,” Kohler. “We’re seeing good results where we’ve made investments.” 

But Kohler and the Task Force also pointed to challenges. 

Homelessness among seniors continued to spike this year. The Task Force reported that people over 55 made up a third of the unsheltered population. Among them during this January’s census was an 86-year-old Latina woman in Chula Vista. 

Kohler also noted the loss of crucial housing vouchers that have bolstered the region’s housing efforts and the uncertainty surrounding federal funding that has haunted homeless service providers for months.  

The Task Force separately reports many more San Diegans accessed homeless services during the past federal fiscal year. The nearly 23,000 people who received services was more than double the 9,803 counted during this January’s homeless census and remains close to last year’s tally of people accessing aid. 

The gulf between those two numbers drives home the reality that the point-in-time count represents a minimum snapshot of the region’s homeless population.  

During the same period, Task Force data also showed the number of newly homeless San Diegans eclipsed the number of newly housed ones by 212 people – a narrowing of the region’s years-long homelessness math problem.  

That gap continued in January, the month that volunteers fanned out throughout the county to tally people living in vehicles, canyons and on sidewalks. In January, 88 more people fell into homelessness for the first time than found homes.  

The post Annual Census: Street Homelessness Down 11% Countywide appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

San Diego’s budget could be in a lot of trouble if voters repeal the city’s trash fee.

City leaders say if that happens, their only option would be to cut up to $150 million from city services like stormwater, fire and police departments. Our hosts explain what’s at stake.

Also on the show: The county governance reforms are marching forward. But one state Senator says her fellow Democrats need to change the plan before it goes on the ballot.

Finally: Former Voice of San Diego reporter Ashly McGlone stopped by to talk about her new project Reconnaissance Man.

Before the Vietnam War America knows, James Lyle Steele, an original Marine reconnaissance man, was in it. Operating at the leading edge of a brutal, evolving conflict — poisoned bamboo, booby traps, tunnels, ambushes, and helicopter assaults— he faced a war that demanded constant vigilance. This episode offers Steele’s firsthand account of the war before most Americans realized it had begun, detailing the constant, deadly reality of his experience.

Listen Here Now

Listen: Apple | Spotify | PodLink

The post VOSD Podcast: The Meteor Heading for the City’s Budget appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

California’s Supreme Court last week determined the California Coastal Commission overstepped its authority in blocking a San Luis Obispo County housing construction permit, the latest blow to the agency following years of criticism for its role in blocking housing along nearly 900 miles of the Pacific Coast.

The 7-0 decision reversed the commission’s vote to block a developer from building four homes in Los Osos over habitat and water safety concerns. It changes little about the commission’s authority and governance, but comes after a series of pro-development appointees at the behest of Gov. Gavin Newsom and criticism that it has overstepped its 1976 charter to protect the coast from environmental degradation.

The judges said the commission didn’t have the authority to override the county’s coastal zoning laws.

The decision won’t have “significant implications for the commission’s program or authority,” spokesperson Joshua Smith said in a statement. 

Attorneys representing homebuilder Tim Shea said the ruling signals a broader willingness from the judicial branch to check the commission’s powers.

“For decades, both in the Legislature and in the courts, the commission was largely untouchable,” said Jeremy Talcott, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Shea. “And, as we’ve seen now in both places, that’s no longer the case.”

Back in 2020, the commission appealed a permit the county had granted for Shear Development Co. to build four Los Osos homes because of water quality issues and concerns the construction would damage the local habitat in the sparsely populated, unincorporated town. 

Counties create their own coastal development with approval from the commission. San Luis Obispo and San Diego — which has the state’s largest coastal zone — both have commission-approved coastal plans. Typically the commission doesn’t interfere once those plans are in place. However, the commission can override local permits in special cases where it thinks the county is violating the state Coastal Act. 

The state Supreme Court said the commission exceeded its authority by blocking Shea’s project. A 2024 bill, Senate Bill 951, by San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener supports the court’s interpretation.

“Neither the County nor the Commission, as local and state entities respectively, should have greater deference accorded to their interpretations of the Coastal Act,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote. All but one of the court’s justices were appointed by Democratic governors.

Housing advocates lauded the ruling as another blow to the commission’s authority.

Colin Parent, chief executive officer of Circulate San Diego, said the particulars of the ruling were less important than the court’s decision to take the case at all.

“This is just another example of a very important branch of California government weighing in favor of seeing some changes,” Parent said, following Newsom’s recent appointments and legislation seeking to curb its authority.

In October, Newsom appointed Jaime Lee, a wealthy Los Angeles real estate developer, to the commission and in May, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas appointed Chula Vista Councilmember Jose Preciado. Preciado has been a vocal critic of the commission blocking  housing and supports more development.

State lawmakers continue to seek to chip away at the commission’s authority. Chula Vista Assemblymember David Alvarez authored a law last year, Assembly Bill 357, that loosens building restrictions for coastal student housing.

What I’m Reading Now

A bill to make it easier for San Diego to build a new stadium was amended to circumvent a court order that had blocked the stadium’s proposed height, The San Diego Union-Tribune writes.

Republican officials in El Cajon are suing over state laws limiting local authorities’ cooperation with federal immigration agents, from CBS 8.

The Los Angeles Times speaks to the underdog candidates in the race to lead the nation’s second-biggest city.

Thanks for reading the Sacramento Report, as always. Please reach me with any questions or comments: nadia@voiceofsandiego.org.

The post Sacramento Report: California Coastal Commission ‘Untouchable’ No More appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

It’s still early for both San Diego Wave FC and San Diego FC, but there is no denying that they have had diametrically opposed starts to their seasons.

Despite Wednesday night’s 2-0 loss to the Portland Thorns – the setback ended a five-game win streak – the Wave is currently second in the NWSL standings after seven games. SDFC, however, is in a five-game skid and sits in 11th place in the 15-team MLS Western Conference.

This weekend they both play at home, with SDFC (3-5-2) hosting rivals LAFC on Saturday, and the Wave (5-2-0) welcoming Bay FC on Sunday.

Fans want Lozano

For San Diego FC, somehow Hirving “Chucky” Lozano still remains in limbo. Though the club made it clear that he’s not a part of its future, the Mexican star is still a part of SDFC.

Not surprisingly, fans are frustrated with the situation. The clearest evidence of that came in the team’s April 25 loss to the Portland Timbers at Snapdragon Stadium, where many fans lingered after the final whistle, voicing their frustration by repeatedly chanting Lozano’s name.

Yet head coach Mikey Varas, who clashed with Lozano last season, leading to the impasse, stood firm after the 2-1 loss.

“Everyone has a right to cheer however they want and support however they want,” he said. “That’s up to every individual as long as it’s not discriminatory or against our values. So, I’m a big boy.”

Macario debut

The only possible distraction, and it’s a positive one at that, for the Wave is deciding when the best time will be for forward Catarina Macario to make her first appearance on the pitch.

Macario’s signing was announced on March 27, but she continues to deal with a lingering heel injury that has delayed her debut.

“San Diego is obviously where I grew up and it’s where all my journey began,” said Macario during the welcome press conference. “To have this opportunity to come back and represent this great club means a lot to me.”

The Wave is already stacked on both ends of the pitch with the likes of Lia Godfrey, Melanie Barcenas and Dudinha – along with the talented Kristen McNabb, who recently set the team record for most appearances – commanding the backline.

This weekend will be a crucial match for both clubs because the Wave wants to avoid a repeat of last season, when the squad also started off red-hot, losing just two of its first 10 games, only to finish in sixth place and fall in the first round of the NWSL playoffs.

On the other hand, SDFC needs to get off the schneid as it takes on LAFC. This will be no easy task, with LAFC in third place in the Western Conference. However, the club has the disadvantage of having just played on Wednesday in the Concacaf Champions Cup semifinal, though LAFC beat Toluca 2-1.

Even a draw could be seen as a step in the right direction for SDFC, not just to break the winless streak – they have not recorded a win since Toluca shut them out in March – but to at least momentarily silence fans still steamed over Lozano’s status.

Rep. Sara Jacobs challenged a visibly angry Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during military budget hearings Wednesday about whether President Trump is fit to command amid the conflict with Iran.

Noting that San Diego is the largest military community in the country, with thousands of local Navy and Marine personnel deployed the Mideast, Jacobs asked about Trump’s “unhinged” social posts, including the image he shared of himself as Jesus.

“My offices’ phones have been ringing off the hook,” said Jacobs, a Democrat who represents the 51st District. “I’ve heard from so many military families concerned about the president’s mental fitness and whether he’s fit to serve as our commander-in-chief given that he’s sending their loved ones into harm’s way.”

I asked Secretary Hegseth a straightforward, yes or no question today: Is Donald Trump mentally stable enough to be Commander in Chief?

He didn't say yes. And that speaks volumes. pic.twitter.com/ncWhEBAX9r

— Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (@RepSaraJacobs) April 29, 2026

“It pains me to even have to ask this about our president,” said Jacobs. “Do you believe that the president is mentally stable enough to be commander-in-chief?”

An angry Hegseth quickly responded, “Did you ask the same question to Joe Biden for four years?”

“I won’t even engage in the level of disparagement that you’re putting on the commander-in- chief,” he said, adding later that Trump is an “incredible commander-in-chief who puts our troops first.”

In hearings on Wednesday and Thursday, members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees delved into the Trump administration’s 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion.

While Republicans focused on the details of military budgeting and voiced support for the Iran operation, Democrats grilled Hegseth about the ballooning costs of the war, the huge drawdown of critical U.S. munitions and the bombing of a school that killed children.

Jacobs ended her questioning by asking if the United States was winning in the conflict.

“13 American troops have died. More that 380 have been wounded. The Stait of Hormuz, which was wide open, is now closed,” she said. “The Iranian regime is still in power. It still has nuclear material.”

“Mr. Secretary, if you think this is what winning looks like, then maybe we should be questioning your mental stability,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

A man convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend in San Marcos was sentenced Thursday to 26 years to life in state prison.

Ziyah Jay Patterson, 31, was found guilty by a Vista jury of first-degree murder and an allegation of using a knife in the Dec. 26, 2023, stabbing of Angela Marie Lanway, 42.

Prosecutors said Patterson and Lanway, who were homeless and living behind a local business at the time, got into an argument after Lanway asked Patterson to turn down his music.

Patterson then asked the victim to give back a gift he had given her – identified in a prosecution’s sentencing brief as a blanket – and she threw it at him.

The defendant then beat her and stabbed her multiple times in the head, leaving her with stab wounds to her ear and neck, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.

He later called 911 and said, “She threw something at me. I was scared. I stabbed her in the side of the head,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing documents.

Lanway was sent to a hospital, where she died.

At trial, Patterson testified that he acted in self-defense, through prosecutors argued he had no injuries and that Lanway had medical issues that prevented her from walking easily or seeing out of one of her eyes.

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said in a statement released after Patterson’s sentencing hearing, “Too often circumstances surrounding domestic violence are made even more dangerous when people are living in vulnerable conditions like being homeless, but our prosecutor and law enforcement believed the victim’s life mattered and deserved justice.”

Don’t let the May Gray get you down. Here are seven great ways to enjoy Point Loma and Ocean Beach this month.

This piece is also featured in the triumphant return of the San Diego Reader as a print publication. Find it as a special arts and entertainment insert inside the latest issue of the Peninsula Beacon.

Opening reception for Nature’s Echo watercolor exhibition

The painter Andrew Wyeth — perhaps you recall the way the Tom Cruise sci-fi film Oblivion used his painting “Christina’s World” to evoke what was lost when civilization fell to an alien invasion — once noted that “watercolor is the most spontaneous of all mediums. You’ve got to take chances with it. There’s no way to come back into it and correct it. It’s pure — what you see is what you get.” (See his motion-in-stillness “Wind from the Sea” to get a sense of what he was getting at, and to see just what’s possible with drybrush in the hands of a master. Then ask AI to do Wyeth-style drybrush watercolor winter scene to see why artists still matter.) Or, as the painter John Singer Sargent put it, with watercolor, you “make the best of an emergency.” Now you can make decoration from that emergency: the exhibition will be juried by local award-winning watercolorist Susan Keith, and features 95 entries for sale and ready to hang.

• Where: San Diego Watercolor Society, 2825 Dewey Road #202, San Diego
• When: Friday, May 1, 2026 at 5 pm (exhibition runs all month)
• Ages: all ages
• Cost: free

Who Do You Think You Are?

The WhatNext Collective presents a staged reding of eight short plays that tell “stories from the second act,” that time of life when the kids start to venture forth but the chickens come home to roost. J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons; “200 Coffee Filters” measures out love in…well, you know. “Bittercake” looks at what else gets handed down alongside a family recipe. “Off Sides” watches two soccer moms as they watch their kids on the field. “Still Standing” pits a standup comedian against the knockdown heckling of cancer personified. “The Gossip” takes up Mr. Rogers’ terrifying question, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” “Thirty-Five Candles” gives two old friends a chance to reunite and reminisce — which can’t possibly be a good idea. “Under the Influence” exposes an influencer during her own livestream. And “Confetti Time” takes up the case of a compliance officer who approved the destruction of $9 million in contraceptives and decides she has to do something about it.

• Where: Old Town Theatre, 4040 Twiggs Street, San Diego
• When: Saturday, May 2, 2026 at 5 pm
• Ages: Shows treat adult material
• Cost: $25-$58

Bach Collegium: Far Beyond the Skies

Leave it to Bach to take the old saw “Rest in Peace” and give it life with “Komm, süßer Tod” — come, sweet death. A favorite verse, translated: Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest!
Oh, that I were already there among the hosts of angels, out of this dark world, into the blue canopy of stars, up toward heaven. O blessed rest! Oh, so that’s what they mean by RIP! Of course, Bach’s is not the only song to express sweet longing for release. Anybody ever hear “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot?” I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, Coming for to carry me home? A band of angels coming after me, Coming for to carry me home. The Bach Collegium brings these two musical traditions together (and tosses in some Telemann to boot) as countertenor d’amore Reginald Mobley performs favorites from the spiritual canon on themes of peace and comfort. (For those seeking further context, a pre-concert panel discussion will take place at 3:30, before the start of the concert.)

• Where: All Souls Episcopal Church, 1475 Catalina Boulevard, San Diego
• When: Sunday, May 3, 2026 at 4 pm
• Ages: all ages
• Cost: $15.53-$72.45

Ass Pocket Whiskey Fellas

Founded in 2011 by members of the Fairfield Fats Band, Superkeltic, Enuf, and the Clairemonsters, Ass Pocket Whiskey Fellas specialize in a brand of Celtic rock that fuses traditional folk and roots music and instrumentation with rock and roll arrangements honed over countless live performances. The band’s live sets mix originals with classic country, bluegrass, traditional Irish, and Led Zeppelin, all the while expressing their love for traditional Irish music and its connection to American bluegrass and country, as well as its rock and roll roots. With a stage lineup featuring up to eight or more members, their all-acoustic setup includes parts for upright bass, fiddle, accordion, mandolin, banjo, and tin whistle. Their third album “Third Flagon” won a 2023 San Diego Music Award for Best Local Recording, and they followed up with “Live At the Belly Up” in 2024 and last year’s “Speedway Racer” album. Besides this performance at Humphreys, May sees them playing at Gator by the Bay, Tio Leo’s, and the Blarney Stone.

• Where: Humphreys Backstage Music Club, 2241 Shelter Island Drive, San Diego
• When: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at 8 pm
• Ages: 21+
• Cost: $5 cover

Wisconsin Cheese Experience

Back in the ‘90s, Wisconsin cheese was ascendant. The Cheesheads had cheered their beloved Packers to a win in Super Bowl XXXI. That was in 1997, the same year that Culver’s introduced their Wisconsin cheese curds onto their fast food menu. When I said “cheddar,” you said “Wisconsin.” (Alas, o England!) Small wonder that the California dairy industry felt the need to mount a PR campaign — that much, we’ve always been good at. And what a campaign. The California Happy Cows proved the most popular, but the live-action spots — the image above is a still from one of them — were on a par with anything the “Got Milk” people ever managed. Oh, how times have changed. Surely there is no clearer sign of victory than when you welcome your onetime rival as a guest in your home. The San Diego Cheese & Libation Expo returns for 2026 with an elevated experience celebrating artisan cheese and curated beverage pairings. This year offers a rare taste of “America’s Dairyland” through 10 award-winning cheesemakers, including Carr Valley Cheese, Sartori Cheese, Marieke Gouda, and more.

• Where: Brick, 2863 Historic Decatur Road, San Diego
• When: Friday, May 15, 2026 from 5 pm-8pm; Saturday, May 16, 2026 from 1 pm-5 pm; Sunday, May 17, 2026 from 11 am-3 pm
• Ages: all ages
• Cost: $75-$125 (Children under 12, $10; children under 2, free)

Sprung Monkey: 10 Year Anniversary Show featuring full performance of Situation Life

Monkey trivia: Sprung Monkey was formed when members responded to an ad in the San Diego Reader, they recorded their first demo tape at Nestor Studios in El Cajon. “When we started, we played at Soma, the first Casbah, Winters, Bodie’s, and the World Beat Center,” recalls lead singer Steve Summers. “One guy who came to see us happened to be Taylor Steele, who put us in his surf videos. That gave us and bands like Pennywise and 7 Seconds huge exposure to the surf community. We were golden everywhere there was water.” The band, founded in 1991, had several national party-romp hits, including “Get ’Em Outta Here” from their album Situation Life. Their music appeared in movie soundtracks, such as “Dude, Where’s My Car?,” and “Van Wilder,” which led to major-venue surfer stomps on both U.S. coasts, Hawaii, and Australia, and then to bookings at ESPN’s X Games, Warped Tours, and MTV Spring Break parties. They toured with the Offspring, Korn, and the Deftones. “Kid Rock was on tour opening for us when his record broke.” Now Kid Rock is buddies with Trump, and Sprung Monkey is playing Situation Life front-to-back at The Holding Company.

• Where: The Holding Company, 5046 Newport Avenue, San Diego
• When: Saturday, May 23, 2026 at 7:30 pm
• Ages: 21+
• Cost: $25

Weekend to Remember Brad Nowell

Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell died 30 years ago on May 25^th. In honor of Nowell’s lasting impact and unique genius, Skunk Records, the label he co-founded, is bringing the Skunk Allstars — Burnt, Perro Bravo, and some special surprise guests — to Ocean Beach’s The Harp for a historic weekend in honor of Nowell, his father Papa Jim, and Bradley’s beloved Dalmatian, Lou Dog. (The Harp, as you know doubt know, is currently co-owned by Miles Doughty of Ocean Beach’s Slightly Stoopid, which signed with Skunk way back when.) Burnt will follow-up with a free matinee show on Sunday after the Saturday blowout.

• Where: The Harp, 4934 Newport Avenue, San Diego
• When: Saturday, May 23, 2026 at 8pm; Sunday, May 24, 2026 at 3 pm
• Ages: 21+
• Cost: $20 on Saturday, free on Sunday

Hello, and welcome to the return of the San Diego Reader to the proudly persistent world of print.

Our website, sandiegoreader.com, is still the best, most complete source for what’s happening in San Diego. But as with the rest of the internet, there’s a muchness to all that information, no matter how well organized, that can get overwhelming.

Below, please find a curated selection of local events for your perusal. It’s just a sampling, but hopefully it will serve to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

Alien Girls

The meta manifests early in Amy Berryman’s sweet drama about female friendship. (And it is sweet, despite the painful betrayals, tragic deaths, and surprising brutality it contains, thanks in no small part to the sympathetic performances from its leads, Brittany Bradford and Emma Ramos, and the propulsive — though not linear — action of the play. There’s too much humanity, and too much artful revelation, to let things curdle to sourness.) We meet Tiffany and Carolyn as they hit the club, buzzing about their future as fellow writers — rich, respected, but not famous. It takes only a moment before the beat takes hold and one of them blurts a confession, whereupon the action freezes, the set’s LED light ring flashes blue, and a voice dictates, “Delete.” Our girl tries again. “Delete.” The first two of many such moments that let us know we are in the somewhere in the midst of someone’s creative process. 

Speaking of creative processes: the other girl has been doing another sort of creating, and has some news to share. The difference between those two creations provides the tension of the play. But it isn’t the story of the play. These writers write to process their encounters with the world — a world which often seems, as the title suggests, hostile and strange. They also write to process their encounters with each other. 

The fragmented narrative can get a bit disorienting, which may explain why the audience laughed at moments that felt not at all comedic. (There are puppets. Try to give yourself over to the puppets.) And the dialogue is not above going for the easy gag here and there, and once or twice shades into self-conscious speechifying. But that’s the “here and there” and “once or twice” of it. Again, the overarching sensation is sweetness, because the overarching dynamic is love.

• Where: The Old Globe Theatre, 
• When: Tuesdays at 7 pm, Wednesdays at 2 pm and 7 pm, Thursdays at 7 pm, Fridays at 7 pm, Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm, Sundays at 2 pm and 7 pm, through May 10
• Ages: Adult material discussed
• Cost: $47-$125

Moonchild

Fronted by multi-instrumentalist and singer Amber Navran and co-founded in 2011 by fellow alumni of the Jazz Studies program at USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, neo-soul trio Moonchild is known for blending elements of jazz, R&B, and electronic music. On the release of their debut album “Be Free” in 2012, they earned the attention and endorsement of Stevie Wonder, who invited the band to open for him at that year’s annual House Full Of Toys benefit concert. Their “Voyager” LP was named among Bandcamp’s Top 100 Albums of 2017, and a 2019 release called Little Ghost hit number six on Billboard’s Heatseekers Album chart. Their full-length album “Starfruit” was nominated for a 2023 Grammy Award for Best Progressive R&B Album, further widening their fan base and bringing them to the attention of mainstream media. They’re touring in support of their sixth full-length “Waves,” released in February and featuring collaborations with Jill Scott and Lalah Hathaway.

• Where: The Music Box, 1337 India Street, San Diego
• When: Sunday, May 3, 2026 at 7:30 pm
• Ages: 21+
• Cost: $36

B-Side Players

“We now represent the Brown Majority,” said Karlos Paez, the dreadlocked frontman of global funk act B-Side Players who helped launch the group in 1994. “The surfer, suburban stereotype of California is changing fast. It’s not all bleach blondes anymore.” Specializing in socially conscious dance music sung in both Spanish and English, the ensemble fuses sounds from Latin America (Cuba, Mexico, Brazil) with funk, rock, jazz, and hip-hop. The group won a San Diego Music Award for Best World Album for their 2009 record Radio Afro Mexica, and they won Best World Music at the 2011 SDMAs — then took it home again in 2012. Their live shows celebrate diverse cultures, especially Chicano identity, drawing frequent comparisons to iconic worldwide Latin groups such as Ozomatli. They dropped a new single in February for their track “Flowers,” which continues to showcase the band’s ability to seamlessly work elements of Cumbia, street Samba, Son Montuno, and Jarocho into their arrangements.

• Where: Lou Lou’s Jungle Room, 2225 El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego
• When: Tuesday, May 5, 2026 at 8 pm
• Ages: 21+
• Cost: $25

Seven Bridges Children’s Hospital fundraiser walk

Yes, it’s a little earnest and olde-timey to be citing Counting Crows lyrics in 2026, but there’s a line from “Long December” that’s appropriate here: “It’s been so long since I’ve seen the ocean/I guess I should.” When you live in San Diego, it’s sometimes all too easy to never do the things that every San Diegan has done — or ought to have done. The Seven Bridges Hike is one of those: Park Boulevard, Cabrillo, First Avenue, Quince Street, Spruce Street, Vermont Street and Georgia Street. (Don’t get cynical when you realize that the anti-suicide fence on Cabrillo starts only once you’ve over the 163.) A testament to civic engineering, a unique perspective on San Diego, City of Canyons, a sense of what makes this city this city. And in case you need a little extra motivation, now you can do it for a cause, and receive a guided audio tour from Jeffery the Surfer Reindeer.

• Where: Meet at Tavola Nostra, 1040 University Avenue B101, San Diego
• When: Saturday, May 16, 2026, 9 am to 1 pm
• Ages: All ages
• Cost: $30-$75

San Diego Museum of Art’s Resident Free Tuesday

For too many San Diegans, Balboa Park is a place you send folks from out of town — “And after you’ve seen the Zoo, why not check out the rest of the Park?” It’s fun to single out the Timken — “We’ve got Rembrandt’s Saint Bartholomew” — before launching into the celebrity hook: Orson Welles famously used the park for his newsreel announcing the death of newspaper mogul Charles Foster Kane at the opening of “Citizen Kane.” It stood in for Kane’s  Florida estate, named Xanadu after the site of the ‘stately pleasure dome’ built by the Chinese emperor Kubla Khan. But while Xanadu was described in the newsreel as “the world’s largest private pleasure grounds,” the park is a democratic answer to Kane’s elitist paradise: a public pleasure grounds, with the Museum of Us as its cathedral and the San Diego Museum of Art as its principal palace. And if you live in San Diego, there’s one day a month when you can just walk in for free! Stop in and marvel at another sort of democratic triumph: the gloriously low-culture posters of Toulouse-Lautrec.

• Where: San Diego Museum of Art, 1450 El Prado, San Diego 
• When: Tuesday, May 19, 2026, 10 am to 5 pm
• Ages: All ages
• Cost: Free

The Bulwark Live

It is a commonplace that modern American politics is theater. (“Show business for ugly people” as one wag famously put it.) Has it always been a commonplace that American political commentary is its own sort of theater? When the Bulwark first coalesced around the idea of conservatives/Republicans standing against the raging storm that was President Donald Trump, a great many people rallied to its cause. A number of others suggested that it was just a canny fundraising move — in other words, theater. Now, as if to short-circuit the argument through sheer bravado, the Bulwalk crew is taking its show on the road and visiting literal theaters around the country, including our very own Balboa. But theater or no, don’t go looking for drama: the promo copy promises something altogether friendlier. “Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell, and Sam Stein bring their signature political insights and banter to a crowd for one night in San Diego for an evening of politics among allies. We can promise you a fun night of sharp political insights and a community built on good faith.” 

• Where: Balboa Theater, 868 Fourth Avenue, San Diego
• When: Wednesday, May 20, 2026 at 7 pm
• Ages: All ages
• Cost: $104-$131

Working Title No. 5

In 2017, the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego passed Resolution 17-05, declaring itself a “Sanctuary Diocese.” The resolution stated that the diocese would stand alongside undocumented immigrants, oppose large-scale deportations, and encourage all diocesan congregations to explore becoming “sanctuary congregations and institutions.” Small surprise then, that its Cathedral is playing host to Project [BLANK]’s latest festival of art and music, which has Sanctuary as its theme. (“What defines a sacred or protected space? What boundaries — physical, social, spiritual — are drawn to offer refuge to those under threat?”) Sanctuaries can be created by architectural spaces, but also by personal practices and political actions, as recent events have made clear.  At the exhibition’s center: “a major new work by San Diego composer Michelle Lou—a mind-melting composition for voices, tubas, pipe organ, and electronics.” And as John Philip Sousa knew, when they bring out the tubas, they mean business.

• Where: St. Paul’s Cathedral & Episcopal Church, 2728 Sixth Avenue, San Diego
• When: Saturday, May 30, 2026 at 6 pm
• Ages: All ages
• Cost: $15-$25

It’s a bird, it’s a plane… It’s Chula Vista’s State of the City event! 

Mayor John McCann on Tuesday staged a State of the City that still has us reeling. 

The event began with a Hollywood-style video starring McCann in a madcap race to get to the speech on time – culminating in him leaping out of an airplane and parachuting toward the city.

As the film ended, an actual airplane (this is not a joke) appeared overhead and a skydiver (still not a joke!) descended toward the crowd of roughly 200 residents and dignitaries gathered at the city’s Elite Athlete Training Center. The skydiver landed in a nearby field and McCann strode onto the stage in a tuxedo accompanied by theme music from Mission Impossible.

It may not shock you to learn McCann is running for re-election this year. 

The event also had all the hallmarks of an average State of the City address, with its shoutouts to corporate sponsors, heartwarming personal anecdotes and an exhaustive list of civic progress. But it had so much more. 

Opera baritone Manuel Vera joined McCann onstage to belt out God Bless America while McCann draped medals over the leaders of Chula Vista’s veterans organizations. (McCann is a United States Navy veteran and current reservist.)

McCann couldn’t resist a dig at his big-city counterpart, Todd Gloria. He pointed out that Chula Vista this year balanced its budget with no new taxes, no cuts in services and fully funded its reserves.

“And no parking fee increases,” McCann added, to widespread laughter.

No word on whether McCann is willing to loan his parachute to Gloria. It might come in handy this budget season.

El Cajon Sues to Overturn State Sanctuary Policies

The city of El Cajon is partnering with the conservative America First Policy Institute to sue the state over its immigration policies. The suit claims the state’s policies “induce and encourage illegal aliens to reside within [California’s] borders.”

The lawsuit, filed in San Diego County Superior Court, also says state sanctuary policies place cities in legal jeopardy by forcing them to limit cooperation with federal immigration agents. 

Last year, The El Cajon City Council voted 3-2 to begin cooperating with federal immigration authorities, in defiance of state policy. The vote has led to ongoing protests.

“Sacramento has spent years telling cities like El Cajon to fall in line with sanctuary policies that put our residents at risk,” Mayor Bill Wells said on social media shortly before the lawsuit announcement. “They assumed nobody would push back. They assumed wrong.”

In a statement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, “El Cajon should prepare for another loss… [California’s sanctuary law] has been upheld in court again and again, and we’re prepared to defend it from a baseless attack once more.”

The Tijuana River Is Having a Political Moment

The humble and terribly polluted Tijuana River has become a must-stop destination for candidates seeking to lead California. 

Xavier Becerra, the former Biden cabinet member, became the latest candidate for governor to tour the much-abused river on Wednesday at the invitation of San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre.

Becerra is the sixth candidate to visit the river this year. Aguirre has pressed each of them – successfully, so far – to promise they would declare a state of emergency at the river, if elected.

Becerra, who as California Attorney General sued the federal government in 2018 to demand action on the river, said he was prepared to declare a state of emergency. But he did hedge. He said he would do so only if he felt the state was ready to make an immediate difference.

“If you declare a state of emergency, you have to deliver,” he said.

Senator Wants to Assign Schools New Math Homework

State Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson’s out with a bold proposal: giving California kids another test.

Let’s back up a bit. Statewide, kids aren’t doing great in math. Slightly more than a third of students are meeting stade standards on tests and they still haven’t made up deep pandemic-era learning losses. 

Weber Pierson is proposing a bill to create a math screener for kids in kindergarten, first and second grade that – the thinking goes – would catch kids who are struggling with math before they fall too far behind to catch up. It also would require schools to offer additional supports to kids who aren’t up to snuff in math.

But like recent efforts to revamp California’s literacy curriculum, not everyone is on board with this new proposal. California’s powerful teachers unions have already come out in opposition, making the bill’s climb a steep one.

Read the full Learning Curve here. 

In Other News

• Candidates vying to replace outgoing North County Supervisor Jim Desmond showed no love this week for two top county issues: a proposed sales tax increase and an overhaul of county government that would award current supervisors another term in office. All four candidates, including Democrats, panned the measures, which are supported by the Board of Supervisors’ current Democratic majority. (Union-Tribune)
• Chula Vista is preparing to release the first of a series of bi-annual reports documenting interactions between city police officers and federal immigration agents. The reports are required as part of an immigration ordinance the City Council approved earlier this year. (KPBS)
• Y’all, maybe don’t fly drones near the airport, OK? A United Airlines pilot reported spotting one beneath his airplane as it landed Wednesday. The drone was so close, the pilot thought he hit it. Luckily, he didn’t. (Union-Tribune)
• Who’s supporting and opposing Measure A, a city of San Diego ballot measure that would tax second homes? inewsource has the details. No surprise: The California Association of Realtors is leading the charge against the measure. (inewsource)

The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch and Jakob McWhinney. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: State of the City Like No Other appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Forget the current budget deficit.  

If voters repeal San Diego’s trash fee, city leaders say their only option would be to cut up to $150 million from city services like stormwater, fire and police departments. 

“Outside of new revenue coming in, there’s no other option,” said Charles Modica, the city’s Independent Budget Analyst. 

A business advocacy group is pitching a ballot measure that would remove the fee for fiscal years 2028 and 2029. They need 21,000 signatures to get the repeal on the November 2026 ballot – far fewer than other signature-gathering efforts. 

“The effort is off to a fantastic start,” said former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who is leading the repeal on behalf of the Lincoln Club Business League. He didn’t say how many signatures the group has gathered. 

While the former mayor says the city needs to repeal the fee and scale back its spending, Mayor Todd Gloria and other city leaders say the repeal could result in a big blow to the city’s budget. 

“The magnitude of those cuts is going to be significant,” said Modica. 

Modica said the money generated from the trash fee is about 5 percent of the city’s budget.  That is more than what the city spends on the library system in a year, and about what it spends on its network of sidewalks and streetlight, he said.  

“The city would need to really have a real conversation about just picking a service that it is currently providing and not providing that service anymore,” Modica said. 

Since 1919, a law known as the People’s Ordinance required the city to collect trash, without charge, from any home with direct access to city streets. The city paid for trash pick up out of its general fund. 

In 1981 and 1986, voters amended the People’s Ordinance to prevent city officials from ever charging fees for city trash collection. In 1981, voters declared that residential trash collection would remain free, although there could be a fee for industrial and commercial waste. In 1986, voters approved an amendment that would require residents who live on private streets or multi-family homes like apartments to pay private haulers to collect their trash.  

Single-family homeowners with access to city streets continued to get trash picked up without paying a fee. 

In 2022, voters narrowly approved Measure B, a new amendment to the People’s Ordinance that allowed the city to start recovering costs.  

The amendment also clarified which properties are eligible to receive city-provided services. This includes properties on public streets that are not mixed-use or commercial. City workers will also only pick up trash at lots with one to four residences maximum.  

City officials estimated the fee would be between $23-$29 per month per customer when they put Measure B on the ballot. But a cost study later revealed that the fee needed to be higher, so the City Council opted for a much higher fee of $43.60 last summer. 

The full cost for the year turned out to be between $32.82 and $43.60. The fee also increases each year. When people got their tax bills, they were furious.  

A group of homeowners sued the city, alleging officials are charging more than what it costs to pick up trash. A judge recently denied the city’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.  

“The ability to charge for trash barely passed at the ballot box,” said Faulconer. “If the city would’ve told people it was going to be double what they said it was going to be, it wouldn’t have passed. That’s, again, why people are angry and rightfully so over a bait and switch.” 

At least one councilmember, also agrees that the City Council should have never doubled the fee. Henry Foster – along with Councilmembers Raul Campillo and Marni von Wilpert – voted no on the fee last June.  

In a recent candidate forum, Foster said he would like to lower it to the estimate the city offered voters when Measure B passed. 

“We need to right our wrongs. We need to take care of our structural deficit, but we need to take the trash down to $29 — no more,” said Foster. 

Modica said two factors increased the fee.  

First, the Environmental Services Department had historically estimated its customer base was much larger. The department thought it served around 285,000 addresses. Since the department didn’t bill households, it didn’t keep track of which households it served. 

A cost-of-service study by the Environmental Services Department in 2022 revealed it served a little over 222,000 addresses. Essentially, there would be fewer families paying the fee and yet the cost of providing the service was going to increase.   

“The denominator by which you would divide the total costs of our things was smaller, which results in a higher fee,” said Modica.  

Just on that point alone, the city would have needed to increase the cost from $29 to $37 per month to recover all of its costs, a report by Modica’s office found last year.  

Modica said the fee also increased because costs are increasing across the board. Vehicles cost more. So does their maintenance. City workers’ pay has also gone up.  

When Measure B first passed, the baseline operating cost for trash collection was about $98.3 million. That number increased to more than $120 million this fiscal year.  

This year, the fee has generated approximately $117 million. The Environmental Services Department estimates the fee will generate approximately $123.9 million next year, which is about $9 million less than officials expected.  

Jordan More with the independent budget analyst office said that’s because some people are returning their additional bins or opting for cheaper bins.  

Homeowners can choose from a wide range of trash bins. The cheapest option is $32.82 a month for a 35-gallon trash bin. The most expensive option is $43.60, which gets you a 95-gallon trash bin. All the options come with bins for recycling and organic waste. 

The money from the fee goes into something called the solid waste management fund. Dollars that go into this fund can only be used to pay for waste management related activities. This essentially frees up money in the general fund to be spent on other city services.  

That could all change soon with the repeal effort.  

Faulconer said he isn’t concerned about the hit to the general fund.  

“This city survived for a hundred years without having to charge people for trash or having to charge families to go to Balboa Park. It’s about priorities,” he said. He also said city officials can invest in public safety and employees “without having to fee and tax San Diegans to death.” 

City officials need to cut back their spending, and focus on reducing middle managers, or unclassified employees at the city, Faulconer said.  

Mayor Gloria, however, is very concerned.  

“Eliminating the solid waste collection fee or further reducing parking revenue will come at the expense of the general fund,” he said. “The sum total of those two things combined exceed the deficit that we’re closing right now. Basically, you would double the challenge we are currently grappling with. It is real. Where would that come from? Well suddenly we’d be right back to where we are today. Where things we are currently doing our best to protect, specifically public safety, police and fire, would have to be up for deeper reductions.”  

The post The Giant Meteor Heading Toward the City of San Diego’s Budget appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Attendees of Chula Vista’s annual State of the City speech Tuesday had every reason to wonder what exactly they were viewing. 

Was it an annual update on the city’s progress? A Hollywood production? A Broadway show? 

I described some of the eye-opening special effects kicking off the event in Voice of San Diego’s Morning Report today. 

If you weren’t there, you missed: A Mission Impossible-style introductory film starring Mayor John McCann; a skydiver parachuting from a plane over the Elite Athlete Training Center, where the event took place; opera baritone Manuel Vera belting out God Bless America while McCann awarded medals to leaders of the city’s veterans organizations; and lots more. 

The frills were fun. (And controversial in the eyes of the mayor’s Democratic critics, who rolled their eyes and asked who paid for it all.) 

For the record, I asked the mayor’s staff how much the event cost and who paid. Amanda Fredeluces, McCann’s chief of staff, said the roughly $28,000 cost of the event was paid entirely either by McCann himself or by corporate sponsors, including Seven Mile Casino, Neighborhood National Bank, Cox Communications, the HomeFed Corporation and Republic Services. 

The Elite Athlete Training Center is owned by the city, so there was no rental fee, Fredeluces said. Sponsors covered the $11,605 cost of catering and other event fees, as well as the cost of the Mission Impossible-style video, she said. 

Sponsors also paid for the skydiver, though McCann himself paid the cost to jump out of an airplane during filming of the video, Fredeluces said. 

Fredeluces called the event a success and said close to 500 people attended. 

Strip away the extras, and the mayor – along with his fellow City Councilmembers and the city’s roughly 1,000 employees, who execute Council policy – actually do have a good story to tell. 

Chula Vista is surrounded by cities in fiscal distress. National City faces a mounting deficit and just appointed its second interim city manager amid a protracted search for permanent leadership at City Hall. 

San Diego’s budget woes are epic, and well-publicized. 

Chula Vista, meanwhile, balanced its budget this year with no tax increases, no cuts to public services and fully funded reserves. 

The city hit other milestones too. 

The Council approved yet another large-scale development at the city’s rapidly evolving bayfront. 

The Port of San Diego, in conjunction with the city, broke ground earlier this year on an expansion and upgrade of much-beloved Harbor Park. 

The city opened two new fire stations, signed an agreement with San Diego State University to begin offering four-year nursing degrees at the city’s soon-to-be-opened Millenia Library, broke ground on a new permanent housing facility for homeless residents and approved a new park that will honor Filipino American military veterans. 

Though the city reported lower than expected hotel tax revenue this year amid regionwide economic uncertainty, McCann said the city’s recently opened Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center nevertheless ranks as the third-highest revenue-generating property in the Marriott corporation’s entire worldwide portfolio. 

When McCann, in his speech, called Chula Vista “an undisputed economic engine and regional leader,” he wasn’t just bragging. 

In a recent interview, McCann said he plans to make his city’s record of accomplishments a central theme in his upcoming re-election campaign. The success of that tactic will depend on what voters care about most this year. 

Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Francisco Tamayo (who attended Tuesday’s event and was one of the eye-rollers) is McCann’s main opponent in the city’s mayoral race. He has signaled he intends to make the race a referendum on the mayor’s reluctance to comment on immigration issues. 

And he has vowed to turn the city’s recent successes into a negative for the mayor by highlighting the extent to which Chula Vista’s rise is making the city unaffordable for residents. 

McCann ended his speech on an inspirational high note, trying out a new slogan to complement his usual “this is Chula Vista’s decade.” (He said that too.) 

“Today’s accomplishments are tomorrow’s legacy,” he said at the speech’s conclusion. 

The accomplishments are real. The legacy remains to be seen. 

The Tijuana River Gets It’s Moment in the Gubernatorial Spotlight 

The humble, much-polluted Tijuana River has gained an unlikely new identity this year. It’s a must-see whistlestop for Democratic candidates running for California governor. 

Former United States Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Wednesday became the sixth gubernatorial candidate to visit the river this year at the invitation of San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre. 

Aguirre, whose personal charm belies an almost ruthless strategic ability to strongarm powerful people into doing what she wants, has conducted these candidate tours of the river’s smelly shoreline with a clear goal in mind. 

From each candidate she has extracted a promise to declare a state of emergency at the river the moment they are elected to office. 

Aguirre contends a state of emergency declaration would enable a similar declaration from the federal government, which in turn would free up funding and grease bureaucratic wheels. 

That’s debatable. Not in dispute is Aguirre’s success in propelling each candidate toward seeing the river as she sees it: As a major issue requiring an immediate response. 

Becerra, a far more careful and considered politician than some of the other candidates who have visited the river, took some convincing. 

He asked a lot of detailed questions and seemed quite familiar with many of the larger policy implications. He voiced skepticism about the value of an emergency declaration without funding to back it up. 

He listened attentively as a roundtable of local doctors, public health experts and residents (all selected by Aguirre) explained the severe health impacts of river pollution on South County’s most vulnerable residents. 

In the end, they convinced him. 

“I’d be prepared to declare a state of emergency,” Becerra said. “These declarations don’t automatically bring the funding. It does free up hurdles.” 

Aguirre seemed to relax. Becerra’s tour ended with the discussion roundtable at Arandas Café, next door to El Tapatio, a local Mexican restaurant institution. 

Aguirre introduced Becerra to Arandas founder Celia Aranda, who, along with her husband, Victor, started El Tapatio as a taco stand in 1979 and later expanded to opening Arandas, a gourmet breakfast and lunch café, next door. 

Becerra, who grew up in an immigrant family in Sacramento, chatted with Celia about her business in Spanish and asked how river pollution affects her. A lot, said Celia. Aguirre, formerly mayor of Imperial Beach, beamed. 

Notch another win for the strongarm charm offensive. 

In Other News 

Deputy Mayor Cesar Fernandez on Monday signed into law a new ordinance that strengthens city protections for immigrants and requires regular updates on city police interactions with federal immigration authorities. The measure, approved by the City Council earlier this year, comes as South County cities grapple with the effects of the Trump Administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown. 

U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas announced earlier this month he and other San Diego-area members of Congress are asking for $100 million in next year’s federal budget for infrastructure upgrades to reduce pollution in the Tijuana River. 

Two bills authored by state Sen. Steve Padilla that together constitute some of the nation’s strongest protections for young people who use A.I. chatbots advanced through key legislative committees this month on their way toward consideration by the full State Senate. The bills would restrict advertising and require safeguards to prevent chatbots from encouraging suicide or hooking children on protracted conversations. 

The recently authorized South County Higher Education Planning Taskforce this week will begin gathering public input and sketching out plans for an envisioned four-year university in the city of Chula Vista. The taskforce holds the first in a series of public meetings beginning at 10 a.m. Friday at Chula Vista City Hall. More information here. 

The post South County Report: State of the City and Then Some appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

This post has been updated.

San Diego-area state Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson wants to assign California educators some new homework: screening kids for math competency.  

A new bill authored by Weber would require schools to perform math testing for students in kindergarten, first or second grade. It would also require educators to offer extra support to students whose math skills are behind where they should be. 

A number of safeguards to more narrowly focus the screenings are also written into the bill. Those include the stipulation that scores could not be used to evaluate teachers or identify students for gifted programs. Students’ math skills are already tested in third grade. But in pitching the bill, Weber Pierson argued that disparities begin even earlier than that. 

“By that time, many students who are struggling with foundational math skills have already fallen behind,” Weber Pierson said. 

The effort is aimed at evening the incredibly uneven playing field of early childhood education. Some kids who enter the public school system may have already had years of more focused math education. Many of those who start behind, stay behind.  

“Unless those students get intervention, the gap will widen. It’ll be harder for them to access higher-level math classes later on, and this will have implications for future job opportunities and the economic future of California. It’s a continual closing of opportunities,” Alice Klein, the research director at WestEd told CalMatters. 

But like the reading curriculum reforms signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom late last year, the new math framework could face some stiff opposition. That signing capped years of a contentious back and forth debate in Sacramento during which multiple bills aimed at changing how we teach kids to read crumble under pressure.  

Like some of those earlier literacy bills, the powerful California Teachers Association opposes Weber Pierson’s math bill. In their telling, lawmakers should wait to see how the state’s new math framework impacts student achievement. They also argue that without additional funding to support students who are behind, a screener won’t do much.  

In any case, both the literacy bill and this latest math bill are responding to real deficiencies. Statewide, California students still haven’t made up pandemic-era losses in student performance. Only a little more than a third of students met math standards in statewide tests. That number is even lower for Black and Latino students. 

Nationwide, the state’s fourth graders were tied for sixth lowest in math proficiency according to 2024’s NAEP tests. In reading, the state’s fourth graders tied for eighth lowest. 

“It’s frustrating for people who have worked in the education space and for those who have been looking at these numbers for decades — a generation — and seeing that, as a state, we have not prioritized education,” Weber Pierson told California Black Media at a recent press conference. “But I am grateful that we are taking steps to fix it.” 

San Diego Unified’s New Motivation Meter Shows Modest Gains, Big Gaps 

As San Diego Unified continues to embark into the unknown in its attempts to measure student wellness, district officials on Tuesday presented the second results of a survey intended to measure student motivation.  

The survey measured a handful of school-related factors. Those included things like how safe kids feel at school and how good their relationships with teachers are. It also asked about more personal attributes, like whether students demonstrate things like grit or a growth mindset.  

The results showed modest district-wide gains across almost all of the domains, with students’ ability to manage stress and calm themselves seeing the highest increase. Still, the percentage of kids who answered positively in each of the categories lingered in the 50s and 60s.  

More worryingly, though, Black, Latino and English learner students saw marked decreases across almost all categories surveyed. At Trustee Shana Hazan’s prompting, district officials said they would come back with strategies to turn that trend around.  

Along with the standard survey, the district collected recorded testimonies from students. Officials then turned to a new tool in the district’s toolkit to make sense of the voice recordings at scale. The AI-powered program, called Impacter Pathway, analyzes student responses to prompts and identifies attributes, characteristics or trends that may have been expressed, but not stated outright.  

District data guru Roman del Rosario and Area Superintendent Erin Richison walked board members and attendees through the system’s analysis of one boy’s statement. In the statement, the boy said he came from a family that had struggled and that he wanted to succeed to prove himself. To do that, he sometimes takes on challenges he knows may be too big for him. The program identified the statement as expressing grit and a desire to be pushed.  

It was an interesting exhibition that clearly resonated with board members, for whom finding ways to divine data from the squishiness of wellness monitoring has been a primary challenge. 

 Trustee Cody Petterson acknowledged there will likely be concerns about student privacy, and admitted to being icked out by the prospect of AI in this context. Still, he said he was “deeply moved.” 

“I always go back to three years ago when we started this process and our consultant said ‘Hey, you really shouldn’t do this, no one in the country is doing this, we don’t have metrics yet,’” Petterson recalled. “You are creating the tools to hold ourselves accountable to creating this space of wellness.” 

Pooch Poo Soils School Fields; Budget Cuts Curtail Caca Cops 

San Diego Unified’s long-running joint-use program has opened up school facilities all over the district to the public. One of the most popular examples has been the district opening fields to community members after school hours.  

But the program hasn’t been all sunshine and roses. It’s also featured some holes and a whole lot of poop, courtesy of community members who let their pooches roam the fields off leash and don’t pick up after them. The problem got so bad at some joint-use fields that kids were tumbling into doggy-dug holes and doggy-dealt doodoo. The district even closed some joint-use fields to the public to curb the crappy behavior.  

Now, citywide budget cuts are taking a bite out of what little enforcement existed.  

The city of San Diego used to contract with the Humane Society to patrol the parks, but that partnership ended last year. Officials confirmed to Axios their officers no longer responded to calls reporting off leash dogs at local school fields. And while the city is adding stickers at some school fields directing residents to report bad behavior on the Get it Done app, there’s still no function that allows such reports.  

Related: A new analysis from Mayor Todd Gloria’s office projects that the city will need to make deep cuts to its libraries and rec centers to fill its yawning deficit. The cuts, which will include significant reduction in hours and potential closures, would amount to nearly $8 million in savings. The current deficit stands at nearly $150 million. 

One More Thing: Just FYI, San Diego Unified’s Board Opposes Iran War 

In case you were wondering, San Diego Unified trustees are against the Iran war.  

The board voted 4-1 on Tuesday night to pass a resolution, authored by Petterson and Trustee Richard Barrera, that condemned the American- and Israeli-led conflict. Trustee Shana Hazan was the sole “no” vote, saying from the dais she felt the district should focus its advocacy on things more directly related to its students, like school funding.  

The resolution – which decried the war’s negative impact on civilians and children in the Middle East, the worldwide economy, local military families and democratic norms – also called on local congressional representative to do everything in their power to bring an end to the war. 

Even AI caught some fire, with the trustees writing: “The use of AI in the targeting of munitions – and the corresponding reduction of human oversight, judgment, and decision-making in the ‘kill chain’ – has introduced profound and unlegislated risks to civilian populations and, in particular, children.” 

During an emotional speech from the dais, Petterson, the self-professed John Boehner (another frequent crier) of the district’s board, tearfully spoke about his anti-war convictions. To Petterson, a straight line could be traced from the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said have contributed to the slow decline of America’s prosperity and opportunity, to the war in Iran. 

“I oppose all wars of aggression,” Petterson said. “I am a secular person, but I was raised in the church and in spite of no longer being a believer, per se, God is still watching.” 

Correction: This post has been updated to correct that Akilah Weber Pierson is a state senator.

The post Learning Curve: Senator Wants New Math Screenings appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Esta historia fue publicada originalmente por CalMatters. Suscríbase a sus boletines.

California se prepara para compartir con una organización externa información detallada sobre los titulares de licencias de conducir, incluidos los inmigrantes que no tienen autorización legal para vivir en los EE. UU.

Eso rompe una promesa que el estado hizo hace una década cuando comenzó a emitir licencias a inmigrantes no autorizados, dicen los defensores, y significa que más de un millón de personas pueden enfrentar un mayor riesgo de deportación.

Pero si los funcionarios estatales no entregan los datos, el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional podría negarse a aceptar las licencias e identificaciones de California en los aeropuertos, creen los defensores, tras una sesión informativa con el Departamento de Vehículos Motorizados de California (DMV) y la oficina del gobernador Gavin Newsom a principios de este mes. Las autoridades estatales confirmaron que planean compartir los datos para cumplir con la Ley Real ID de 2005, que estableció requisitos para aceptar identificaciones estatales en instalaciones federales como los aeropuertos.

Representantes de cuatro grupos de defensa que participaron en la sesión informativa dijeron a CalMatters que la información compartida mostrará si una persona tiene un número de Seguro Social, lo que significa que podría usarse para identificar a personas en el país sin autorización.

El estado planea proporcionar la información a la Asociación Estadounidense de Administradores de Vehículos Motorizados (AAMVA), una organización sin fines de lucro cuya junta directiva está compuesta por funcionarios del DMV de todo el país.

La información entregada a la asociación irá al sistema de Verificación de Estado a Estado del grupo y a su plataforma, conocida como SPEXS, que permite a los DMV y a los contratistas que trabajan con ellos verificar si alguien tiene más de una licencia emitida a su nombre. Compartir esos datos permite a las agencias que emiten licencias de conducir verificar que una persona no tenga licencias duplicadas en múltiples estados.

En el futuro, una base de datos de identidad como la que mantiene la asociación podría usarse para admitir licencias móviles que la gente puede usar en sus iPhones o la verificación de edad en línea para acceder a contenido para adultos o chatbots.

Pero los defensores temen que los funcionarios federales de inmigración intenten obtener acceso masivo a los datos y utilicen el hecho de que una persona no tiene un número de Seguro Social como una señal de que es deportable.

El estado recibió garantías de la asociación de que se añadirán salvaguardas para evitar búsquedas masivas de titulares de licencias de inmigrantes no autorizados en la base de datos y para evitar el acceso de la Patrulla Fronteriza y el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE), según las personas que se unieron a la sesión informativa con el DMV y la oficina del gobernador. Pero siguen siendo escépticos.

“Una vez que estos datos se cargan en AAMVA, están fuera del control de California, no importa lo que California quiera, no importa las protestas que podamos hacer”, dijo Ed Hasbrouck del grupo de libertades civiles de San Francisco The Identity Project, quien estuvo en la llamada.

Para llevar a cabo el plan de compartir datos con la asociación, la Legislatura de California deberá aprobar 55 millones de dólares para cubrir los costos del DMV. También puede ser necesario enmendar la ley actual, que establece que un número de Seguro Social obtenido por el DMV no puede ser compartido para ningún otro propósito que no sea abordar impuestos no pagados, multas de estacionamiento o manutención infantil.

Una portavoz de la oficina del gobernador se negó a confirmar los detalles de la llamada o responder a las preocupaciones específicas de los defensores.

“California sigue liderando el apoyo a las familias inmigrantes y la protección de los datos personales contra el exceso de autoridad federal”, escribió en un correo electrónico la portavoz, Diana Crofts-Pelayo. “El estado ha adoptado el mismo enfoque para proteger los datos de los californianos durante la implementación de la Real ID, manteniendo el cumplimiento de la misma para beneficio de todos los californianos”.

Ian Grossman, el director ejecutivo de la Asociación Estadounidense de Administradores de Vehículos Motorizados, dijo a CalMatters que la participación en el sistema de verificación es voluntaria y que solo los empleados estatales o contratistas autorizados tienen acceso al sistema, que actualmente no se permiten búsquedas masivas y que todas las búsquedas deben contener información específica sobre un individuo como su nombre y fecha de nacimiento.

Número de seguro social ‘99999’

Durante más de una década, California y otros 18 estados invitaron a personas indocumentadas a obtener licencias de conducir para apoyar la seguridad pública y la economía. Los economistas dicen que tales leyes mejoran la actividad económica, inyectan miles de millones de dólares en impuestos a las arcas estatales y benefician la seguridad pública porque las personas que carecen de autorización federal para estar en el país pueden sentirse más cómodas denunciando actividades criminales.

Más de 1 millón de personas han obtenido licencias de conducir en California bajo la Ley de la Asamblea 60, una ley aprobada en 2013. La ley prohíbe al estado usar información obtenida en el proceso de concesión de licencias para considerar la ciudadanía de un individuo.

Pero el sistema de verificación multiestatal puede revelar si una persona es un inmigrante indocumentado. Según un manual de la asociación obtenido por CalMatters, la base de datos incluirá los últimos cinco dígitos del número de Seguro Social de una persona, y si esa persona no tiene número de Seguro Social, la asociación permite a los estados usar el marcador de posición “99999”.

Los defensores temen que los funcionarios federales de inmigración puedan obtener acceso a la información en la base de datos, incluyendo a los californianos indocumentados, pidiendo a los funcionarios locales que realicen solicitudes en su nombre.

Ese tipo de maniobra no carecería de precedentes.

CalMatters informó sobre casos el año pasado y este año donde las agencias locales de aplicación de la ley violaron la ley estatal y compartieron información recopilada por lectores automáticos de matrículas con agentes de ICE o la Patrulla Fronteriza.

El DMV y la oficina del gobernador dicen que la asociación notificará a California sobre las solicitudes de cualquier entidad que no sea un estado participante, incluidos los intentos de citar la base de datos para obtener información sobre los titulares de licencias de California, dándoles la oportunidad de impugnar las citaciones o intervenir en otras solicitudes. Pero si una citación va acompañada de una orden de mordaza, la asociación no podría entregar dicha notificación. Un acuerdo entre la asociación y el DMV de California obtenido por CalMatters establece que la asociación informará a California “si legalmente se permite” si recibe una citación “para liberar, divulgar, discutir u obtener acceso a la información de S2S”.

Hasbrouck cree que el DMV y la oficina del gobernador “debieron haber sabido” que las garantías que obtuvieron de la asociación eran “vacías dada la posibilidad de órdenes de mordaza”.

También dijo que, como entidad privada, la asociación tiene menos protección contra órdenes judiciales o citaciones que una agencia gubernamental. Su intercambio de datos también se oculta más fácilmente, ya que la asociación no está sujeta a solicitudes de la Ley de Libertad de Información o leyes de reuniones abiertas.

Los defensores ven ‘una traición directa’

Los defensores que hablaron con CalMatters dijeron que compartir la información de la licencia de conducir con la asociación vende a los titulares de licencias inmigrantes. La ley que creó el programa prohíbe al estado usar la información que el programa recopila para determinar la ciudadanía.

“No está claro qué tan extremo es el peligro al que se está exponiendo a las personas con esta decisión, pero no hay duda de que le dijimos a las personas con licencias AB 60 que esto nunca sucedería, pero está sucediendo, y eso es una traición directa”, dijo Tracy Rosenberg, jefa de defensa en Oakland Privacy, quien estuvo en la llamada.

Linda Nguy, directora asociada del Western Center on Law and Poverty, comparó la divulgación con una medida el verano pasado del secretario de Salud y Servicios Humanos, Robert F. Kennedy, para compartir datos sobre millones de no ciudadanos con agencias federales de inmigración. Eso fue una violación de la ley federal, concluyeron funcionarios del departamento, según un memorando obtenido por Associated Press.

Pedro Ríos, director del Programa de la Frontera de EE. UU. y México en el American Friends Service Committee, no estuvo en la llamada, pero se hizo eco de Rosenberg y Nguy, calificando el plan de intercambio de datos como “una traición al compromiso de California de proteger y defender a todos sus residentes, especialmente a aquellos que tienen una licencia de conducir AB 60”.

Becca Cramer, quien trabaja con grupos de privacidad y libertades civiles, cuestionó por qué la oficina del gobernador y el DMV tienen prisa por cumplir con la Ley Real ID dos décadas después de su aprobación, en un momento de mayor presión por parte de la administración Trump.

“Simplemente parece que nos estamos perdiendo el panorama general de este momento en el tiempo”, dijo.

El plan para compartir información de licencias con la base de datos depende del proceso del presupuesto estatal porque el DMV está solicitando 55 millones de dólares para trasladar los datos a los sistemas de la asociación.

En una audiencia presupuestaria del Senado estatal el mes pasado para aprobar los fondos, los legisladores cuestionaron por qué el estado debería seguir un cronograma establecido por una organización privada y compartir parte de los números de Seguro Social de los californianos. También pidieron al DMV que explore el razonamiento detrás de una demanda presentada por legisladores de Oklahoma en enero para bloquear el intercambio de datos con la asociación, en la que argumentaron que compartir datos personales recopilados para licencias de conducir viola la ley estatal allí.

El director del DMV, Steve Gordon, les dijo que California intentó sin éxito convencer a la asociación de vehículos motorizados para que considerara un identificador único que no fuera un número de seguro social y “cualquiera que tenga un número de seguro social que esté compartiendo información, por supuesto, tendría una preocupación”.

El portavoz del DMV, Jaime Garza, dijo que los californianos pueden presentar una solicitud para entregar o cancelar una licencia de conducir, pero que conducir sin licencia es ilegal.

Nick Miller, portavoz del presidente de la Asamblea, Robert Rivas, dijo a CalMatters que los legisladores continúan trabajando en el tema de política.

“Proteger a las comunidades inmigrantes de los ataques implacables de la administración Trump —y garantizar que los californianos estén empoderados y defendidos— sigue siendo una prioridad absoluta para el presidente”, dijo en un correo electrónico.

Rosenberg con Oakland Privacy sugirió que el estado podría estar mejor optando por no participar en el sistema Real ID que compartiendo información sobre sus titulares de licencias, señalando que más del 60 por ciento de los californianos ya tienen pasaportes.

“Simplemente me pregunto qué pasaría si el estado pidiera a los californianos que obtuvieran un pasaporte para volar durante un par de años con el fin de proteger a 1 millón de californianos con licencias AB 60. Tal vez deberíamos darle a la gente esa oportunidad”.

As the cash-strapped city of San Diego considers slashing its arts funding in next year’s budget, County Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Monica Montgomery Steppe unveiled an initiative on Wednesday to bolster the region’s arts and culture scene.

The initiative would invest millions into the arts, especially focused on diverse and underserved communities, the supervisors said.

“Our residents are hungry for these arts programs in so many communities,” said Lawson-Remer, chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

“The proposal includes up to $2.75 million in total funding, with $2.25 million in ongoing annual investments, to launch and sustain everything from an artist grant program, to investments in the Black Arts and Culture District, to an artist space grant program and a binational creative economy investment, and artist in residence program.”

“Too often our black, brown and immigrant neighborhoods have been overlooked,” said Montgomery Steppe, the board’s vice chair. “Arts and culture are not optional — they are foundational to a thriving, inclusive San Diego County. Today, we are making the choice to move that vision forward.”

Key components of the proposed initiative include:

• Artist Grant Program ($1 million annually): Direct, low-barrier funding for individual artists, prioritizing underserved communities and supporting both emerging and established creatives;
• Artist-in-Residence Program ($250,000 annually): Placement of local artists within county departments to address public challenges through “creative, community-informed” approaches;
• Artist Space Grant Program ($500,000 annually): Expanding access to affordable creative spaces, including county-owned properties for public arts programming;
• Binational Creative Economy Investment ($250,000 annually): Strengthening cross-border arts and cultural collaboration in the San Diego- Baja California region;
• Arts and Cultural District Designation Program: Formal recognition and support for “culturally rich areas” across the county, with a focus on historically underfunded communities;
• Black Arts and Culture District Investment ($500,000 one-time): Supporting infrastructure, programming and economic development in nine blocks within the San Diego community of Encanto.

“Today’s investment signals that the county recognizes and values the power of diverse voices across the arts sector,” said Gaidi Finnie, executive director of the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Arts.

“The Black Arts and Culture District stands as a vital hub for cultural expression and creative enterprise, and this investment affirms the county’s commitment to advancing arts and culture in an inclusive and meaningful way.”

According to the supervisors, the proposal also includes efforts to work with philanthropies, advocate for expanded arts funding and establish the county as a designated Local Arts Agency through the California Arts Council.

“San Diego ART Matters and the broader artist community commend the county’s long-overdue historic investment in the arts,” said Bob Lehman, executive director of San Diego ART Matters. “This initiative transforms passion into purposeful, strategic action — placing the creative economy at the table of our region’s future.”

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on the proposal during its upcoming meeting on May 5.

Qualcomm reported quarterly earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street estimates and announced a major sale of AI chips, prompting its stock to jump nearly 17% in after-hours trading.

The San Diego-based wireless pioneer earned $7.370 billion, or $6.88 per share, on revenue of $10.599 billion in the second fiscal quarter ended March 29, compared to $2.812 billion, or $2.52 per share, on revenue of $10.979 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

The latest earnings included a deferred $5.7 billion income tax benefit resulting from “additional guidance issued on corporate alternative minimum tax,” according to the company.

On an operating basis, Qualcomm reported a 7% decline in earnings on 2% lower revenue.

With the results beating Wall Street’s expectations, and the AI chip announcement, shares rose as high as $182.20 in after-hours trading, a nearly 17% increase from the $156.00 close.

“We are pleased to deliver results in line with our guidance, reflecting solid execution as we navigate a challenging memory environment,” said Cristiano Amon, president and CEO.

He was referring to the shortage in memory chips caused by artificial-intelligence data center demand that is affecting smartphone sales.

As a result, company’s revenue from handset technology fell 13% during the quarter. However, revenue grew 38% for automotive technology and 9% for connected devices — the “internet of things.”

Amon said Qualcomm is focused on incorporating AI into its products, and is offering technology for data centers. He said “a leading hyperscaler custom silicon engagement is on track for initial shipments later this calendar year,” though offered no further details.

“We are in a period of profound industry transformation — the rise of AI agents is reshaping our roadmap across every platform we develop,” he said.

Two months and many coyote costumes after she was found, Val the Valentine’s Day Coyote is thriving.

The orphaned coyote pup rescued earlier this year in San Diego County has settled into her new home in Richmond, Virginia, where she is helping educate visitors about wildlife, the San Diego Humane Society announced on Wednesday.

Val was the first coyote of the season admitted to SDHS’ Project Wildlife program. She arrived unusually early in the year, on Feb. 14, 2026, after being found along a creek in Valley Center.

According to the Humane Society, a community member initially left her overnight in hopes her mother would return. When she did not, the pup was brought in for care.

“We did everything we could to give this pup a chance to remain wild,” said Autumn Welch, SDHS wildlife operations manager. “We even revisited the site where she came from with the finder to look for evidence of a den or siblings, but found nothing.”

Wildlife experts at the organization believe the pup was born in late December, outside the typical coyote breeding season of January through March. During her time at the Ramona Wildlife Center, staff initially provided hands-off care to prevent habituation.

Caregivers wore coyote disguises and introduced natural scents to help maintain her wild instincts, while she progressed from formula to eating solid food.

Ultimately, after a consultation with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, it was determined Val would not be able to survive in the wild on her own. The organizations decided to transfer her to a licensed wildlife facility.

Welch flew across the country with Val on April 8 to her new home at the Robins Nature Center in Maymont, a 100-acre Victorian estate and park in Richmond.

Robins’ staff have begun introducing Val to her new roommate, “Bernie,” another coyote living in the center’s newly renovated Virginia Wildlife Trail.

“Val will play an important role in helping people better understand coyotes and how to peacefully coexist with wildlife,” Welch said. “While we always strive to return animals to the wild, in cases like this, providing a high-quality permanent home is the best possible outcome.”

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

Six leading Democratic candidates for governor were seeking a breakout moment Tuesday night in a race that has been dominated by its lack of certainty, with two Republican candidates frequently in the lead. 

None of them appeared to find one in a chaotic, combative and often hard-to-follow CBS debate at Pomona College, prompting former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter to declare at one point that “this is worse than my teenagers at dinner.” 

With less than a week before ballots are mailed to voters, though, the targets were clear: Billionaire Tom Steyer, who has led fellow Democrats in polling and has already spent at least $132 million of his own money on the race; and Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary who has had a sudden surge in momentum since former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out amid allegations of sexual assault. 

Porter, once a rising national progressive star, got in a dig at Steyer, who has consolidated support among many of the party’s most left-wing activists, criticizing the fortune he made in part by investing in fossil fuels when he tried to tout his climate-friendly credentials and policy of “making polluters pay.” Steyer has said that he subsequently divested from those investments and devoted himself to addressing climate change.

“How about profiteers pay?” Porter asked pointedly.

Becerra, meanwhile, was criticized by moderate Democratic San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan for his mixed record as former President Joe Biden’s health secretary and for bristling when pressed for policy specifics. At one point, Becerra argued with one of the five debate moderators over the legality of his proposal to call a state of emergency to freeze home insurance rates. 

Becerra entered the debate fresh off a recent boost in polling and fundraising, buoyed by an army of online influencers whose posts adviser Michael Bustamante said are “all organic.” The candidate was eager to spar with his competitors, but his newfound spotlight has also come with scrutiny about his record on immigration and health.

Progressives and Steyer’s campaign have also highlighted Becerra’s support from companies like Chevron and his handling of an influx of unaccompanied migrant children as Biden’s health secretary. A 2023 New York Times investigation found that those children — whom Becerra had pressured officials to process and place as if they were running an “assembly line” — ended up in dangerous child labor jobs. 

Becerra later dismissed the criticism as a “MAGA talking point” and said the Department of Homeland Security was responsible for the child labor. 

“We did everything we could,” he said. 

Republican Chad Bianco, the ornery Riverside County sheriff with a penchant for the conspiratorial, was also on the offensive Tuesday night. He leapt to attack Democratic policies wholesale as “lies” whenever he could. He drew groans from the audience when he interrupted Becerra to state, falsely, that COVID-19 vaccines distributed under Biden had “poisoned” millions of Americans.

His frequent broadsides at state regulations prompted Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond to attack Bianco’s recent unprecedented seizure of 650,000 ballots in Riverside County.

Little to differentiate Democrats

But the Democrats largely failed to differentiate themselves as they tackled questions on the cost of living, health care, education, housing and energy, struggling to promote new policies to address the crushing cost of living. They were careful not to attack the liberal policies of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has declined to endorse any of them. 

Even getting a moment in the spotlight was hard in a debate format that seemed to jump from subject to subject and in which candidates frequently interrupted one another. 

“They’re all wrong,” Mahan said, as he tried to walk the line between the Republicans supporting a Trump tax policy that will cut up to 2 million people from public health coverage and Democrats calling for publicly funded single-payer health care estimated to cost $392 billion in California. 

But Mahan didn’t offer much of an alternative, saying the answer was “incentivizing actual health.”

All eight said they support forcing homeless residents who refuse repeated shelter offers into mandated mental health treatment facilities. Mahan and Thurmond agreed with Republicans Bianco and Steve Hilton that the state gas tax should be suspended; Becerra, Porter, Steyer and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa disagreed. 

On energy, Porter agreed with Mahan and Villaraigosa that the state should aim to keep oil refineries open amid skyrocketing gas prices while working toward greater electrification, while Steyer called for more taxes on oil industry profits. Hilton, who has promised to eliminate many climate goals to lower the price of gas, did not say what he would do to support clean energy. He has dominated most polling in the governor’s race.

“I think I’m more confused on who to vote for now than ever,” said Pomona College politics student Kloi Ogans after the debate. “So I have a lot more researching to do.”

As part of the debate, Ogans was invited to ask the candidates about rebuilding housing in California. She said after the debate that young voters are worried about affordability and concerned about Trump’s immigration enforcement sweeps. She particularly wanted to hear from Becerra and Porter, but the sparring among candidates made her disinterested.

CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.

San Diego’s South Bay has long taken pride in its deep connections to Mexico.

Enter the second Trump administration, which has thrown the region’s cross-border identity, culture and commerce into chaos.

San Diego hasn’t seen the dramatic onslaught of immigration enforcement that made national headlines in Minneapolis or Los Angeles but as our Jim Hinch reports, it’s suffering nonetheless.

Unpredictable and seemingly random enforcement operations have left residents and workers unsettled. Business and transit ridership are down. Even health clinics are seeing fewer patients.

Meanwhile, Hinch reports, South Bay politicians and community leaders are grappling with what they can do to help as residents demand support.

Read the full story here.

Democratic Super PACs Pour Big Bucks Into Congressional Race

Cue the big money.

Democrats are pouring millions into the 48th Congressional District race in the hopes of eventually flipping the seat, reports the Union-Tribune. For now, much of their fire power is trained on each other.

The current outside spending edge tilts strongly toward Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city councilmember. A pro-Israel group is supporting von Wilpert to the tune of more than a million dollars and the state’s largest labor union has spent more than $100,000 on her behalf. 

But Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar is also the beneficiary of some very deep pockets. Campa-Najjar’s longtime partner is U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs, granddaughter of Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm. Jacobs pumped $500,000 into a group supporting Campa-Najjar.  

The Democratic-led House Majority PAC has pledged $4.8 million to the eventual Democratic nominee.

Last week was a rough one for Campa-Najjar, as we wrote in last week’s Politics Report. Laura Loomer came at him because his grandfather was a high-level official in Palestine’s Fatah party. The U.S. Navy also came at him for calling himself an officer in the military, while not stipulating that he is actually a reservist.  

Von Wilpert’s team has called him out for accepting money from billionaires. Campa-Najjar fired back and said he’d rather get financial support from groups that support veterans and small donors than a pro-Israel super PAC.

In Other News

• An analysis by Mayor Todd Gloria ranks library and recreation centers by their importance to the community in the midst of big budget cuts. In the analysis he lays out different scenarios for City Council to consider in order to conserve hours and minimize impact on different neighborhoods. (Union-Tribune)
• A Superior Court judge has ordered Rady Children’s Hospital to continue providing gender-affirming care until at least this Friday. (CBS 8)
• Turns out it’s tough to hire dispatchers. The Harbor Police with the Port of San Diego wants special permission to rehire recently retired dispatchers to fill staffing gaps. (Union-Tribune)
• America’s Finest Charter School in Talmadge will shut down at the end of the school year. (10 News)
• City residents who need help covering trash and recycling fees have until Thursday to seek assistance from the city. (NBC 7)
• San Diego Whale Watch reported its first blue whale sighting of the season. (Instagram)
• Correction: We updated the Environment Report from Monday to note that a spokesperson quoted in the story worked for the governor of Baja California. 

The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and Mariana Martínez Barba. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: South Bay and the Immigration Crackdown appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

San Diego-area Assemblymember Akilah Weber Pierson wants to assign California educators some new homework: screening kids for math competency.  

A new bill authored by Weber would require schools to perform math testing for students in kindergarten, first or second grade. It would also require educators to offer extra support to students whose math skills are behind where they should be. 

A number of safeguards to more narrowly focus the screenings are also written into the bill. Those include the stipulation that scores could not be used to evaluate teachers or identify students for gifted programs. Students’ math skills are already tested in third grade. But in pitching the bill, Weber Pierson argued that disparities begin even earlier than that. 

“By that time, many students who are struggling with foundational math skills have already fallen behind,” Weber Pierson said. 

The effort is aimed at evening the incredibly uneven playing field of early childhood education. Some kids who enter the public school system may have already had years of more focused math education. Many of those who start behind, stay behind.  

“Unless those students get intervention, the gap will widen. It’ll be harder for them to access higher-level math classes later on, and this will have implications for future job opportunities and the economic future of California. It’s a continual closing of opportunities,” Alice Klein, the research director at WestEd told CalMatters. 

But like the reading curriculum reforms signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom late last year, the new math framework could face some stiff opposition. That signing capped years of a contentious back and forth debate in Sacramento during which multiple bills aimed at changing how we teach kids to read crumble under pressure.  

Like some of those earlier literacy bills, the powerful California Teachers Association opposes Weber Pierson’s math bill. In their telling, lawmakers should wait to see how the state’s new math framework impacts student achievement. They also argue that without additional funding to support students who are behind, a screener won’t do much.  

In any case, both the literacy bill and this latest math bill are responding to real deficiencies. Statewide, California students still haven’t made up pandemic-era losses in student performance. Only a little more than a third of students met math standards in statewide tests. That number is even lower for Black and Latino students. 

Nationwide, the state’s fourth graders were tied for sixth lowest in math proficiency according to 2024’s NAEP tests. In reading, the state’s fourth graders tied for eighth lowest. 

“It’s frustrating for people who have worked in the education space and for those who have been looking at these numbers for decades — a generation — and seeing that, as a state, we have not prioritized education,” Weber Pierson told California Black Media at a recent press conference. “But I am grateful that we are taking steps to fix it.” 

San Diego Unified’s New Motivation Meter Shows Modest Gains, Big Gaps 

As San Diego Unified continues to embark into the unknown in its attempts to measure student wellness, district officials on Tuesday presented the second results of a survey intended to measure student motivation.  

The survey measured a handful of school-related factors. Those included things like how safe kids feel at school and how good their relationships with teachers are. It also asked about more personal attributes, like whether students demonstrate things like grit or a growth mindset.  

The results showed modest district-wide gains across almost all of the domains, with students’ ability to manage stress and calm themselves seeing the highest increase. Still, the percentage of kids who answered positively in each of the categories lingered in the 50s and 60s.  

More worryingly, though, Black, Latino and English learner students saw marked decreases across almost all categories surveyed. At Trustee Shana Hazan’s prompting, district officials said they would come back with strategies to turn that trend around.  

Along with the standard survey, the district collected recorded testimonies from students. Officials then turned to a new tool in the district’s toolkit to make sense of the voice recordings at scale. The AI-powered program, called Impacter Pathway, analyzes student responses to prompts and identifies attributes, characteristics or trends that may have been expressed, but not stated outright.  

District data guru Roman del Rosario and Area Superintendent Erin Richison walked board members and attendees through the system’s analysis of one boy’s statement. In the statement, the boy said he came from a family that had struggled and that he wanted to succeed to prove himself. To do that, he sometimes takes on challenges he knows may be too big for him. The program identified the statement as expressing grit and a desire to be pushed.  

It was an interesting exhibition that clearly resonated with board members, for whom finding ways to divine data from the squishiness of wellness monitoring has been a primary challenge. 

 Trustee Cody Petterson acknowledged there will likely be concerns about student privacy, and admitted to being icked out by the prospect of AI in this context. Still, he said he was “deeply moved.” 

“I always go back to three years ago when we started this process and our consultant said ‘Hey, you really shouldn’t do this, no one in the country is doing this, we don’t have metrics yet,’” Petterson recalled. “You are creating the tools to hold ourselves accountable to creating this space of wellness.” 

Pooch Poo Soils School Fields; Budget Cuts Curtail Caca Cops 

San Diego Unified’s long-running joint-use program has opened up school facilities all over the district to the public. One of the most popular examples has been the district opening fields to community members after school hours.  

But the program hasn’t been all sunshine and roses. It’s also featured some holes and a whole lot of poop, courtesy of community members who let their pooches roam the fields off leash and don’t pick up after them. The problem got so bad at some joint-use fields that kids were tumbling into doggy-dug holes and doggy-dealt doodoo. The district even closed some joint-use fields to the public to curb the crappy behavior.  

Now, citywide budget cuts are taking a bite out of what little enforcement existed.  

The city of San Diego used to contract with the Humane Society to patrol the parks, but that partnership ended last year. Officials confirmed to Axios their officers no longer responded to calls reporting off leash dogs at local school fields. And while the city is adding stickers at some school fields directing residents to report bad behavior on the Get it Done app, there’s still no function that allows such reports.  

Related: A new analysis from Mayor Todd Gloria’s office projects that the city will need to make deep cuts to its libraries and rec centers to fill its yawning deficit. The cuts, which will include significant reduction in hours and potential closures, would amount to nearly $8 million in savings. The current deficit stands at nearly $150 million. 

One More Thing: Just FYI, San Diego Unified’s Board Opposes Iran War 

In case you were wondering, San Diego Unified trustees are against the Iran war.  

The board voted 4-1 on Tuesday night to pass a resolution, authored by Petterson and Trustee Richard Barrera, that condemned the American- and Israeli-led conflict. Trustee Shana Hazan was the sole “no” vote, saying from the dais she felt the district should focus its advocacy on things more directly related to its students, like school funding.  

The resolution – which decried the war’s negative impact on civilians and children in the Middle East, the worldwide economy, local military families and democratic norms – also called on local congressional representative to do everything in their power to bring an end to the war. 

Even AI caught some fire, with the trustees writing: “The use of AI in the targeting of munitions – and the corresponding reduction of human oversight, judgment, and decision-making in the ‘kill chain’ – has introduced profound and unlegislated risks to civilian populations and, in particular, children.” 

During an emotional speech from the dais, Petterson, the self-professed John Boehner (another frequent crier) of the district’s board, tearfully spoke about his anti-war convictions. To Petterson, a straight line could be traced from the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said have contributed to the slow decline of America’s prosperity and opportunity, to the war in Iran. 

“I oppose all wars of aggression,” Petterson said. “I am a secular person, but I was raised in the church and in spite of no longer being a believer, per se, God is still watching.” 

The post Learning Curve: Local Assemblymember Wants New Math Screenings appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

OCEAN BEACH – Antiques and collectibles are how Ocean Beach entrepreneurs Ken and Nancy Freeman met, what they draw sustenance from, and what keeps them going — and going and going.

“We moved here from downtown San Diego,” said Ken Freeman, before finally settling in permanently at the Ocean Beach Antique Mall at 4926 Newport Ave.

Earlier this month, the couple marked their 50th anniversary dealing in antiques, half of that time in OB. It’s an occupation that began with the opening of their first antiques business on April 1, 1976.

How Ken first got involved with antiques is an interesting tale. “He answered an ad for a part-time job as an apprentice working on imported German clocks,” said Nancy Freeman, adding that her husband also “became quite a proficient woodworker” as an understudy in that trade too.

“We were right across from where they eventually built Petco Park,” said Nancy of their former downtown address. “We opened up out here Memorial Day weekend 2001, a couple of blocks up, and we’ve been here for 20 years in this spot, which was originally a women’s clothing store. We’re the third owners of an antiques footprint here.”

How Nancy and Ken got together is somewhat unusual as well. “I met him shopping in the store, I was a customer,” she said.

“She kept saying no — but she kept coming back,” said Ken. “Finally, she said yes.”

“And we have two beautiful daughters and two wonderful sons-in-law,” added Nancy, adding that their oldest daughter works at the mall and will probably take over one day.

Their downtown location was great, said Nancy, while indicating it wasn’t home, which is what Ocean Beach has become. “When we moved here, we just felt like we were in the right spot,” she said.

The Freemans’ OB Antique Mall is the epitome of a brick-and-mortar mom-and-pop. Their business is chock full — almost spilling over — with collectibles and memorabilia of all sorts they’ve gathered over the years.

Their almost unfathomable collection of items in-store includes everything from china and knick-knacks to a huge showcase of sterling silver, along with comic books, toy trolls with colored hair, and tiki items, plus plenty of sports and Disney memorabilia. There’s even a drawer full of collectible cocktail swizzle sticks and, of all things, a couple of pairs of wooden snowshoes.

Given the nature of their business, it’s technically a mini mall. “We have twelve different dealers besides ourselves,” said Nancy. “That’s why we get such an amazing mix of inventory.”

Some of OB Antique Mall’s dealers rent spaces with cases.

“Most of my dealers have been doing this for 20-plus years,” Nancy said. “So, they’re very seasoned: They know what they’re doing.”

Most of the mall’s dealers are local. Some have moved away but still rent space, and periodically return to bring more merchandise. Jewelry, both real and costume, is always a popular mall seller. Sterling silver, which OB Antique Mall carries a lot of, is also in high demand.

Antiques is also a trade that has proven to be somewhat surprisingly resilient to economic change. Despite the OB Pier being permanently closed due to storm damage, which has cut some into local business, Nancy said their mini-mall has been largely unaffected.

“Other businesses have said they’re off anywhere from 10% to 20%,” she said. “We are not. We have been going strong.”

Explaining the reason behind their mall’s being largely recession-proof, Nancy said, “Mainly, I really think it is that people love coming to San Diego. We’re a fun, funky little town. And we’re a getaway.”

And fun and funky is what Ocean Beach Antique Mall is, always has been, and always will be about.

On Saturday, Uptown hosted Adams Avenue Unplugged, a free musical walkabout that had the neighborhood’s streets buzzing with people, food vendors and the sound of live music.  

Adams Avenue Unplugged is an annual event that started back in 2012, but its foundation can be traced back decades earlier in accordance with San Diego’s rich music festival scene, evolving from the Roots Festival and the Adams Avenue Street Fair. 

The most recent edition took place on a two-mile stretch through Uptown’s neighborhoods, including University Heights, Normal Heights and Kensington. Over 90 performers took the stage in an assortment of 26 indoor and outdoor venues, including restaurants, bars and the historic Normal Heights Church, among others. 

With no need to RSVP or to purchase a ticket, guests had the freedom to choose whichever performance to attend, whether they gravitated towards a lively show by an indie rock band at a bar, a quiet and conversational acoustic folk set at a church, or a late night experimental DJ set at a dimly lit lounge. 

Throughout the day, Adams Avenue Unplugged welcomed new and returning artists in an array of musical genres that showcased the versatility of talent local to San Diego. 

Amongst the returning artists was Amanda Portela, who gave the first performance of the day at 11 a.m. in a coffee shop, Marta. Portela’s genre-defying music creates a distinct sound that transcends language and nationalities, blending Latin jazz, R&B and alternative rock. 

She has been part of Adams Avenue Unplugged for 15 years and has continued to experiment with distinct styles and musical combinations for every performance, this time joined solely by guitar player Nico Hueso. 

Underneath the Normal Heights sign just east of Felton Street on Adams, The Gravities played at The Rabbit Hole bar & restaurant in the afternoon. The band’s signature soul/funk fusion had the dance floor full as people danced along to the music of frontman and drummer Isaac Guerra, vocalist Riston Diggs, bassist Ben Roberson and electric guitarist Sam Triston.

The San Diego-based band drove the festival towards an energetic jam session that encouraged its audience to groove to a  ‘70’s inspired sound that has made them a staple in the city’s live music scene. 

Next door at The Ould Sod, country artist Sara Petite drew in an audience that had the bar filled to capacity. The intimate setting accommodated Petite, an electric guitar player and drummer, who played an original setlist, sharing personal stories through song in true country fashion.

The performance came three days before Petite left San Diego to complete a series of 10 shows through the United Kingdom. She is another of the returning artists who has come back to Adams Avenue Unplugged since 2012. 

Down the street at Smitty’s Service Auto Repair shop, The Beard and The Bird stood with their classic acoustic guitar, white upright bass and an additional violin that attracted the attention of passersby. In addition to performing original songs – self-described as “western swing music,”​ the duo gave a unique rendition of “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics. 

Event organizers transformed the space outside Smitty’s into an open-air courtyard complete with seating and food vendors, including Flavors of East Africa. Additional vendors throughout the event included Ponce’s Mexican Restaurant, House of Baro and Goodboy Pizza. For vinyl enthusiasts, Soul Side Vinyl had a pop-up outside of Mixed Grounds Coffee Shop. 

One disappointment – the cancellation from rock musician Alejandro Escovedo, who was set to perform in the Normal Heights Church as a headliner. So Deke Dickerson served as the last performer of the day at the venue, alternating between electric and acoustic guitar throughout his performance. He also told stories between songs, emotional country and rockabilly tunes, making for a personal performance.  

The event is set to continue next year after 2026’s successful installment again connected members of the community with local businesses, artists, vendors – and one another.

Note, featured photo: Vocalist Riston Diggs and bassist Ben Roberson of The Gravities; photo by Shanti Velasco.

UC San Diego on Tuesday announced the establishment of a new school focused on artificial intelligence thanks to a total of $125 million in donations from alumnus Taner Halicioglu.

The Halıcıoglu School of Data Science and Computing unites the earlier Halıcıoglu Data Science Institute and the San Diego Supercomputer Center into a single school.

The university said the new school’s vision is to advance data and computing to improve society, and to prepare the next generation of highly skilled technologists driving AI advancements.

“The Halıcıoglu School represents UC San Diego’s next leap forward in addressing the most compelling need of our times: transforming data into actionable knowledge to benefit mankind,” said Rajesh Gupta, dean of the new school. “In addition to serving as an academic hub for AI-related innovation, collaboration and ethics, the new school is also building the capacity to ensure computing and data literacy for all our students and prepare them for an exciting future in AI-enabled professions.”

Halicioglu graduated from UC San Diego in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He went on to work for Loudcloud and eBay before landing at Facebook in October 2004. He was Facebook’s first full-time hire, and managed operations through its first million users.

He is currently a lecturer at the university, and an active angel investor and advisor to startups through Keshif Ventures.

In 2017 he donated $75 million to the university, and recently pledged another $50 million.

“Data science and AI are shaping our world, and UC San Diego is at the forefront of these fields,” Halicioglu said. “I’m proud of UC San Diego and pleased to support the Halicioglu School of Data Science and Computing as it advances education, fuels discovery and creates lasting impact that will benefit society.”

Service on four new nonstop domestic routes began this month, with two more to come by the end of the summer, San Diego International Airport officials said Tuesday.

The new direct flights by Alaska and Southwest airlines include three California destinations, along with service to Dallas/Fort Worth and Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina. Flights to Boston are set to follow.

The new nonstops began on April 7, when Southwest Airlines added service to Santa Rosa. On April 22, Alaska Airlines began nonstops from San Diego to Oakland, Dallas/Fort Worth and Raleigh-Durham and also resumed nonstops to Santa Barbara after a three-year hiatus.

Southwest is set to add a direct flight to Boston on June 4 and one to Santa Barbara two months later.

Airport officials also announced the seasonal return of domestic routes and expanded availability of international routes:

The returning domestic routes, all set for May and June, are:

• May 6 – Jacksonville, Florida and Norfolk, Virginia (Breeze Airways)
• May 7 – Cincinnati and Raleigh-Durham (Breeze)
• May 8 – Pittsburgh (Breeze)
• May 16 – Anchorage (Alaska)
• June 4 – Pittsburgh (Southwest)
• June 11 – Kalispell/Glacier, Montana (Alaska), and
• June 13 – Missoula, Montana (Alaska).

The expanded international flights include two that already began. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines resumed service three times per week to Amsterdam on Feb. 21 and Lufthansa, on Saturday, began flying daily to Munich, Germany out of San Diego.

International expansions to come include:

• Friday – London-Heathrow, United Kingdom (British Airways), increasing to twice daily, and Calgary, Alberta (WestJet), increasing to nine weekly flights in July.
• Saturday – Montreal, Quebec (Air Canada), resuming daily, and Vancouver, British Columbia (Air Canada), increasing to three times daily.
• July 1: Panama City, Panama (Copa Airlines), increasing to five times per week.

The airport now offers 87 nonstop destinations, the most in its history.

“Nonstop flights offered this spring and summer are up by more than 10% over last year,” said Atif Saeed, president and CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

A man convicted of breaking into a woman’s Rancho Penasquitos condominium and killing her was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years to life in state prison.

Parrish Juan Chambers Jr., 47, was convicted by a San Diego jury of second-degree murder for the June 2022 killing of Nahal Connie Dadkhah, 45.

Prosecutors alleged Chambers smashed through a window to gain access to Dadkhah’s home and beat her to death, while Chambers’ defense attorney, Abram Genser, argued any injuries Chambers may have inflicted were not life-threatening. Dadkhah, he claimed, died of a brain bleed caused by excessive methamphetamine use.

Chambers’ murder conviction came in his second trial in the case. A separate San Diego jury acquitted him of first-degree murder, but deadlocked after more than three days of deliberation on lesser counts of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

The same jury did, however, convicted Chambers of battery and false imprisonment for other prior altercations in which prosecutors said Chambers pushed, grabbed and choked Dadkhah.

Chambers was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years to life in state prison for the murder, plus an additional two years for the false imprisonment count.

Superior Court Judge David Berry said that among the factors that led him to impose the prison terms consecutively was the ongoing domestic-violence related history between the pair, which included a restraining order imposed against Chambers that he violated at the time of Dadkhah’s killing.

Prior to being sentenced, Chambers said, “I want to send my apologies and condolences to the Dadkhah family.”

He maintained that he “loved Connie” and that while he would accept the sentence, he said, “I’m not a murderer.”

Dadkhah, 45, was found dead on a couch inside her Twin Trails Drive home on the morning of June 15 after Chambers told one of Dadkhah’s neighbors that she wasn’t breathing and asked him to call 911.

After her death, an autopsy revealed blunt-force injuries to Dadkhah’s head and more than 50 bruises and cuts, Deputy District Attorney Trisha Amador said.

Genser argued those injuries did not contribute to her death and that there was no evidence of a beating taking place in the condo, though he did concede that an “altercation” occurred. However, he said, the pair made up afterward.

While several neighbors called 911 on the night of June 14 to report the disturbance, officers who responded to the condo ultimately did not enter the residence and left the scene, sparking public criticism and a lawsuit from Dadkhah’s family.

In a news release from 2022 announcing Chambers’ arrest, police said officers went to the condo on a report of a disturbance involving Chambers, but left after being unable to confirm a crime had occurred or being able to make contact with anyone inside.

Dadhkah’s family alleged in their lawsuit that the officers “created a dangerous situation” by failing to enter Dadkhah’s home and preventing others from doing the same “by assuring concerned neighbors and citizens that they would respond and lulling (them) into relying upon those representations.”

A San Diego federal judge ruled twice in favor of the city of San Diego, finding that the officers’ actions did not constitute violations of Dadkhah’s constitutional rights. Last fall, Dadkhah’s family filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss their lawsuit.

Five years after the initial promise, officials in the U.S. and Mexico are finally beginning construction on a key piece of infrastructure designed to keep sewage out of the Tijuana River.

That piece of infrastructure is a pump station known as PB-1. Baja California’s secretary of water called it “the heart of our wastewater system,” but it hasn’t been doing well for a while.

Our MacKenzie Elmer first wrote about plans to repair the pump station in 2021, but there’s been little progress since.

When it’s working, PB-1 is supposed to send sewage water to a treatment plant in Mexico and another in the U.S. But when it’s not working, it allows sewage to spill over into the Tijuana river, contaminating the water.

Officials on Monday announced they had finally selected a contracting firm, as well as an engineering and construction firm, to fix the ailing pump station. Unfortunately, it’s not the only piece of equipment in the Tijuana River sewage system that needs repairs.

Read the full story here.

County Will Pay Subcontractors Hit by Scandal

Weeks ago, our Lisa Halverstadt highlighted another set of victims in the criminal misappropriation scandal surrounding a former county contractor: nonprofit contract partners and workers who went months without pay.

The county announced Monday it will pay six former subcontractors of the Harm Reduction Coalition nearly $150,000. It had previously directed those subcontractors struggling with unpaid bills to work out a deal with the troubled nonprofit. The Harm Reduction Coalition’s ex-finance chief is accused of spending county money on everything from plastic surgeries to purebred dogs.

Halverstadt reports that the county has since decided to send money to those subcontractors “given the unique circumstances.”

Read the full story here.

In Other News

• A statewide voter ID initiative received enough signatures to appear on the November ballot, the secretary of state’s office confirmed. The initiative would require voters to present government-issued identification at the polls or provide identifying information when voting by mail. (NBC 7)
• Last month, San Diego residents planned a huge work-from-the-beach meet up last month in Pacific Beach. City officials are now saying any future meet ups like that one will need special event permits. (Times of San Diego)
• Related: Remember when Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera said he wanted the city to stop killing free fun?
• San Diego County is the fifth most expensive place to own a home out of the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S., according to a new study by University of San Diego’s real estate school. (Union-Tribune)
• Have questions about how to vote, where to vote, mail-in ballots and more in the 2026 Primary Election? KPBS has answers. (KPBS)

The Morning Report was written by Tigist Layne and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: Finally, a Fix for Tijuana Sewage Pump appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Most days, the immigration crackdown tightening its grip on San Diego’s border region is all but invisible. 

Then, suddenly, it’s not. 

Late last month, according to one eyewitness, five Ford Explorers with tinted windows screeched to a halt on a side street near Chula Vista’s Third Avenue business district. 

Immigration enforcement agents wearing masks and tactical gear leaped from the SUVs and began chasing a group of men on the sidewalk.  

The men, looking for work in Chula Vista after attending an asylum hearing in downtown San Diego, scattered. 

Authorities caught two of the men, according to a local activist who monitors Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and witnessed the event. One escaped by jumping into a nearby backyard. 

“He was shaken up,” said the activist, who gave his name only as Aldo B. for fear of reprisal by authorities. “It’s the most powerful weapon in their toolkit: Fear. The fear they instill in the community. It’s an environment of uncertainty and instability.” 

It has been a little more than a year since President Donald Trump launched a nationwide crackdown on America’s roughly 14 million unauthorized immigrants. 

From the moment the highly publicized enforcement operation began, residents of South San Diego County, one of America’s most densely populated immigrant regions, feared the worst. 

What unfolded since then has not been what anyone expected. But it has shaken the proudly international region. 

South County, home to the world’s busiest transnational border crossing, is accustomed to immigration enforcement. Though comparisons are difficult because the Trump Administration has stopped updating several publicly available sources of immigration data, the region arguably saw more deportations during the Obama Administration than during Trump’s current surge. 

But today’s enforcement feels different, residents of South San Diego County say. The arrests seem more random. The agents act more ruthlessly. And the tactics sometimes appear flat-out unlawful. 

That has led to measurable declines in business activity, public transit ridership and even visits to low-cost health clinics. 

A once outward facing and aspirational region is suddenly anxious about its cross-border ties and uncertain of its future direction. 

“The human toll is serious,” said Chula Vista City Councilmember Jose Preciado, who said his office receives a steady stream of communication from residents anxious about immigration issues. 

“This federal government is turning its back on our immigrant traditions,” Preciado said. “We need to support as many people as we can.” 

It may seem hard to remember, but just 18 months ago, many South County voters welcomed the prospect of more immigration enforcement.  

Voters in the region shifted to the right, politically, in the 2024 presidential election, motivated in part by a sense that San Diego’s southern border had become too porous. 

Shortly after the election, a prominent local Democratic political consultant told Voice of San Diego local Democratic officials were engaged in a panicked “run to the middle” on the issue. 

“Stop talking about immigration,” said the consultant, who asked to remain unnamed to speak candidly of internal Democratic Party deliberations. “Just talk about renting a home and buying groceries…Latinos care about the same issues everyone else does.” 

At first, such advice seemed sensible. Trump’s shift in immigration policy was barely visible on the streets of southern San Diego County. 

Data from the Deportation Data Project, which publishes federal immigration enforcement statistics obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, show that, during the first half of 2025, South County cities and communities saw comparatively few ICE arrests. 

In the first six months of 2025, ICE arrested more than twice as many people per capita in the northern San Diego County city of Escondido as in Chula Vista, even though Chula Vista, South County’s largest city, is more than twice as big as Escondido. 

By the second half of the year, however, enforcement activity began to rise. More alarming for residents, the rise followed no discernible pattern. 

In National City, which has one of South County’s highest concentrations of undocumented immigrants, immigration authorities arrested just three people in 2025, according to the Deportation Data Project – a decline from the previous year. 

In San Ysidro, by contrast, home to the region’s — and the world’s — busiest border crossing, there were 492 immigration arrests in 2025. That represented a sea change from the previous year, when the Data Project records no arrests at all. 

(Graeme Blair, a UCLA political scientist who helps direct the Data Project, said the lack of recorded 2024 arrests in San Ysidro possibly stems from changes in how federal officials reported arrest location information.) 

Though South County never saw the militarized enforcement operations that convulsed Los Angeles, Minneapolis and other cities, the slow-building wave of arrests felt harsher and less comprehensible than any the region had experienced before. 

Three of the San Ysidro arrests recorded in 2025 took place on Christmas Day. One of the people arrested that day was a 77-year-old woman from Mexico for whom the Deportation Data Project records no prior criminal record. 

Preciado, of Chula Vista, said authorities seemed to be arresting people at random, regardless of legal pretext. 

“I’ve always believed in the rule of law and due process,” he said. “These Trump policies are not what I’ve always known.” 

In Imperial Beach, a lull in arrests during the first half of the year suddenly gave way to 13 arrests in July, followed by sporadic bursts in August, October and November. 

Chula Vista saw seven arrests in January, followed by just three in February. Nine arrests in October were followed by just two in September. There were no arrests in December. 

“It will be dead for weeks, then a bunch of activity in a couple of days,” said activist Aldo B. of enforcement operations. 

For many, the unpredictability became the surge’s defining feature. 

“They are looking for people in schools and churches and homes,” said Antonio Cardenas, a Mexican citizen who lives in Tijuana and crosses the border regularly to shop and visit friends. 

Speaking one recent morning in San Ysidro, Cardenas said virtually everyone he knows on both sides of the border is reluctant to spend time in public in the United States because they simply don’t know what might happen. 

“We’re afraid,” he said. 

Maricela Flores, a salesperson for the cell phone provider TruConnect, said the pervasive atmosphere of low-grade fear has dampened business. 

“Business is down since last year,” she said earlier this month at a TruConnect sales pavilion across the street from the San Ysidro Transit Center. 

According to a recent San Diego Metropolitan Transit System mid-year performance report, ridership on trolley lines, including the Blue Line servicing the San Ysidro Transit Center, is down this year compared to the first quarter of last year. 

MTS CEO Sharon Cooney told agency board members in March officials believe “federal immigration enforcement” likely contributed to the unexpected ridership decline. 

“People in the community…are staying hidden,” said MTS board member and National City Councilmember Marcus Bush. “Businesses are losing because those that employ undocumented immigrants, it’s hard to hire people or sometimes employees don’t come to work.” 

Scott Andrews, president and CEO of local Neighborhood National Bank, confirmed the hiring challenges. 

“In some of the service industries, they’re definitely seeing issues with manpower,” Andrews said. “The labor pool has shrunk, and a lot of these might be immigrants crossing the border, and now they’re not.” 

Jim O’Callaghan, president and CEO of the South County Economic Development Council, said in addition to labor shortages, business owners he speaks to cite a more general pall of uncertainty clouding their prospects. 

“What we’re hearing and seeing is more trepidation and uncertainty than anything,” he said. “There’s a tightening of sorts from what they’d normally see of foot traffic. If they used to get the same visitor two times per week, now it’s once or none.” 

In Chula Vista, city officials last month were surprised to discover hotel tax revenue from bayfront hotels was less than officials had projected. 

The city’s finance director said hotel operators reported a decline in bookings from cross-border guests. 

Even local healthcare providers have experienced a change. 

San Ysidro Health, a network of federally subsidized low-cost health clinics that serves a predominantly Latino population in South San Diego County, reported a sudden drop-off in uninsured patients beginning in 2024, the year the Biden Administration began tightening border enforcement. 

California residents are eligible to pay for care at low-cost clinics via Medi-Cal, the state’s federally funded health insurance program. Mexican nationals crossing the border for treatment are not. 

The drop-off in uninsured patients continued last year, according to preliminary figures provided by a spokesperson for the San Ysidro clinic network. 

Overall growth in patients also slowed in 2024 and 2025, according to federal reports. And in 2024, the number of what the reports call “migratory and seasonal agricultural workers” plummeted from 377 to just 31. 

Giovanni Tec, the San Ysidro Health spokesperson, said equivalent migratory worker figures for 2025 are not yet available. 

Felix Gomez, a contract welder at San Diego’s naval shipyard, said foreign-born workers are crossing the border less because “there are no jobs here. In the last three to four months, it went down…People are staying in Tijuana waiting to work again.” 

Gomez said the job crunch is exacerbated by employers’ increasing strictness about employees’ authorization to work in the United States. 

“With no papers, you can’t get anything,” Gomez said. “Even with papers, it’s hard. Even with a Green Card or U.S. citizenship. Last year, it was okay. This year, it’s going down.” 

The ties binding South San Diego County with Mexico and other Latin American countries are deep. Residents said the sudden injection of fear into what once felt like routine cross-border connections has left them disoriented. 

“Chula Vista is the hub of the San Diego-Tijuana mega-region,” said Chula Vista Director of Economic Development David Graham in an interview last year. “Forty-three percent [of foreign-born residents in Chula Vista] entered [the U.S.] before 1990. They came to us three decades ago.” 

Now, those longtime residents say they are looking over their shoulders. 

Chula Vista Elementary School District Trustee Francisco Tamayo was born in Mexico and became a U.S. citizen nearly two decades ago. These days, he said, he carries his passport everywhere he goes. 

“Just in case,” he said. 

Tamayo and other local leaders said foreign-born residents often ask for help. But with little control over federal immigration policy, officials mostly have resorted to incremental measures. 

Chula Vista recently adopted an ordinance restating the city’s commitment to state-mandated limits on cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. 

The ordinance added provisions limiting disclosure of residents’ personal information and restricting immigration authorities’ access to certain city facilities. Still, it generated comparatively little public debate and has not quelled residents’ demands for help. 

At Southwestern College, which enrolls close to 600 students who are non-U.S. citizens, students packed a recent board of trustees meeting demanding a more vigorous response from school leaders to the immigration issue. 

Trustees hastily adopted a measure similar to Chula Vista’s last month. 

The rush to pass laws has led to debate among local leaders about how best to respond to the immigration crackdown. 

“If you can accomplish something, great. If not, don’t,” said National City Mayor Ron Morrison, explaining why his city has not rushed to emulate what he called other cities’ largely symbolic efforts. 

Morrison said though his city is home to a large foreign-born population, opinions about immigration policy vary widely. 

He cited recent social media posts critical of a Jan. 30 anti-ICE protest in National City that some residents said had devolved into what Morrison described as “people doing donuts” in their cars. 

Another recent social media post encouraging high school students to skip school to attend a protest “had 200 comments on it and 80 percent were against,” Morrison said. 

Absent unified political leadership, residents have begun taking matters into their own hands. 

On a recent Wednesday morning, roughly a dozen local activists gathered at a National City shopping center at the intersection of Plaza Boulevard and Highland Avenue. 

Brandishing signs and a bullhorn, the activists announced the formation of what they called the National City Defense Coalition, a partnership of local community groups that plans to train residents to spot, monitor and, if possible, disrupt the activities of federal immigration authorities. 

“A lot of people are really in fear,” said Izabella Lopez McGawley, a coalition leader. “We’re forming this coalition to stop that from happening.” 

Judy de los Santos said her organization, Union del Barrio of San Diego, would train coalition members in monitoring tactics. Already, she said, her organization has been monitoring ICE agents in Linda Vista, Escondido and other parts of San Diego County. 

“Today we’re adding National City to that work,” she said. 

Coalition members said they plan to canvas local neighborhoods, handing out flyers in Spanish and Tagalog and encouraging residents to call a network of volunteer responders whenever they see immigration agents in their neighborhoods. 

Aldo B., the Chula Vista activist, said it was a phone call from a watchful resident that alerted him to the enforcement operation against asylum seekers in his city. 

“There’s definitely a lot of fear in the community,” said McGawley. “At the same time, there are a lot of people who are agitated in the current situation and pushed to take action in ways they never felt the need to before.” 

“We’re looking at how to mobilize.” 

The post Immigration Enforcement Is Slowly Suffocating San Diego’s Border Region appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Employees at San Diego’s REI store have filed to unionize, REI Union announced Monday, with the aim of joining United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 135, the largest private-sector union in the region. 

Workers voted to unionize in hopes of improving working conditions, scheduling practices and pay, along with keeping the co-op true to its original mission. 

“We’re excited to join a national movement of REI workers standing up to save the heart of the co-op that is losing its way,” said Juan Pablo Contreras, a local REI worker, in a news release.

“Like many of my co-workers, I am passionate about the outdoors and sharing it with everyone. With our union, we hope to hold REI accountable to that mission.”

The Kearny Mesa store at 5556 Copley Drive generates the third-most revenue in the nation for the outdoor equipment retailer. If the unionization is successful, San Diego would be the largest REI store to unionize. 

Employees at two other California REI stores, Santa Cruz and Berkeley, have become union members. With the local vote, the San Diego REI store could become the 12th in the chain to unionize since organizing efforts began in 2022. However, none have successfully negotiated a contract despite four years of collective bargaining. 

REI Union has accused the retailer of union-busting activities and manipulating board elections. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged that raises, promotions and benefits have been withheld at unionized stores. 

The company responded to the NLRB complaint by saying it “has negotiated – and will continue to negotiate – in good faith with stores that have chosen union representation.” As to the allegation of withholding pay, officials said that negotiations were ongoing, “so no pay changes have been implemented – there’s nothing to ‘withhold.'”

REI Union has announced a planned boycott of the anniversary sale, a Black Friday-level sales event, if the union stores don’t have a contract by May 1. The sale is set to begin May 16.

“Watching unionized green vests throughout the country mobilize for the working conditions they deserve, despite the company’s ruthless union-busting tactics, has made us, in San Diego, all the more determined to organize,” said Phen Green, another REI store worker. “We know there is strength in numbers. We are excited to join and expand this movement.”

Featured photo: Site of new UFCW Local 135 building in Scripps Ranch; file photo courtesy of Local 135.

Volunteers are the heartbeat of nonprofit organizations like Serving Seniors. Their energy and kindness make our programs possible and show our clients the humanity behind a warm smile and helping hand.

Serving Seniors volunteers create a community of caring. They see our clients as family, friends and neighbors. Their contributions of time, talent and treasure bring our mission to life every day.

April is National Volunteer Month. At Serving Seniors, we celebrate our volunteers every day. They are nothing less than essential to our work with San Diego’s low-income and homeless older adults. We could not provide our services to as many deserving people without them.

Serving Seniors gratefully welcomes its growing number of community and corporate partners, whether brand new to us or longtime supporters, who selflessly give back to our community of older adults in need.

In our recent 2024-2025 annual report, Serving Seniors reported 13,577 volunteer hours were donated to our organization, with a value of this time calculated as $544,980. This nearly half-million dollars in savings allows us to use it elsewhere to increase our outreach.

But we can’t put a price on the human connection our volunteers make with our older adult clients.

ASML, a technology company based in the Netherlands with a major presence in San Diego County, is a champion for our clients. Throughout the year, a team of ASML employees joins Serving Seniors to volunteer all day at our Gary and Mary West Senior Wellness Center. Together, they help prepare and serve hundreds of nutritious meals to older adults in need. They take time to connect personally with enthusiasm and warmth. Meaningful conversations flow in our dining room. These individual small acts of service make a big difference.

Misti Benson, program manager for society and community engagement at ASML, reports that over the past year, ASML employee volunteers have contributed nearly 100 hours of service to Serving Seniors, including assembling 400 hygiene care kits, serving hundreds of meals, and leading activities encouraging connection, creativity, and community from bingo to craft projects to ice cream socials.

“ASML’s partnership with Serving Seniors provides opportunities for employee volunteers to engage directly with seniors while supporting essential services that promote well‑being and social connection,” said Benson. “These experiences reinforce why employee volunteering is such a meaningful part of ASML’s culture and why partnerships like this one are central to the spirit of Global Volunteer Month: showing up, working together and strengthening the community through service.”

In addition to its hands-on support, ASML recently provided a $650,000 grant to Serving Seniors to increase the health and wellbeing of low-income seniors by providing nutritionally sound meals. ASML’s support allows us to rent five large cargo vehicles to support our home-delivered meal clients. Over 60% of our annual 1.5 million meals served are home-delivered. With delivery costs rising, this is a true lifeline.

ASML is one of many champions for our older adult clients. Our partnership with ASML highlights the power of corporate volunteerism in creating stronger, more caring communities. We’re grateful for their generosity, teamwork and commitment to supporting our mission of helping seniors live healthy and fulfilling lives.

Corporate and business partners are essential in supporting the critical services Serving Seniors provides in San Diego County, alongside the many devoted individual volunteers we count on day in and day out.

For 56 years, more than 200 community leaders have provided their high level oversight, set strategic priorities, and offered their insights as members of the Serving Seniors board of directors. We’re fortunate to have dedicated people who devote countless hours behind the scenes to ensure the viability of Serving Seniors. They bring a rich and diverse background of expertise from law, finance, housing, information technology, business management, communications, social services and more.

The United Nations states that “Volunteerism is a basic expression of human relationships. It is about people’s need to feel that they matter to others.”

Wherever you contribute whether as a volunteer, a donor, or both, you are caring for people and causes that benefit everyone in our community. At Serving Seniors, what our volunteers give matters deeply to our older adult clients. Because of our volunteers, our clients thrive and age with respect and dignity, and the warmth of shared smiles and conversation. We can’t put a price on their generosity and giving spirit.

Melinda Forstey is president and chief executive officer of Serving Seniors.

Want to submit a letter to the editor, guest column or opinion piece? Find our guidelines and submission form here.

San Diego County has announced that it will reimburse local organizations who never received payment from a contractor who is accused of embezzlement.

The county said that it will pay nearly $150,000 to six subcontractors for services delivered on behalf of the Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego, which reportedly never paid them for work they had done.

Amy Knox, the former chief operating officer of Harm Reduction Coalition SD, has been accused of taking more than $130,000 in public funds to pay for personal expenses such as plastic surgery procedures, trips to Hawaii and Disneyland, and payments for her SDG&E and credit card bills.

According to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, the funds she is accused of taking were part of over $4 million awarded to the nonprofit for its efforts to prevent and reduce fentanyl deaths within San Diego County.

Knox, 45, “controlled the nonprofit’s finances and was designated as the contract administrator for the county contracts,” the DA’s office said at the time.

She faces up to seven years in state prison if convicted of charges that include felony counts of misappropriating public funds and embezzlement.

Knox was arrested in February.

All HRCSD subcontractors may also seek victim restitution for additional money they may be owed through the San Diego County District Attorney’s criminal case, the county said in a statement.

The Harm Reduction Coalition was responsible for distributing the anti-overdose medication naloxone along with drug testing materials throughout the county, which ended all contracts with the organization in mid-2025.

“The County is committed to accountability and is working with an independent auditor to review its overall contracting processes,” officials said in a statement. “The auditor is expected to deliver a report with findings and recommendations by the end of May.

“Once the independent audit is complete, the County will evaluate the findings and determine additional steps needed to strengthen contracting practices and protect public resources.”

The county added that despite the termination of HRCSD contracts in 2025, the naloxone distribution efforts have continued without interruption.

Scott Pesch, 59, and his son Ethan, 23, are in San Diego on Monday for a baseball game, though neither has a particular affinity for the Cubs or the Padres.

The duo, originally from Eureka, will spend the evening at Petco Park after more than a month on the road and roughly 1,500 miles of cycling as part of a 9,563-mile cross-country ride to every Major League Baseball stadium in the United States and Canada.

San Diego marks their fifth stop of an eventual 30-ballpark journey. Nearly three years in the making, the trip moves from stadium to stadium in support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Ethan rides a Salsa Warbird gravel bike, while Scott pedals a Canyon road bike built for long-distance racing.

“Our longest stretch so far has been about 900 miles,” Scott Pesch said. “We average roughly 100 miles a day. From Seattle to Sacramento we rode nine straight days, seeing the Mariners before heading down to the A’s. Our longest day has been about 110 miles.”

“The most I’d ever ridden before this was 65 miles,” Ethan Pesch added. “So doing that Seattle to Sacramento stretch was a lot on my body. For him, it was nothing. I don’t understand how he does it—he’s in great shape—but it’s physically taxing. It’s also mentally taxing because you have to do it every single day. There’s that residual effect on your mind.”

For the Pesch family, the cross-country ride has become a kind of rite of passage into adulthood. Scott first completed a similar journey in 1994, and decades later, with Ethan—the eldest of his three children—having recently graduated from the University of Arizona, the timing felt right to recreate the experience side by side.

Scott Pesch, a commercial real estate broker who has stepped away from work for the duration of the ride, said the trip has deepened his relationship with his son.

“I’m not retired, but I’m taking these six months off,” he said. “I’m really getting to know Ethan better. Work is kind of gone right now, and I’m focused on the trip with him. We bicycle together every day. There are good days and bad days—it’s very challenging—but I’m getting to know my son pretty damn well, and it’s only getting better.”

“There are good days, there are bad days,” Ethan Pesch added. “You just have to keep pushing, because at the end of the day, once we make it to Miami and reach our goal of raising money for St. Jude’s, that’s going to be a surreal moment for both of us.”

As of Monday, the pair has raised more than $33,000 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, largely through outreach on social media via their Instagram account @bike2ballparks.

“Our short-term goal is the bike ride itself—taking it in small segments,” Scott Pesch said. “If you think about the whole thing, it becomes overwhelming. Our first goal is to get to $100,000, but we’d love to give a check for a million dollars.”

“We started this thing organically. We had zero followers on Instagram,” Ethan Pesch said. “Combined we’re over 4,000 now.”

The connection to St. Jude dates back more than three decades, to Scott Pesch’s time as a student at Cal Poly Humboldt. His favorite professor, Dr. Richard Stull, lost his daughter Camilla to cancer at age 12.

Reading her obituary, Scott said he was overwhelmed with grief—as a parent, he added, it is impossible to fully imagine that kind of loss.

Scott said Stull later shared something Camilla told him before she died: “Dad, please don’t let people forget about me,” Scott said. “And I just thought, oh my God. I couldn’t believe it.”

“That’s a way of people not forgetting Camilla,” he said. “That’s the extra—that’s the good stuff.”

Becoming a parent, he said, reshaped his outlook. “Once you have kids, you put things in perspective,” he said. “Before kids, I was selfish. You’re only thinking about yourself. But when
you have kids, things switch. I can’t imagine losing my kids. That’s where I put myself when I think about people who have gone through that. And that’s the reason why we’re doing this.”

Scott, his wife and Ethan, later traveled to Memphis to visit the St. Jude campus in person.

“We wanted to feel what we were raising money for,” Scott Pesch said. “You can read all the brochures, look at the website, but if you don’t go there and feel it—the people giving care to young kids—you don’t really understand how effective they are.”

From San Diego, the next leg is 13 days and 847 miles of riding to Phoenix, where they will take in a Diamondbacks game. They are set to finish their trek in Miami on Sept. 26.

“My only little pet peeve is that I like to start on time,” Scott Pesch said. “If we’re leaving at 8 a.m. because we’ve got a 100-mile day, then let’s leave at 8 a.m. He’s a little more lackadaisical, and that’s okay—it kind of helps balance out my type-A behavior.”

The big package of reforms county supervisors want to put on the ballot has to go through one more approval before it’s officially something voters will consider in November. 

At least one state senator hopes they will change it significantly before it does. 

Sen. Catherine Blakespear told our Politics Report team that she finds the measure “outrageous” not because of what it does, necessarily, but because of when it does it. 

Main beef: Blakespear said she is uncharacteristically calling out her fellow Democrats at the county because the proposal includes limiting supervisors’ terms to three. Right now they’re limited to two terms in office. If, she says, such a change is a good one for the long term, then they should do it for future supervisors, not themselves. 

“It’s unquestionably a self-serving power grab. It gives us all a bad name,” she said. She also objected to parts of it that would limit the terms of the sheriff, district attorney, assessor and treasurer-tax collector. 

Also: We have a report about the disappointing revenue numbers from the trash tax the city began collecting. They didn’t anticipate people would want smaller bins at the level they do. 

The Politics Report is for Voice of San Diego donors. 

You can read it here.

Correction: The original version of the Politics Report included a line about what other legislators who represent San Diego think about putting term limits on the district attorney, sheriff and others. This was the result of a misunderstanding and has been removed. 

Sacramento Report: The ‘Stop Nick Shirley Bill’

Some Republican state lawmakers fear a proposed state bill intended to protect the privacy of people who work with immigrants would stop “citizen journalists” from investigating fraud. 

GOP lawmakers coined Assemblymember Mia Bonta’s bill the “Stop the Nick Shirley Act,” after a conservative activist whose videos about Somali-operated Minnesota day care centers spurred a immigration-enforcement surge. 

At the bill’s hearing, people testified they feared violence because they provide legal, health or social services to immigrants. Bonta’s bill would allow those workers to provide a substitute mailing address to the secretary of state’s office to protect their privacy, akin to survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse. 

Nadia Lathan, our Sacramento Reporter, is also tracking a bill that would delay government response times to public records requests. Many city and county governments back the bill because they say people are abusing requests. First Amendment and civil liberties groups worry the elongated timeline would dissuade people from filing public records.

Read the full newsletter here.

VOSD Podcast: Those County Reforms

On the latest episode, our hosts talk about your ballot and the city of San Diego’s budget trouble.

First up! San Diego County supervisors have officially taken the first step to put a measure on the ballot that would extend their term limits. But there are other county government reforms in that measure that are way more interesting.

Next, Mayor Todd Gloria released his proposed budget. Some folks are very mad, but we saw that coming. We explain the proposed cuts on the show.

Finally: You got to be delusional to run for governor of California. The podcast crew goes through a voter guide to explore some of your more interesting options.

Listen here!

In Other News 

• Baja California officials convicted a woman to 20 years in prison in connection with the execution-style killings of surfers from San Diego and Australia two years ago. (NBC 7)
• SDG&E released a proposed route for a new transmission line from Imperial Valley to the Orange County border. At least one desert conservation group is already opposing the power line. (Union-Tribune)
• Construction on controversial tiny homes for unhoused people began in Lemon Grove. (Union-Tribune)
• New report says we have dirty air. (KPBS)

The post Morning Report: Senator Wants Redo on County Reforms appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

This post first appeared in the Politics Report.

The budget hits just keep coming.

The city expects to bring in less revenue with the trash fee than expected because some customers are returning their additional trash cans — while others are opting for lower-cost, smaller bins.  

The environmental services department projects it will generate approximately $123.9 million in revenue in the coming year. That’s about $9 million less than what city officials assumed in the department’s cost-of-service study.

The $9 million funding discrepancy is just the latest problem in San Diego’s troubled budget. Hundreds of people protested the mayor’s proposed cuts to libraries, recreation centers and the arts this week and a tough fight over what actually gets funded may be ahead. 

The city gives homeowners a menu of options for trash bins.  

The cheapest option starts at $32.82 a month. That gets you a 35-gallon trash bin. In the middle, there’s an option for a 65-gallon bin. And on the high end, $43.60 a month gets you a 95-gallon trash can. All of the options come with bins for recycling and organic waste.  

More homeowners are choosing the cheapest options, which means the city is bringing in less money than expected.

“The reasons for this decrease in revenue are customer selection changes that differ from the assumptions in the cost-of-service study,” wrote Jordan More, who works in the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst, in an email.

Officials with the Independent Budget Analyst’s office said they will provide more information on how the changing customer behavior is impacting revenue projections in a report they will publish next month.  

More said the environmental services department revenue estimate is based on customer behavior through January. The department anticipates a revenue adjustment in the May revision of the budget based on new data.  

For the current year, all homeowners actually paid the high-end cost of $43.60 per month. They will adjust and give credits on future tax bills, depending on the bin option residents chose. 

If a person requested and received a smaller trash bin, that’s credit that will go toward their next tax bill. If a person requested and received additional bins, they’ll owe more money.  

The post Trash Fee Bringing in Less Than Expected  appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The county says it will pay subcontractors that were stiffed by the Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego months before the county cancelled its contracts with the nonprofit last summer. 

The county announced Monday that it will send nearly $150,000 to six subcontractors after initially directing those strained by the unpaid bills to seek payment from the troubled nonprofit. 

The announcement comes as the criminal case against the Harm Reduction Coalition’s former finance chief expands to include three new felony charges, including for allegedly forging a $105,000 invoice to the county. Ex-COO Amy Knox had already faced six felony misappropriation charges for allegedly spending public money on everything from plastic surgery to purebred dogs.  

The missing payments to subcontractors – and previous bouncing or delayed checks from the nonprofit – were early signs of escalating financial chaos surrounding a nonprofit that once had two county contracts totaling $2.2 million annually. The county began learning of the Harm Reduction Coalition’s struggle to pay its bills in 2024. The situation only worsened as the months went on, raising questions about county oversight. 

On Monday, the county said it would collectively pay three partners on the Harm Reduction Coalition’s overdose reversal drug contract – SAY San Diego, A New PATH and Project AWARE Enterprises – nearly $74,000. UC San Diego, which partnered with the coalition on research and reviews of its county work, is also set to receive nearly $37,000 while drug testing technology firm Bruker Scientific LLC will get about $34,000. Sourcing and distribution company VIDL Sourcing will get a nearly $5,000 check. 

Voice of San Diego previously reported that the three organizations that partnered with the Harm Reduction Coalition on its county contract to deploy overdose reversal drug naloxone reported being collectively owed nearly $200,000 in county money that the coalition was supposed to distribute to them. A former Harm Reduction Coalition contract employee also told Voice that the Harm Reduction Coalition failed to pay her about $36,000 from March through July 2025.   

The county noted in its statement that the subcontractors may also seek restitution for additional unpaid bills through the ongoing criminal case. 

A New PATH Executive Director Gretchen Bergman, whose small nonprofit helped the Harm Reduction Coalition train San Diegans on how to use overdose reversal drug naloxone, said her organization now expects to receive about $40,000 of the roughly $100,000 it’s owed.  

Bergman said it was her understanding the county payouts covered work her organization and others completed in May and June 2025 that the Harm Reduction Coalition never billed the county for payment on. 

“I think it’s really positive,” Bergman said. 

The pile-up of unpaid bills previously forced A New Path to slash some full-time staffers’ hours by a quarter and temporarily led Bergman to give up her own salary. 

The county’s decision to pay subcontractors represents a shift from its initial position. First, it directed them to try to work something out with the Harm Reduction Coalition. 

Then, as Voice reported on the unpaid bills in March, a county spokesperson wrote that the payments were the Harm Reduction Coalition’s responsibility but that it was “exploring options” for reimbursing subcontractors.  

On Monday, the county said it ultimately decided to pay subcontractors due to “unique circumstances.” 

County spokesperson Tammy Glenn wrote in an email that the county decided to issue direct payments after confirming the subcontractors’ work fell within those county contracts, they could provide adequate documentation and that the Harm Reduction Coalition failed to submit invoices for their work.  

 Glenn separately noted in a statement that an independent auditor is now reviewing county contracting processes with the expectation of delivering a report next Monday. 

“Once the independent audit is complete, the county will evaluate the findings and determine additional steps needed to strengthen contracting practices and protect public resources,” Glenn wrote.  

The post County to Pay Harm Reduction Subcontractors $150K appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

In 2021, I wrote that a contract to fix an ailing wastewater pump in Tijuana would be awarded to a contractor that spring. 

It did happen in spring – only five years late.  

On Monday officials from Baja California and the U.S. convened outside that aging pump to announce construction would finally begin. The pump station, known as PB-1, is one of the many problem child pieces of infrastructure built to stop sewage spilling into the Tijuana River. It suffers mechanical failures, power outages and gets sent more water than it has the capacity to handle quite often.  

Tijuana’s topography allows most of its sewage to flow toward the border by gravity. But its wastewater system needs a few electric-powered pumps to blast it to treatment plants located across the border in the U.S. and one on the Mexican coastline.  

When PB-1 breaks, or there is simply too much water for it to handle, sewage spills into a border drain which empties in the river. (The river empties into the Pacific Ocean just south of Imperial Beach – thus polluting and closing shorelines due to contamination.) That happened just last month, though officials at the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission said water didn’t make its way into the river that time.

“This is the heart of our wastewater system,” said Victor Manuel Barragán, Baja California’s secretary of water, during an interview Monday. “If this is not working then basically all of that sewage goes to the river.”  

The pump hasn’t been upgraded since 1998, said Nicolle de Leon, spokesperson for Tijuana’s  water and wastewater services commission called CESPT.

“After that date, equipment was only replaced sporadically or as needed,” she said.

The U.S. government is spending $13.4 million to rehab this pump station, a stone’s throw from the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican government plans to pay for the rest of the $30.8 million project.  

In this case, the U.S. is helping to pay for part of the project through the North American Development Bank or NADBANK, an investment tool created in the 1990s where both countries can put money to invest in international projects. Projects through the bank have to undergo more levels of scrutiny to ensure both countries know how the money is being spent.  

John Beckham, NADBANK’s managing director, said the project took five years to break ground in part because the project had to go out for public bid three times. The first two public bidding processes didn’t yield enough contractors who could meet NADBANK’s requirements. 

“There was a low level of certainty that the contractors and the equipment they were bidding was what we needed to do the job,” Beckham told me.  

A contracting firm in Tijuana called Urbanizadora ROMA SA de CV and an engineering and construction company based in Querétaro called Latinomericana Agua y Medio Ambiente eventually won the bid, according to Irma Flores, a spokesperson for NADBANK. 

Barragán estimated it would take 18 months to upgrade the sewage pump system.  

In Other News

• San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget cuts money from a fund set up to build projects for underserved residents in the name of climate change. (Voice of San Diego) 
• San Diego’s Local Agency Formation Commission says dissolving the San Diego County Water Authority may be the best way to address regional water costs and needs in the future. (Voice of San Diego) 
• The city of San Diego’s new trash fee will bring in less revenue than expected because some customers are opting for smaller, lower-cost bins. (Voice of San Diego) 
• Great white sharks have abandoned their nursery in La Jolla making way for Baja California-based hammerhead, bull and tiger sharks to potentially take their place. (Union-Tribune) 
• SDG&E released a proposed route for a new transmission line from Imperial Valley to the Orange County border. At least one desert conservation group is already opposing the power line. (Union-Tribune) 
• New report says we have dirty air. (KPBS) 
• San Diego County has a brand new trail: Ruffin Canyon Trail, located between Serra Mesa and Mission Valley. (Union-Tribune) 

The post Environment Report: Finally, a Fix in the Works for Tijuana Sewage Pump appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Some members of the San Diego congressional delegation are speaking out about the violence at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where a 31-year-old Torrance man is accused of trying to storm the gala armed with guns and knives.

Cole Tomas Allen was arrested after allegedly shooting a U.S. Secret Service officer at the Washington Hilton, where President Donald Trump was waiting to address the annual gathering. Allen is reported to have sent family members a manifesto railing against the Trump administration shortly before Saturday night’s disruption.

He was tentatively scheduled to be arraigned Monday and is facing two preliminary charges for using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, according to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Bonsal, was at the dinner and posted on X after the shooting.

“This is the reality of what @realDonaldTrump faces every day — and for years before that. This is a man of uncommon courage,” Issa wrote. “I was there at the event tonight. And I’ll be there again or anywhere else to support this president.”

Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-San Diego, also posted on X. She was not in attendance at the dinner.

“I’m glad that everyone is safe at the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight,” Jacobs said. “Thank you to law enforcement and first responders for acting so swiftly and courageously.”

The shooting occurred shortly in a ballroom of the hotel. Security video showed a man attempting to sprint past the security checkpoint, prompting several officers to draw their weapons. U.S. Secret Service agents rushed Trump and first lady Melania Trump out of the hotel and back to the White House. Vice President JD Vance was also rushed out.

Neither the president or vice president was injured. One law enforcement officer was shot but was wearing a bullet-proof vest and is expected to be OK, according to multiple media reports.

Authorities said Allen was registered as a guest of the hotel and that his room was searched. His parents’ Torrance home, where Allen reportedly lived, was also searched.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said authorities believe “that the suspect traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago, and then Chicago to Washington, D.C., where he checked into the hotel where the Correspondents’ Dinner was at in the last day or two.”

Allen was carrying a “shotgun, handgun and multiple knives,” according to Interim Metropolitan Police Chief Jeffery Carroll, who said that although the suspect was not struck by gunfire, he was nevertheless taken to a hospital to be evaluated.

Investigations by the Secret Service and the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. were continuing Sunday.

According to multiple media reports, Allen sent a message to his family members about 10 minutes before the disruption at the Correspondents’ Dinner, calling himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and stating that he was trying to kill members of the administration.

“Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration,” Allen wrote, according to the California Post. “Turning the other cheek when `someone else’ is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

He allegedly said his targets Saturday night included “Administration officials … they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest. I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

Citing his LinkedIn profile, Wired magazine reported that Allen has been employed part-time since March 2020 at Torrance-based C2 Education, a private company that prepares students for college entrance exams. C2 Education provides “tutoring, test prep and college counseling,” according to its website. It also named Allen on its social media accounts as Teacher of the Month in December 2024 at C2 Education.

Allen graduated from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Pasadena Now reported. Officials at Cal State Dominguez Hills issued a statement late Saturday confirming that he graduated from the university last year, reportedly with a degree in computer science.

Shortly after being evacuated from the ballroom, Trump posted on X: “Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and law enforcement did a fantastic job … The shooter has been apprehended.” He said he recommended that the show go on but it was up to law enforcement, and the dinner was canceled.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X to say he was “relieved everyone at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is safe tonight based on initial reports. A free press is foundational to our country. Violence is never acceptable.”

California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin also issued a statement, condemning repeated instances of politically related violence.

“The attempted assassination of President Trump and mass shooting [near] other guests at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was a terrible act of violence,” Rankin said. “This violence must stop now. Democrats must end their violent rhetoric; their words have consequences and are causing real harm.

“Quite an evening in D.C.,” Trump wrote on X. “Secret Service and law enforcement did a fantastic job.” He said he recommended that the show go on but it was up to law enforcement, and the dinner was canceled.

After being returned to the White House, Trump stood behind a podium and made a public address before taking questions. Among his comments, he said he saw “a tremendous amount of love and coming together” in the ballroom when the shots were first heard.

“It’s a dangerous profession,” he said about the job.

Asked why he feels he has been the target of multiple apparent assassination attempts, he said, “The people that do the most … make the biggest impact … they go after them,” he said. “I hate to say I’m honored by that.”

Trump was expected to speak further about the case on CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday night.

A STOCKTONIA IMMIGRATION REPORT

Above: Patterson, California. (Photo by Annie Barker/Stocktonia/CatchLight Local/Report for America)

Nearly two weeks later, a federal judge in a Sacramento courtroom recounted watching video of that crucial moment, a second and a half, on repeat — “probably 10 or 12 times” — as he tried to decide whether the man, with six gunshot wounds, should be set free. 

The moment highlights the competing narratives in the case of Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández, who was shot by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents early the morning of April 7 in the Central Valley. 

Federal investigators, prosecutors and ICE Director Todd Lyons say Mendoza Hernández is not only an immigrant targeted for deportation, but also a high-level gang member wanted for murder in El Salvador. They say he refused to cooperate with their commands, then tried to ram them with his Toyota. They say they had no choice but to fire “defensive shots.” They say he committed a federal crime — assault on an officer with a deadly weapon — that could put him in prison for 20 years. 

Mendoza Hernández, his attorneys, eyewitnesses and other observers offer a different perspective. They say Mendoza Hernández moved his car not with the intent to strike anyone, but to flee agents who seemed bent on shooting him. They say he’s not a gang member, not a murderer, but the latest victim in a pattern of aggression by immigration agents who have barreled unchecked through communities across the country — and put civilians’ lives at risk by shooting into moving vehicles, this time pointing their guns in the direction of weekday commuter traffic. 

ICE agents “don’t enforce their own use-of-force policy,” said Mike Fox, a legal scholar with the Cato Institute, a policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “They want to bully and harass people.”

A court hearing Monday in Sacramento did not explore the bigger questions in this case: whether the agents used excessive force; whether Mendoza Hernández had “weaponized his vehicle,” as ICE claimed; or even whether the agency’s claims about his criminal history were accurate. U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd was tasked only with sorting out the question of bail, and he said his decision would come down to that crucial 1½ second of grainy dashboard camera surveillance video. 

Drozd said his analysis of the video led him to believe that Mendoza Hernández moved the steering wheel prior to the first gunshot. That detail made him a flight risk, the judge ruled, a determination that would keep him behind bars awaiting a trial that could still be years away. 

By then, nearly two weeks after the shooting, the case had inflamed the Central Valley communities where both Mendoza Hernández and the ICE agents live and work. Protesters stood outside the federal courthouse in Sacramento with megaphones, demanding that the justice system “free Carlos!” and arrest the ICE agents instead. “Carlos is only alive because he understood he had to fight for his life when ICE tried to execute him,” one sign read. 

The case had already raised concerns about how the criminal justice system treats people ensnared in immigration raids, in a country reeling from a string of high-profile killings by ICE agents. 

And it had begun to tear a family apart. 

An FBI officer would later write that the agents already knew which car belonged to Mendoza Hernández because of “intelligence gathered prior to the operation.”

From their vehicles, the four agents watched the home, waiting for Mendoza Hernández to leave for work. 

A camera was watching them too. Mendoza Hernández’s fiancee, Cindy — who asked to use only her first name for fear of immigration repercussions — said in a news conference the week after the shooting that she and Mendoza Hernández had a security camera outside their home. After the shooting, she reviewed the footage and saw agents waiting outside.  

According to Cindy, Mendoza Hernández worked for a construction company that removes debris from structures in San Jose. It’s a two-hour drive from Patterson, a town of 25,000 — the same kind of commute countless others make every day from homes deep in the Central Valley to Bay Area jobs on the other side of the mountains. 

At 6:40 a.m., Mendoza Hernández pulled out of the driveway. The agents followed.  

They trailed him, heading west on Sperry Avenue, out of Patterson and toward the freeway. Just past Rogers Road, as he approached I-5, they pulled him over. 

Mendoza Hernández had never interacted with federal agents before, but he had been stopped by local police a week earlier, Cindy says, for a cracked windshield. 

California law prohibits local police from feeding information to ICE in most cases, but federal agents have access to interconnected databases that often are used by local law enforcement — such as when they check fingerprints for criminal records or scan a driver’s license for outstanding arrest warrants. 

The criminal complaint against Mendoza Hernández says ICE agents had obtained a photo of him prior to the operation. After they pulled him over, an agent could identify his “big ears” on sight. 

The ICE agents and Mendoza Hernández’s lawyers are all in agreement that Mendoza Hernández refused to get out of the car. “The conversation was going in circles,” one agent later told an FBI official. 

As the seconds passed, traffic flowed by, a few feet away. 

One eyewitness who spoke out after the shooting identified herself only as Christina, out of fear of harassment because she had already been targeted for being involved in the case. She was a few car lengths behind Mendoza Hernández’s Toyota at the street curb. It was “a weird spot” to pull someone over, she would say later, because it is near a busy freeway onramp. 

As she approached the three cars stopped on the side of the road, Christina said she saw agents fanning out around the Toyota. 

“One of the agents started hitting the front windshield,” she said. 

“During the encounter, agents also informed Mendoza Hernández that they may have to break the window of his vehicle and extract him out of the vehicle,” an affidavit from the FBI investigator reads. After an officer shattered the front passenger window, the agents on the other side of the car — one leaning over the windshield and another at the driver’s window — pulled their weapons.

And then, the critical second and a half.

Video of the incident captured on the dashboard camera of a passing car, published by KCRA-TV on YouTube, shows a mountain of replays at this specific moment, as viewers try to parse the sequence of events. 

The Toyota’s wheels turn left, then the car rocks forward before accelerating backward, curving out from between the agents’ cars. 

The federal government’s case rests on the fact that the agent at the windshield was in the path of the vehicle when it lurched forward. “Based on my training and experience, and after reviewing relevant video evidence from the encounter, I believe that if Agent 1 had not moved, he/she would have been struck by Mendoza Hernández and would have suffered serious bodily injury or death,” the FBI agent wrote. “I believe agents discharged their firearms in response to Mendoza Hernandez driving his vehicle striking Agent 1.”

But Patrick Kolasinski, one of Mendoza Hernández’s lawyers, said his client was “adamant” that he was shot prior to moving the car, and that he drove in an attempt to flee further gunfire.

The video has no sound, so it is impossible to hear when the first agent fired at Mendoza Hernández. 

Christina, the eyewitness, initially told CNN that the Toyota first began to move, and then she heard several gunshots in quick succession. In a news conference several days after the incident, she said reviewing the video from her own dashcam had brought back a clearer memory of the events. There was one gunshot, and then the Toyota moved, and then she heard the rest of the shots, she said. 

The criminal complaint also notes one shot, a brief pause and more shooting. The complaint states that the car moved forward and the first shot happened “around this time,” not clarifying which occurred first. 

In Monday’s court hearing, David Hitt, the federal public defender representing Mendoza Hernández, said if the car was in neutral and then shifted into reverse, it could have caused the rocking movement forward seen in the video. 

But Drozd said the movement of the Toyota’s wheels to the left prior to the bump forward indicated Mendoza Hernández intended to flee the scene before he was shot, so even if he did not intend to harm the agents, he was “taking extraordinary measures to evade apprehension,” the judge said.

“His flight in this case was to save his own life,” Hitt argued, noting that the agents’ guns were already drawn. 

After that first gunshot, Christina watched from her car as Mendoza Hernández’s Toyota swung out from between the ICE agents’ vehicles, the front passenger door crunching backward off its hinge. Agents fired at the car, and Christina says she “wanted to turn around, but there was nowhere to go.” She said that amid the gunshots, an officer “was pointing his firearm at the traffic.”

The officers were also pointing their firearms at each other. The criminal complaint notes that at least one of the ICE agents chose not to shoot because of a “crossfire situation.”

Mendoza Hernández was shot at least six times, according to Kolasinski, and drove over the median into oncoming traffic. He collided with another vehicle under a nearby overpass and rolled to a stop, at which point the ICE agents succeeded in handcuffing him. Kolasinski said one of his arms “had bones sticking out” when he was taken into custody.

The criminal complaint states that the ICE agents “rendered first-aid,” but Kolasinski said Mendoza Hernández told him he did not receive any medical attention until paramedics arrived at the scene. 

Mendoza Hernández was transported to Doctors Medical Center in Modesto, where he underwent four surgeries over several days and was hospitalized in the intensive care unit. Protests outside the hospital on the evening after the shooting, in which dozens demanded justice for Mendoza Hernández, resulted in multiple arrests for vandalism.

Above: Carlos Ivan Mendoza Hernández with fiancee Cindy, at a baby shower for their now-2-year-old daughter. (Photo courtesy of Patrick Kolasinski)

Mendoza Hernández appeared in the courtroom in Sacramento on Monday in a wheelchair, with his right arm in a large white cast and bandages on his left arm and jaw. 

During the proceedings, he slumped to one side, his head resting on his hand. His lawyer, Hitt, argued that he could not be a flight risk because he no longer had the physical ability to flee. 

But Drozd focused on the second and a half of video in which Mendoza Hernández’s wheels turned to the left prior to the car moving. He did not determine whether Mendoza Hernández intended to strike an agent with his car, but said there was enough evidence to suggest he intended to escape — and could be expected to do the same if released. 

Hitt proposed an ankle monitor or house arrest, but Drozd was unmoved. 

“If there are people with guns in our faces, what reaction are we supposed to have?” Cindy said after the hearing. 

Outside the courthouse, a handful of protesters with megaphones decried the judge’s decision, accusing the judicial system of protecting the true perpetrators — the ICE agents — and criminalizing Mendoza Hernández, the man who was shot six times.

A couple of protesters argued with security guards, who insisted they remove a flag from the manicured bushes in front of the patio. 

Then, slow raindrops began to fall, and everyone scattered. 

The news cycle has acclimated to ICE shootings, Fox, the Cato Institute legal scholar, argues. “What is this, the 18th one of these?” he said in an interview. 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two activists killed by federal agents during a surge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis in January, might also have “come across as more sympathetic figures,” he said, because they were U.S. citizens rather than targets of immigration enforcement. 

The Department of Homeland Security has not issued a public statement about Mendoza Hernández’s shooting since the day it occurred, April 7. In response to questions from Stocktonia about the conflicting accounts of the incident, the department replied by sending a copy of the same statement, from Lyons, its director.

“As officers approached the car, the wanted gang member weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run an officer over,” Lyons wrote. “Following their training, our officers fired defensive shots to protect themselves, their fellow agents, and the public.”

The criminal complaint identifies them only as “Agent 1” through “Agent 4.” As in the shootings in Minneapolis, DHS has not released the identities of any of the agents involved.

No agent has been charged in any of these shootings, “so we’ve normalized this,” Fox said. 

Because of Monday’s bond ruling, Mendoza Hernández could be in prison for months, or even years, Kolasinski said. 

But even if Drozd allowed Mendoza Hernández to be released, he might have been sent to the same detention facility, Kolasinski said — but as a different type of detainee. 

Mendoza Hernández is currently in U.S. Marshals’ custody at a detention center in California City that primarily houses immigrants in ICE deportation proceedings. Even if he is released on appeal or serves a sentence elsewhere if convicted of the assault charge, he could end up back in California City as an ICE detainee, Weisselberg, the UC Berkeley law professor, said.  

“Once this case is done, then there’s the immigration case. And at this point, immigration cases are taking five to 10 years to resolve,” Kolasinski said. 

Weisselberg said the judge’s refusal to release Mendoza Hernández could have inadvertent benefits for his family.

Court transcripts suggest Cindy and her family were prepared to use a house as collateral for her fiance’s bond.

“Many people would say ‘I’d rather sit in the federal jail than put all of these assets at risk,’” Weisselberg said. 

If Mendoza Hernández had been released and then re-arrested by ICE, Weisselberg said he also would not have received sentencing credit toward a possible conviction in the assault case, meaning more time behind bars. 

Cindy said she was unnerved by the appearance of ICE agents at an earlier court hearing. 

“The ICE agents sat in front of us, right in front of the family,” she said. She recognized two of them, sitting just behind Mendoza Hernández’s wheelchair, as the officers who had shot him at the traffic stop.

“They were just over his shoulder,” she said. 

Cindy also said a separate group of ICE agents was at the hearing, with the apparent goal of arresting Mendoza Hernández if he had been released on bond. 

“I told him to prepare himself physically and mentally because the agents could pick him up today,” Cindy said before Monday’s hearing. “I told him, ‘Don’t sign anything; stay silent.’”

I grew up living on military bases around the world — Alaska, France, Germany and the American Southwest. My father, Staff Sergeant Elmer Fred Green, served in the Marine Corps and then the Air Force. He taught me that service is a commitment, and when you’ve earned something, it’s yours. I took that lesson seriously, and so did my brothers, when we each joined the military. I spent years at sea before transitioning to defense work.

I later taught elementary school in San Diego’s inner-city schools and economics and history at Coleman College. My wife Teri, a registered nurse, and I have built our life in San Diego and have been happily married for 47 years. In my retirement, I’ve volunteered with the California Highway Patrol, served as a docent on the USS Midway, and been active with the American Legion and the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA). 

Over the past decade, and especially over the past few years, an affordability crisis has emerged. Our state is becoming less and less affordable, especially for retirees. California is our home, but lately, I’ve been worried about whether California wants veterans like me to stay. 

Through my years of advocacy with MOAA, including serving as president of the California Council, I’ve worked to make our state a welcoming place for veterans. And right now, that feels more important than ever. California is already one of the most expensive places in the country to retire, and veterans on fixed incomes depend on knowing their retirement and savings are secure. 

That’s why I support the Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act aimed for the November ballot. It would prohibit new taxes on retirement accounts, personal savings and personal property, and ban retroactively taxing the savings we’ve already built. 

Some politicians and interest groups are pushing the idea to tax pensions, 401(k)s and other retirement savings. These kinds of taxes often start small and targeted, then expand to cover everyone, so it’s a terrible precedent to set — especially in a state with looming budget deficits.  

For veterans and retirees, that is a threat to the financial security we spent our lives building. Think of the disabled veterans who are managing significant medical expenses; the retirees on fixed incomes trying to stay in their homes; teachers and firefighters who spent decades in public service, expecting their pension to keep them secure. These are real people, our friends and neighbors, who expect their retirement to be there when they need it. 

Changing the rules now is a betrayal of that promise. 

California is a wonderful place to live. Many of us don’t want to leave — but wanting to stay and being able to afford to stay are two different things. Every new threat to what we’ve earned is another reason for a veteran or retiree to contemplate moving out of state. 

This proposed ballot measure would give Californians the certainty that the savings they’ve worked their whole lives to build won’t be taxed away. 

Those of us who served didn’t do it for the benefits — we did it because we believed in something larger than ourselves. I protected our country, taught our children, and have spent my retirement giving back to the community I’ve called home for decades. The savings Teri and I built weren’t handed to us, but were earned over a lifetime of service. 

That’s why so many veterans organizations are in support of this measure, including the Marine Corps League, Department of California; the Scottish American Military Society, Post 1921; Disabled American Veterans, Department of California; and the California Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, which have all endorsed the measure. 

The Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act keeps a promise — to veterans, to retirees, and to every Californian who has worked hard and believed that their savings would be theirs. I’m asking you to join me in voting yes this November.

E. Fred Green, Jr. is a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant commander who served aboard a variety of vessels and on shore duty before retiring. A San Diego resident, he is a life member of the American Legion and Military Officers Association of America.

Saturday’s Chicano Park festivities in Barrio Logan got a surprise guest with a performance by singer Alicia Keys.

Social media lit up with footage of Keys singing atop the roof of Arts-Rec, a neighborhood skate shop. Keys was joined by her husband, rapper/producer Kasseem Dean (a.k.a. Swizz Beatz).

View this post on Instagram

The couple’s appearance coincided with the opening of “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla. They bought a home in the area in 2019.

The exhibition, which showcases the couple’s personal collection, “champions artists who continue to shape culture and move us forward,” Keys wrote on her Instagram account.

“To experience that together, in a time when it’s needed more than ever is truly unstoppable!! Thank you for bringing your magic,” she posted. Swizz (a.k.a. Kasseem Dean, Keys’ husband) shared photos on his own account of himself taking his grandmother to the exhibition, calling it “a moment in history.”

The appearance came around two months after the Deans bought every photograph in an exhibition by two local artists, Oscar Cruz and MJ Pimentel, at another Barrio Logan business, Por Vida.

“I think about 95 or so percent of the photos were taken in Barrio Logan, of the community, of the people that are there, the actual grandmas, the grandpas, the kids, the park,” co-owner Milo Lorenzana told KPBS at the time. “just highlighting the things that create the fabric of Barrio Logan.”

We contacted Arts-Rec seeking comment on the Deans’ appearance, but the store has not responded.

This article originally appeared in The Conversation.

For the third time in three years, Donald Trump has come under threat by an attacker. Many facts remain unclear after a gunman stormed the Washington Hilton on April 25, 2026, during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

As the investigation into the shooting continues, Alfonso Serrano, The Conversation’s politics and society editor, spoke with James Piazza, a political violence scholar at Penn State, about what is driving the rise of political violence in the U.S. and what can be done about it.

This is not the first time Trump has faced political violence. What stands out after the latest attack?

I think the events of April 25 underscore how dangerous this political moment is in the United States. For the past several years – certainly since Jan. 6, 2021 – the U.S. has been experiencing a period of increased political violence, which is generally defined as violence that is motivated by politics or is intended to communicate a political message or achieve a political objective.

Researchers at the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab have documented that political violence has increased in the U.S. in recent years. Several recent examples come to mind: the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building; multiple assassination attempts on President Trump; the deadly attacks on Minnesota lawmakers Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman that left Hortman and her husband dead; the attempted murder of Paul Pelosi; the assassination of Charlie Kirk. In my home state of Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro was targeted in an attack on the governor’s mansion.

What’s driving that apparent plague of political violence afflicting the country?

There are several important drivers of political violence at work in the U.S. today, according to my own research and research by other scholars. The United States is currently very politically polarized, meaning that Americans are sharply divided against one another along partisan lines. They are suspicious and hostile toward one another, and this produces a tense and volatile environment for politics and public life. This has produced a “zero-sum” environment in which every election and political contest is a “do or die” moment.

What stands out to me is the moral dimension of polarization in the U.S. Each side views members of the other party not as merely having a different view on politics but rather as evil or immoral. The polarized environment has made political violence more normalized. It has also dampened public backlash against political violence when it occurs. This makes political violence more likely.

Political rhetoric has become much more divisive and violent in nature. This works hand in hand with polarization and helps to further normalize political violence. In particular, when politicians use demonizing or dehumanizing rhetoric to attack their opponents – for example, using words that depict their opponents as subhuman – this fosters extremism and helps motivate extremists to hurt their opponents physically.

Disinformation is also an important driver of political violence. A number of people who have engaged in recent acts of political violence seem to have been motivated by conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation, often gleaned from social media. Disinformation plays a particularly important role in the context of social media communities, where people are exposed to large amounts of disinformation and are hermetically sealed off from other sources that might challenge their worldview. This facilitates radicalization and has been shown to fuel political violence in some cases.

Finally, I think an important factor is also the current assault on democratic norms and democratic institutions in the United States. U.S. democracy is experiencing pressures that are unprecedented in the modern era. This has had a very damaging effect on Americans’ trust in government, confidence in democratic institutions and value for democratic rule itself.

My work shows that individuals who are skeptical about democracy are much more likely to express support or tolerance for political violence.

How does this moment of political violence stand out from other violent periods in U.S. history – are we in uncharted waters?

While the U.S. is currently experiencing an uptick in political violence, unfortunately it is not unprecedented. One example would be the highly polarized period in the 1850s in the run-up to the Civil War. In this era, there was a sharp division between abolitionists and advocates of slavery. This culminated in political assassinations, an assault on an abolitionist member of Congress by a pro-slavery member of Congress, and a bloody civil conflict in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery armed groups.

The early 1900s, right after World War I, saw another increase in political violence due to labor issues and violence by the second generation of the Ku Klux Klan.

Finally, the 1960s also saw a period of intense political violence surrounding opposition to the Vietnam War and backlash to the Civil Rights Movement.

Though there are some unique features about political violence today – namely the influence of social media – I think we can look for some parallels in these early periods of political violence.

Any last thoughts?

I believe it is absolutely critical that both Democratic and Republican politicians – politicians from all sides – unite to condemn this attack and all political violence. Political commentators and influencers can also condemn this and all use of political violence.

Research amply shows that what political elites – politicians, political leaders, media commentators, online influencers – say in the wake of these sorts of events has a huge effect on citizens’ attitudes. Political elites can adopt rhetoric that does not normalize this sort of behavior.

If the message comes from across the political spectrum, it will be that much more effective at reducing the public attitudes that nurture political violence.

James Piazza, Liberal Arts Professor of Political Science, Penn State.

The Conversation is a nonprofit, independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of researchers, scientists and scholars for the public good.

Our Voice of San Diego reporters were busy this week reporting on stories that impact our communities. Here’s what you need to know to start your week.

Grab some cafecito chismosos!

Budget, Budget, Budget!

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria released his proposed budget last week.

Rather than jumping on the daily train, our reporters took their time with the proposal to uncover some interesting stories about what’s at stake.

Big picture: We know city leaders need to close a $146 million budget deficit. To do that, they’ll have to make some tough choices. This was our first glimpse into how those choices would manifest.

Cuts to the arts! Our Bella Ross attended a protest against Gloria’s proposed cuts to funding for arts grants and library and recreation center hours. A lot of people are pissed, no surprise, and want to see the City Council propose an alternative option.

You can watch Bella’s video here. Former Voice reporter Deborah Brennan did a great job breaking down the arts funding issue for CalMatters.

Climate dollars! MacKenzie Elmer identified an interesting proposal. She reported that the city’s Climate Equity Fund is going to take a hit too. Instead of making a $7 million contribution to this fund, which pays for climate projects in poor communities, the city is going to keep the money in the General Fund.

Is there something you’d like us to dig into? Send me a note at andrea.sanchez@voiceofsandiego.org.

Former CEO’s Rocky Past

The agency that oversees the Del Mar Fairgrounds fired its CEO last week and our North County reporter wanted to know what happened.

Tigist Layne reported that the 22nd District Agricultural Association Board of Directors voted to fire CEO Carlene Moore and named the board’s chairman interim CEO for 10 days.

No one would tell Tigist why Moore was fired, but she did dig up information about Moore’s trouble at a previous job at the Napa County Fairgrounds. You can read the full story here.

New: The board of directors appointed Rebecca “Becky” Bartling as CEO through at least September 2027, according to a press release sent on Friday.

The fair opens on June 10. Chairman Sam Nejabat said he is confident staff will execute a successful event.

An Anxious Flyer’s Worst Nightmare

You could not pay me enough to live in this Coronado mansion.

South County reporter Jim Hinch caught wind of a development that has a yacht community in Coronado in an uproar. No, it’s not a massive apartment complex, it’s a house with a rooftop jet.

(As a certified anxious flyer, living in a home with a plane on top of the roof sounds like a nightmare. It would be a constant reminder of flying; my hands are getting clammy just thinking about it.)

Jim spoke to residents and reached out to the developer to understand the beef. It’s worth a read and has great photos of the project. Read it here.

In Other News

I missed my newsletter last week — blame it on the reporters who kept me busy, just kidding. Here are other Voice of San Diego stories you should read.

• Mariana Martínez Barba wrote about the fire station in southeastern San Diego that is still temporary despite officials’ promises to build a permanent station 11 years ago. Read the story here.
• Martínez Barba also wrote about the homeless encampment near a freeway that officials have cleared more than 70 times because people keep returning.
• The county hired a PR firm to deal with a contractor scandal. More deets here.
• Do you want to spice up your lunch break? Donate $120 or more and get a fabulous VOSD lunch bag. Support our journalism here.

The post Cup of Chisme: Quick Hits appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

San Diego was promised a bullet train to Los Angeles. Gavin Newsom once promised to deliver it. Neither promise has been kept — and if you live here, you have been paying for the failure for nearly two decades. 

The California High-Speed Rail project, approved by voters in 2008 with a promise to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours for $33 billion by 2020, is now one of the most expensive infrastructure failures in American history. After 18 years of planning and more than $15 billion in spending, not a single mile of high-speed track is in operation.

The current cost estimate stands at $126 billion — nearly four times what voters were told. The initial operating segment, connecting Merced to Bakersfield along a route few San Diegans will ever use, won’t open until at least 2032. The full corridor is projected for 2038 to 2039 — if funding ever materializes. There is a $90 billion gap between what the state has and what it needs. 

As a San Diego financial controller with over two decades in public finance and government contract compliance, I have spent considerable time with the project’s audit records. What they reveal is not just incompetence — it is a systemic extraction of public money by politically connected insiders, operating largely without accountability. 

The failure began before a single shovel broke ground. When voters passed Proposition 1A in 2008, the California High-Speed Rail Authority had not yet determined the specific land parcels the route would require. It had not settled on a final corridor. It had not secured the private investment the project legally required. What it did have was $9.95 billion in voter-authorized bonds and an army of contractors ready to collect. 

Construction began in Fresno in 2015 under Gov. Jerry Brown. The first major contract — 29 miles in the Central Valley — went to Tutor Perini Corporation at $985 million, well below the authority’s own staff estimate of $1.2 to $1.8 billion. That contract has since ballooned from $985 million to $2.4 billion in approved invoices. 

The consultant structure tells an equally troubling story. The authority employed roughly 180 state workers while its lead consultant, WSP, had approximately 470 personnel on the project. Consultant engineers cost the state an average of $427,000 per year — more than three times the $131,000 cost of in-house staff. WSP alone accumulated an estimated $666 million in contract value. The 2018 State Auditor found the authority had outsourced not only engineering but the oversight of engineering to private consultants — a structure designed, whether intentionally or not, to make accountability nearly impossible. 

Newsom walked into this in 2019 and initially called it what it was: too expensive, too slow and not enough oversight. He promised transparency on every change order. That transparency never came. By 2025, he was signing legislation locking in $1 billion annually in cap-and-trade funding through 2045 — funding that could have addressed San Diego’s own crumbling infrastructure, transit deficit, and housing cost crisis. 

San Diegans know what $15 billion in undelivered promises looks like. We see it in the congestion on the 5 and the 15. We see it in SANDAG’s perpetual funding shortfalls. We see it every time a local infrastructure project stalls for lack of state resources that are being consumed by a train that goes from Merced to Bakersfield. 

Newsom leaves office in January 2027. He has one year to show California — and the country, as he eyes 2028 — that he can govern rather than perform. For San Diegans still waiting for a rail connection that was promised to us in 2008, the standard is simple: stop defending the system that failed us, and start dismantling it. 

Jose Navarro is a financial controller and public affairs analyst based in San Diego with more than two decades of experience in public finance, nonprofit management and government contract compliance.

More than 2 million registered voters in San Diego County can expect to receive a voter information pamphlet soon for the June 2 California Gubernatorial Primary Election, the Registrar of Voters reported this weekend.

Each pamphlet includes voting options, key election deadlines and a sample ballot showing what the official ballot will look like. Voters will also find a list of official ballot drop boxes and vote centers, or they can view the locations online at sdvote.com.

“Residents who signed up to receive the pamphlets electronically should have already received an email with a direct link to their pamphlet,” the ROV said. “Those who choose this option will no longer receive a paper copy by mail and will instead get an email when the pamphlet is posted online.”

Voters who want to receive their pamphlet as soon as it becomes available in each election can sign up for electronic delivery, according to the ROV.

Every active registered voter will receive a ballot by mail beginning May 4 and can return it in one of the following three ways:

— By mail (postage not required).

— At an official Registrar’s ballot drop box that will be available May 5 through the final day of voting, June 2.

— At any vote center.

Voters will have about a month to mark and return ballots by the final day of voting. In-person voting starts May 4 at the Registrar of Voters Office in Kearny Mesa, 5600 Overland Ave., and will be available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Voters who prefer to cast their ballot in person can visit a vote center beginning May 23 through June 2.

Beginning May 23, some vote centers will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Starting May 30, all vote centers will be open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

On June 2, the final day of voting, all vote centers, official ballot drop boxes and the Registrar’s Office will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m, according to the ROV.

More information is available at sdvote.com, or by phone at 858-565- 5800 or toll-free at 800-696-0136.

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

A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down California’s requirement that masked federal agents identify themselves, a blow to the state’s ongoing resistance to the Trump administration’s deportation program. 

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel handed down a ruling prohibiting California from enforcing a section of the 2025 law that mandates federal law enforcement officers visibly display identification while carrying out their duties. 

The law was destined to face critical scrutiny from the federal judiciary. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute federal law enforcement officers acting in the course of their duties. 

The law also ran headlong into the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which holds that states may not regulate the operations of the federal government. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it in connection with a law that banned federal immigration agents from wearing masks. The Trump administration sued to challenge both of them.

On Feb. 19, a federal judge issued an injunction against the mask law. The new ruling by a 3-0 decision focuses on the identification requirement. 

“If a state law directly regulates the conduct of the United States, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with federal functions or operations,” wrote judge Mark J. Bennett. 

California’s lawyers argued that, even if the law does violate the Supremacy Clause, the court should have also considered the state government’s concerns about federal immigration enforcement’s effect on public safety. 

“We decline to do so,” Bennett wrote. “Because the United States has shown a likelihood that the Act violates the Supremacy Clause, it has also shown that both the public interest and balance of the equities tip ‘decisively in…favor’ of a preliminary injunction.”

Democrats passed the law, called the “No Vigilantes Act”, to rein in the federal officers who showed up in masks and without visible identification as they carried out the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Lawmakers this year are advancing more bills targeting the administration’s immigration agents, including proposals that would bar them from employment in California law enforcement agencies and a measure that would make it easier for people to sue federal agents over civil rights violations. 

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche crowed about the 9th Circuit ruling on social media.

“This Department of Justice stands in unwavering and total support of the brave men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line everyday to enforce our immigration laws and keep American citizens safe,” he wrote. :Today’s legal victory in the 9th Circuit halts enforcement of California’s mask ban for ICE agents and is a big win to protect law enforcement.”

CalMatters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.

President Donald Trump was uninjured and other top leaders of the United States were evacuated from an annual dinner of White House correspondents on Saturday night after an unspecified threat. There did not immediately appear to be any injuries, and one law-enforcement official said a shooter had opened fire.

Authorities said the incident occurred outside the ballroom where Trump and other guests were seated. It was not immediately clear what happened.

The Secret Service and other authorities swarmed the banquet hall at the Washington Hilton as guests dining on burrata salad ducked under tables by the hundreds. “Out of the way, sir!” someone yelled. Others yelled to duck. From one corner, a “God Bless America” chant began as Trump was escorted off stage. He fell briefly — he apparently tripped — and was helped up by Secret Service agents.

A law enforcement official confirmed there was a shooter but no further details were immediately available. All officials protected by the Secret Service were evacuated. Organizers were attempting to resume the dinner.

Some in the crowd reported hearing what they believed to be five to eight shots fired. The banquet hall — where hundreds of prominent journalists, celebrities and national leaders were awaiting Trump’s remarks — was immediately evacuated. Members of the National Guard took up position inside the building as people were allowed to leave but not immediately re-enter. Security outside was also extremely tight.

Those in attendance included Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and many other leaders of the Trump administration.

The event appeared set to resume after the disorder. Servers refolded napkins and refilled water glasses in preparation for Trump’s return. Another worker prepared the president’s teleprompter for the remarks he was scheduled to make. Guest evacuating the ballroom had to step over many broken plates and glasses.

Outside the hotel, members of the National Guard and other authorities flooded the area as helicopters circled overhead.

Generally, the Hilton hotel, where the dinner has taken place for years, remains open to regular guests during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and security has typically been focused on the ballroom and rather than the hotel at large, with little screening for people not entering the dinner itself. In past years, that has created openings for disruptions in the lobby and other public spaces, including protests in which security moved to remove guests who unfurled banners or staged demonstrations.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro posted a short video from the hotel after the incident, saying, “I have been taken out of the ballroom after the sound of the shots fired. The Secret Service is now in charge of this building, this hotel. I just spoke to Mayor Murial Bowser. She is on her way and (Police) Chief Jeffery Carroll is on his way. He will be in charge as soon as he gets here.”

Event was about to take place

Trump’s attendance at Saturday’s annual dinner in Washington for his first time as president is putting his administration’s often-contentious relationship with the press on full public display.

Trump arrived to an event where the leaders of a nation at war mingled with celebrities, journalists and even a puppet — Triumph the Insult Comic Dog — in a dinner that typically generates debate about whether the relationship between journalists and their sources should include socializing together and putting aside sometimes adversarial relationships.

Trump was being watched closely at the event held by the organization of reporters who cover him and his administration. Past presidents who have attended have generally spoken about the importance of free speech and the First Amendment, adding in some light roasts about individual journalists.

The Republican president did not attend during his first term or the first year of his second. He came as a guest in 2011, sitting in the audience as President Barack Obama, a Democrat, made some jokes about the New York real estate developer. Trump also attended as a private citizen in 2015.

Trump entered the subterranean banquet hall of the Washington Hilton to the strains of “Hail to the Chief” and greeted prominent journalists on the dais, also pausing to laud White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt with a cheerful pointing of his finger.

Past dinners have also featured comedians who poke at presidents. This year, the group opted to hire mentalist Oz Pearlman as the featured entertainment.

A contentious relationship

Between berating individual reporters, fighting organizations like the Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press in court and restricting press access to the Pentagon, the administration’s animus toward journalists has been a fixture of Trump’s second term.

On the eve of the dinner, nearly 500 retired journalists signed a petition calling on the association “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

The WHCA president, CBS News reporter Weijia Jiang, said the organization was fighting for all different forms of the press that have a line in to the American people. “I don’t think people realize how closely we are working with the White House,” she said on CSPAN before the dinner convened. “The relationship is important. It can be complicated. It can be intense. But it is robust.”

Welcoming guests, Jiang alluded to the contentious relationship in thanking Leavitt “for everything your team does to work with us every day, whether you like it or not.”

Veteran reporter Manu Raju of CNN, as he entered the Washington Hilton for the dinner, said it was not his role to express his opinion on Trump’s relationship with the press. “I’m not an activist,” he said. “My job is not to protest.”

A few dozen protesters stood across the hotel in the runup to the event. One was dressed in a prison uniform, wearing a Pete Hegseth mask and red gloves. Another carried a sign saying “Journalism is dead.”

Some news organizations invite sources as guests

Journalists often invite sources as guests at the dinner. It will be noticed Saturday whether administration officials who have also expressed hostility to the press will attend, and with whom they will be sitting. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he was invited by the New York Post; Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were NBC guests.

The Associated Press invited a former Trump official that it sued last year. Taylor Budowich, a former White House deputy chief of staff who crafted communications policy, was a named defendant last year when the AP sued the administration after it reduced its access to the president because the news outlet did not follow Trump’s lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

“We maintain professional relationships with people across the political spectrum because we are nonpartisan by design — focused on reporting the facts in the public’s interest,” AP spokesman Patrick Maks said.

The White House correspondents will also hand out awards for exemplary reporting. That includes some stories that displeased Trump, such as one from the Journal about a birthday message Trump once sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The story led to a presidential lawsuit.

The U.S. Central Command released a photo Saturday of a San Diego-based guided-missile destroyer intercepting a merchant vessel in Iran’s sanctioned “shadow fleet.”

A helicopter from the USS Pinckney tracked the M/V Sevan, which was then escorted by the destroyer back toward an Iranian port. The blockade enforcement took place in the Arabian Sea.

“The merchant vessel is currently complying with U.S. military direction to turn back to Iran under escort,” Centcom said in a social media post.

The Sevan is among 19 vessels sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury for activities related to transporting billions of dollars worth of Iranian energy, oil and gas products, including propane and butane, to foreign markets.

So far 37 vessels have been intercepted and redirected since the start of the blockade against ships entering or leaving Iranian ports.

The latest naval action occurred as negotiations between the United States and Iran appeared to have broken down, with President Trump telling his team not to travel to Pakistan for talks.

Sometimes when you’ve got too much politics on the brain, it’s hard not to see things elected officials say as they may appear on a mailer.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear just said some things about the big county governance reforms headed to the ballot this November that could make for good mailers for someone paying to oppose them.

“I think it is outrageous and they need to change course,” Blakespear said. She said she can support all the changes in the package, she just can’t support extending the term limits for current supervisors. Right now, supervisors can only serve two terms. If voters approve the measure as it’s currently written, current supervisors could do third terms.

“They still have three weeks to change course,” Blakespear said. While the Board did approve the measure for the ballot, it must be reaffirmed with another vote. “It’s unquestionably a self-serving power grab. It gives us all a bad name.”

She said she could support making the term limit three. But she said it should have been written to apply to future elected leaders.

She also said that another provision that would put term limits on the other elected leaders of the county — the sheriff, district attorney, treasurer-tax collector and assessor — was a mistake.

It conflicts with state law and supervisors tried to write that it would kick in only if state law changes. Blakespear said none of the San Diego legislative representatives want to change that law and it would cause an immediate and unnecessary legal fight with the state.

She supports all the other parts of the measure and actually articulated arguments for them well – the county does need to be able to move its bureaucracy better to accomplish things.

“My hope is the three supervisors who voted for this remove those objectionable parts of the proposal and it succeeds,” she said.

About those mailers: The thing is, to put some spicy quotes on mailers costs money and it’s not clear who, if anyone, has enough money at stake to want to pay for any opposition campaign efforts to defeat the measure.

About the reform: We talked about it at length on the podcast this week.

Trash Fee Bringing in Less Than Expected 

The budget hits just keep coming.

The city expects to bring in less revenue with the trash fee than expected because some customers are returning their additional trash cans — while others are opting for lower-cost, smaller bins.  

The environmental services department projects it will generate approximately $123.9 million in revenue in the coming year. That’s about $9 million less than what city officials assumed in the department’s cost-of-service study.

The $9 million funding discrepancy is just the latest problem in San Diego’s troubled budget. Hundreds of people protested the mayor’s proposed cuts to libraries, recreation centers and the arts this week and a tough fight over what actually gets funded may be ahead. 

The city gives homeowners a menu of options for trash bins.  

The cheapest option starts at $32.82 a month. That gets you a 35-gallon trash bin. In the middle, there’s an option for a 65-gallon bin. And on the high end, $43.60 a month gets you a 95-gallon trash can. All of the options come with bins for recycling and organic waste.  

More homeowners are choosing the cheapest options, which means the city is bringing in less money than expected.

“The reasons for this decrease in revenue are customer selection changes that differ from the assumptions in the cost-of-service study,” wrote Jordan More, who works in the Office of the Independent Budget Analyst, in an email.

Officials with the Independent Budget Analyst’s office said they will provide more information on how the changing customer behavior is impacting revenue projections in a report they will publish next month.  

More said the environmental services department revenue estimate is based on customer behavior through January. The department anticipates a revenue adjustment in the May revision of the budget based on new data.  

For the current year, all homeowners actually paid the high-end cost of $43.60 per month. They will adjust and give credits on future tax bills, depending on the bin option residents chose. 

If a person requested and received a smaller trash bin, that’s credit that will go toward their next tax bill. If a person requested and received additional bins, they’ll owe more money.  

South San Diego Council Candidates Pitch New Revenue

At a candidates forum for City Council District 8 – which represents Barrio Logan, Sherman Heights, San Ysidro and other southern San Diego neighborhoods – Venus Molina said she wanted to bring back a sales tax measure.  

Molina works as chief of staff to District 2 Councilmember Jennifer Campbell and is one of four candidates running for the seat.  

“The sales tax – that’s something that actually was really popular when it comes to Districts 8, 4, and 9,” she said. “It was districts up north that actually didn’t support the sales tax. But our communities understood that a sales tax is something that actually would benefit us when it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to, like I said, our basics.”

Two of the other candidates also had ideas for new revenue, though they didn’t go as far as proposing a tax.

Antonio Martinez, who serves as a San Ysidro school district board member, said he wants to increase rent on city leases. He also wants to do an audit to see if there are businesses and organizations that are “not paying their fair share of taxes.”

Gerardo Ramirez, who works as chief of staff to District 8 Councilmember Vivian Moreno, said the city needs to apply for more grant funding. 

“We are leaving money at the table when it comes to grants. San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, they’re all getting more money per capita than the city of San Diego. Why? Because we are not applying,” he said. 

Quite a Week for Ammar

It comes up every time he runs and its very unfair but it happened again this week: Ammar Campa-Najjar was attacked because he is the grandson of a bad person.

This week it came from Laura Loomer, the president’s friend known for her racist and inflamatory attacks. “Crazy that Ammar Campa Najjar … is allowed to even serve in the US military and that he’s dating [U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs] … when he is the grandson of Muhammad Yousef al-Najjar,” she posted this week.

He has long renounced his grandfather, a Palestinian who died before Campa Najjar was born. Here’s how the U-T described the grandfather in 2018.

“Campa-Najjar’s paternal grandfather was Muhammad Yusuf al-Najjar, head of the intelligence wing of Fatah, the political party founded by Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat. Some Fatah members formed the Black September organization, a terrorist group that was responsible for a series of attacks against Israelis, including the 1972 killing of 11 athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics.

“Israel launched a series of responses to the Munich attack, including a 1973 commando raid in Beirut, Lebanon, where Yusuf al-Najjar and his wife were both killed.”

You don’t pick your grandparents. The president’s party has a lot of voices overtly, or getting really close to, saying people shouldn’t be allowed to be part of American civic life because of their ethnic backgrounds.

But then he got hit for a legit flub: The Navy reprimanded Campa-Najjar for campaign materials that inappropriately used Navy imagery.

KPBS: “Pentagon regulations allow reservists to run for office but restrict how they can use their military status and photos. Department of Defense Directive 1344.10 says reservists ‘must clearly indicate their retired or reserve status’ when referencing their service.”

This is an unforced error by Campa-Najjar, who described himself as an officer but didn’t clarify that it was in the Reserve.

But then he got a big financial boost: A Jeff Bezos-backed group and Irwin Jacobs have put $750,000 into an independent campaign supporting Campa-Najjar. Times of SD has the details.

This should more than make up for any shortfall he has in campaign cash on hand.

If you have any feedback or ideas for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org or will.huntsberry@voiceofsandiego.org.

The post Politics Report: Dem Calls County Reform ‘Outrageous’ appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

San Diego city leaders may not have taken a visit to the French Riviera Friday, but they got the next best thing, unveiling a new Sister City sign with the city of Marseille, France.

The ceremony on Friday coincided with the third edition of the French Market, transforming the Civic Center Courtyard into a “vibrant celebration of French culture, cuisine and businesses in the heart of downtown,” a city statement read.

“San Diego is proud to welcome Marseille as our newest sister city,” said Mayor Todd Gloria. “San Diego’s relationship with Marseille reflects who we are as a city — internationally connected, culturally rich and open for business.

“From innovation and trade to education and community ties, this partnership will help strengthen our economy and deepen the connections between our two cities for years to come.”

Both port cities in warm climates, San Diego and Marseille actually signed the sister city agreement last year during a World Trade Center San Diego-led trade mission to France, attended by Gloria and Rep. Scott Peters.

The cities share some similar industries, including clean energy, life sciences, maritime businesses and advanced manufacturing.

“San Diego is a global city, and we are more successful when we engage with the world,” Peters said. “This sister city relationship creates powerful economic opportunity. From clean energy innovation to life sciences collaboration, these partnerships open markets, support high-quality jobs and ensure San Diego remains competitive in a rapidly changing global economy.”

The event at the Civic Center also featured Adrien Frier, Consul General of France in Los Angeles. The French Market was organized by the French-American Chamber of Commerce and Downtown San Diego Partnership.

San Diego has a number of sister cities, including Edinburgh, Scotland; Jalalabad, Afghanistan; Perth, Australia; Taichung, Taiwan; Vladivostok, Russia; Yokohama, Japan; and Tijuana, Mexico.

“At World Trade Center San Diego, we design trade missions with one goal in mind: delivering results for our region,” said Nikia Clarke, executive director of World Trade Center San Diego.

“The France trade mission strengthened research partnerships, opened doors with French investors, and created new pathways for San Diego companies to grow internationally.

“Many of the leaders who joined that mission are here today, demonstrating how global engagement shows up locally.”

The San Diego Police Department announced plans for a DUI and license checkpoint somewhere in the city limits on Friday night.

Officers will be stopping drivers from 10 p.m. Friday until 2 a.m. Saturday to check for alcohol or marijuana impairment as well as proper licensing.

Checkpoints like this are typically announced in advance because of the deterrent effect on people who might drink or smoke to excess and then get behind the wheel. Locations are chosen based on a prior history of DUI crashes and arrests.

“The San Diego Police Department is committed to keeping the traveling public safe and reminds the public that impaired driving is not just from alcohol. Some prescription medications or over-the-counter drugs may interfere with driving,” the department said in a statement.

Drivers charged with a first-time DUI face an average of $13,500 in fines and penalties, as well as a suspended license.

El Museo de Arte de San Diego se transforma estos días en un santuario donde el color y la fragancia rinden tributo al ingenio humano. En el marco de Art Alive, el evento de recaudación de fondos más importante de la institución, se celebra el ya legendario Bloom Bash, una experiencia que ha cautivado a la región por décadas.

Este evento es verdaderamente único en el mundo, como bien señala Tatiana Martínez, portavoz de la institución: “Cada año invitamos a alrededor de 80 floristas de la región para que interpreten la obra de su preferencia”.

Es un diálogo fascinante entre el arte plástico y la naturaleza, donde tuvimos el privilegio de conversar con dos floristas latinas cuyo talento y sensibilidad dejan una huella imborrable.

La arquitectura del mañana cobra vida

Suzannee Borel es originaria de la Ciudad de México y tiene su estudio Flower You Beatiful en Point Loma. Ella ha asumido un reto monumental. Con una visión audaz, decidió interpretar floralmente la maqueta de la futura expansión del museo, un proyecto a cargo de la prestigiosa firma de arquitectos Foster + Partners, bajo la dirección de Norman Foster, y que sin duda representa el futuro de esta centenaria institución.

Al observar la maqueta, Borel no oculta su emoción. Su obra es una recreación del edificio que conmemora el centenario del Museo, una tarea que exigió una introspección profunda. “No fue fácil. Hice varios diseños y no me gustaban”, confiesa con humildad. “Tuve que tomar un respiro y observar detenidamente los colores, las texturas y los jardines. Fue así como nació esta pieza”.

Para ella, participar en este grupo exclusivo de artistas no es solo un trabajo, sino un privilegio. Su aporte como diseñadora en el Bloom Bash la coloca junto a otras diseñadoras de renombre.

Borel tiene una importante fuente de inspiración: los colores, los olores, la cultura del México de sus recuerdos. “Cada vez que visito el país, es como si se recargaran las baterías de la inspiración”, dice con una sonrisa.

Tan pronto me retiro, ella continua haciendo movimientos en su pieza. La observa, se asegura que todo esté listo para el momento en que la gente empiece a llegar.

Herencia y sueños en cada detalle

Al recorrer los pasillos, donde el aroma a flores frescas y la energía creativa lo inundan todo, encontramos a Sara Delgado Santacruz una talentosa sandieguina de 27 años. Con una precisión admirable, da los toques finales a su interpretación de la obra Heaven and Earth de la artista mexicana Marianela de la Hoz.

A pesar de ser su tercer año en el evento, los nervios y la pasión siguen intactos. “Trabajas cada detalle para que todo sea impecable”, comenta. Su elección de Eva no fue casualidad: “Elegí esta obra primero porque es de una artista mexicana, pero también por su poderoso mensaje sobre las mujeres y la autonomía en sus decisiones”.

Hija de padres provenientes de Zacatecas y Jalisco, Sara Delgado lleva el arte floral en la sangre; sus padres fueron dueños de una florería que tuvo que cerrar durante la pandemia. Aunque actualmente se enfoca en el diseño de eventos y perfecciona su técnica en el Southwestern College, su paso por el Museo es una carta de presentación brillante para el sueño que persigue: tener su propio negocio.

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

Californians this fall will decide whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting ballots.

A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant win for San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who led the signature-gathering campaign. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have pushed for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.

If voters approve it, they would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would need the last-four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The secretary of state and county election offices would also be required to verify voters’ registration each time they vote.

Currently, voters only need to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote. Thirty-six states require or recommend voters show some form of identification at the polls, according to a 2025 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“This is an initiative that’s incredibly popular amongst Democrats and Republicans,” GOP state Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach told CalMatters. “I think the only way we don’t get this passed is if we get (outspent). So we’re working very hard with an on-the-ground campaign apparatus.”

Strickland and others who have helped lead the campaign attribute the initiative’s rapid certification to Julie Luckey, mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey who helped seed the majority of the $10 million the campaign committee has raised in the past year. 

Voting rights groups say the initiative will suppress turnout among eligible voters who don’t have the documents on hand, many of whom are disproportionately poor and people of color.

Opponents, including the state’s most powerful labor unions, plan to campaign heavily against it.

Voter fraud is rare in California. However, claims of fraud and concerns about election integrity have risen since President Donald Trump touted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Californians broadly support voter identification at the polls but are split along ideological lines when given specific details about the ballot measure, according to a 2026 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies. When told the measure is meant to combat voter fraud and that it could suppress eligible votes, support dipped to 37%.

La Oficina del Médico Forense del Condado de San Diego solicitó ayuda al público para identificar a una mujer que se ahogó en el río Tijuana en 2022.

La víctima de ahogamiento, descrita como una mujer de poco más de 20 años, fue encontrada el 26 de abril de 2022. No tenía identificación, y las verificaciones de huellas dactilares no han producido coincidencias, según funcionarios del condado.

Se cree que es una mujer latina de 5 pies y 4 pulgadas de altura, que pesa aproximadamente 125 libras. Debido al estado de sus restos, los investigadores no pudieron determinar el color de su cabello o de sus ojos. La investigadora del médico forense Jennifer Wright dijo que un artista forense del Centro Nacional para Niños Desaparecidos y Explotados creó una reconstrucción facial basada en los restos de la mujer.

Las autoridades solicitan que si alguien del público reconoce a la mujer que aparece en el retrato, llamen a la Oficina del Médico Forense al 858-694-2905 y de como referencia el número de caso 2022-01456.

Getting rid of the San Diego County Water Authority might be the best way to address regional water costs and needs in the future. 

That’s what the plurality of concepts studied by the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission or LAFCO, suggest under its first audit of the county’s water wholesaler. The Water Authority fell under LAFCO’s scrutiny a few years ago after two member water districts fought to leave the agency over its high water prices. 

So LAFCO decided to do what’s called a municipal service review of the Water Authority, which is basically an audit with recommendations on how to fix certain problems. 

LAFCO came up with three possible solutions to the Water Authority’s dire financial straits: Dissolve the Water Authority into smaller water wholesale regions; or dissolve it and form a new special district to manage water treatment and reservoir storage while giving the rest of the Water Authority’s assets to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The third option is to actually expand the Water Authority’s power by letting it absorb its 22 member water districts’ role of selling water to cities and the county. 

In water world, dissolving the Water Authority and redistributing its power to Metropolitan is likely to really raise some eyebrows. There’s been longstanding hate between these two agencies due to a protracted legal battle, settled only recently, over the cost of moving water from one to the other. And its member water district’s eyebrows may actually fall off at the suggestion that the Water Authority absorb their power to sell water. Some local water districts have their own water resources or are embarking on expensive projects to create their own by recycling water to try and save their customers’ money.

Importantly, LAFCO is giving the Water Authority two years to get its house in order. The report gave a nod to leadership change at the Water Authority, General Manager Dan Denham.

“It is appropriate to allow current internal reforms time to demonstrate effectiveness before committing resources to explore fundamental organizational alternatives,” the report reads. 

In other words, let’s give the Water Authority some time to make good on commitments to sell off expensive water supplies and hopefully bring down water rates. 

The Water Authority responded to the report in a March 23 letter. The agency said LAFCO relied on “outdated and conflicting information” for some of its conclusions. And it asked for LAFCO to come back in five years instead of two to allow reforms going on within the agency right now “to mature.”

The agency reported that it has begun a process to review its business model working with general managers of its member agency water districts. 

Denham has already been successful selling water. Under his leadership, the Water Authority has made two deals to sell water to thirsty water districts in Riverside County.

LAFCO can initiate a breakup of government service agencies if it believes the business model of the agency is substantively flawed. It has jurisdiction over boundaries endowed by the state legislature and also has the power to annex cities or services together. 

The Water Authority now works like this: It acts sort of as a middle man, buying Colorado River water and water from northern California from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California based in Los Angeles. Then, the Water Authority turns around and resells that water to 22 smaller, local water districts that service residents within cities and the county. 

But the cost of water has been skyrocketing due in large part to a bunch of spending the Water Authority did years ago to ensure the region had a reliable water supply, especially during droughts. It made deals with farmers in Imperial Valley to buy Colorado River water that’s legally protected from being cut as droughts worsen in the West, and it built a desalination plant in Carlsbad that makes ocean water drinkable but at a very high price. 

LAFCO’s analysts nudged the Water Authority with a few recommendations in its report. LAFCO said the agency should fix its governing board’s voting structure as the city of San Diego prepares to use recycled water and buy a lot less from the agency. As the Water Authority’s biggest customer, the agency is going to take a big hit in revenue when the city does this. 

Smaller water districts want more power at the Water Authority. Currently its board votes are weighted toward agencies that buy the most, like the city of San Diego.

LAFCO also suggested it generate revenue not just via water rates (or how much water they sell) but via a special property tax to help support the growing fixed costs associated with building and maintaining all the pipes, pumps and reservoirs the region needs to get and keep water here. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California already does this. 

LAFCO is also going to take a look at Metropolitan’s finances and operations in a second part of this municipal service review slated to be released later this summer, said Priscilla Mumpower, assistant executive officer at San Diego LAFCO.

The post LAFCO: Dissolve the Water Authority? Not Yet. appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Getting rid of the San Diego County Water Authority might be the best way to address regional water costs and needs in the future. 

That’s what the plurality of concepts studied by the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission or LAFCO, suggest under its first audit of the county’s water wholesaler. The Water Authority fell under LAFCO’s scrutiny a few years ago after two member water districts fought to leave the agency over its high water prices. 

So LAFCO decided to do what’s called a municipal service review of the Water Authority. That’s a fancy way of saying an audit with recommendations on how to fix certain problems. 

LAFCO came up with three possible solutions to the Water Authority’s dire financial straits. Here’s what they are: 

• Dissolve the Water Authority into smaller water wholesale regions.
• Dissolve it and form a new special district to manage water treatment and reservoir storage while giving the rest of the Water Authority’s assets to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. 
• Expand the Water Authority’s power by letting it absorb its 22-member water district’s role of selling water to cities and the county. 

Read more here. 

South County Report: What We Know About Coronado’s ‘Jet House’

Residents of the ritzy Coronado Cays community are up in arms over an unusual new home under construction that includes a 40-foot-long rooftop fuselage of a jet.

For his latest South County Report, our Jim Hinch was determined to get to the bottom of what’s happening there.

Among his findings: Neighbors are seeking a court injunction to stop what architectural renderings call “The Jet House.” That lawsuit identifies the owner as Abdulelah I. Albusseir, the apparent owner of a development company that submitted plans for the house.

Albusseir also may be connected with an artist who goes by the same name as the development company – Donatello Bonasera – and who designs solid-gold skulls and other fine art objects. An Architectural Digest advertorial featuring the development company compares its owner to Leonardo Da Vinci and says he is readying plans to build a residential community on Mars.

 Read the full South County Report here.

San Diego’s Air Is Super Polluted 

Our friends at KPBS read a report on the state of our air so you didn’t have to and found that San Diego County is among the most polluted regions in the country.  

“The 2026 State of the Air report ranked San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad as the fifth-worst nationally for annual particle pollution,” writes KPBS’s Tammy Murga. “Last year, it landed in 59th place. The region also ranked as the seventh worst for ozone pollution.”

Why? Probably all of the cars. A lot of these pollutants dropped dramatically during the pandemic when workers stayed home, as we’ve reported. 

Read the full story on KPBS here.

Chicano Park Boulevard! 

The San Diego City Council voted this week to rename a street in Barrio Logan from Cesar E. Chavez Parkway to Chicano Park Boulevard in response to sexual abuse allegations against the late labor leader. 

Business owners and residents must now begin the process of updating their addresses on all legal and business documents. NBC 7 reports that the city is not helping residents pay for costs associated with that process. 

In Other News 

• The state Water Resources Control Board now has a plan to dole out nearly $50 million in state bonds for water quality projects meant to help long-running debacles near the border. (KPBS)
• A judge this week granted four anti-ICE protesters who barricaded themselves inside Mayor Todd Gloria’s office in January misdemeanor diversion that could lead to the dismissal of their cases. (NBC 7)
• The U.S. Navy Reserve inspector general ordered Congressional candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar to take corrective actions tied to his descriptions of his service as a reserve officer in his campaign. (KPBS)
• The National City Municipal Golf Course will live on for at least five more years. (Fox 5 San Diego)
• A proposed county-backed park in Alpine will undergo a second environmental review after a Superior Court judge ruled that an initial review and approvals be set aside. (KPBS)
• Update: A member of Encinitas’s city Urban Forestry Advisory Committee held onto his seat this week after concerns about his controversial Facebook post describing a video of African-style dance as “scenes of blacks dressed in tribal gear banging on drums.” (Union-Tribune)

The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer, Lisa Halverstadt and Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.

The post Morning Report: LAFCO: Dissolve the Water Authority? Not Yet. appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

On the latest episode, our hosts talk about your ballot and the city of San Diego’s budget trouble.

First up! San Diego County supervisors have officially taken the first step to put a measure on the ballot that would extend their term limits. But there are other county government reforms in that measure that are way more interesting.

Next, Mayor Todd Gloria released his proposed budget. Some folks are very mad, but we saw that coming. We explain the proposed cuts on the show.

Finally: You got to be delusional to run for governor of California. The podcast crew goes through a voter guide to explain your options, sort of.

Listen Here Now

Listen: Apple | Spotify | PodLink

The post VOSD Podcast: LivingForGod AndCountry appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Right-wing operatives unleashed a firestorm inside the Capitol halls this week.

For weeks, a bill that would strengthen privacy protections for immigrant service workers stirred controversy online among some conservatives over fears that it would stifle First Amendment rights before it was taken up at a committee hearing this week.

Assembly Bill 2624 expands on a 25-year-old state protection program that allows victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse to keep their residential addresses confidential by providing a substitute mailing address to the secretary of state’s office. 

The legislation by Assemblymember Mia Bonta would broaden the eligibility to include people who provide legal, health or other social services to immigrants and ban their private information from being shared online if intended to incite harassment or violence if they are in the program. Violations would be a civil offense and give those affected the right to sue.

However, it has spurred anxiety among Republicans over concerns that it would stop independent ‘citizen journalists’ from investigating fraud accusations. The pushback has included calls from GOP lawmakers for a special session on the issue and ire from non-Californians such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Trump administration officials.

Republicans have coined it the “Stop the Nick Shirley Act,” although the bill does not name the conservative activist and content creator whose videos about Somali-operated Minnesota day care centers spurred an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Shirley also visited several Somali-run day care centers in San Diego where he accused owners of running “ghost facilities” with no children present.

At a public safety hearing earlier this week, immigrants rights groups advocates filled the room and the testimony overwhelmingly supported the bill. It’s intended to protect workers who help immigrants from being targeted, but many advocates were rattled.

“I fear that people may come after me or my family because of my affiliation with this effort,” said Aydee Rodriguez, a fellow at the Women’s Foundation of California.

Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins of La Mesa, who sits on the committee, said she supports the bill because “no one should fear walking out of their home.”

There was opposition, though. A self-described independent journalist echoed concerns it would curtail investigative journalism. Palmdale Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican, said he couldn’t back the bill because of how it’s been interpreted by outsiders.

“It shows this bill is not clear,” he said about claims the bill would limit what journalists could share online. “Maybe it’s clear in your intent, but the application needs help if there’s this much attention being drawn and accusations that it represents something that you say it doesn’t claim.”

It passed the committee 7-2 along partisan lines.

Bonta’s office maintains that the bill language is clear and that the proposal would not affect journalists.

The fiasco is the latest flashpoint amid a nationwide Republican push to scrutinize Democrats over alleged widespread social services fraud. In California, the message has been politically potent ever since the state was found responsible for paying billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment insurance claims during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“For voters that are fiscally motivated, they do believe the fraud exists, and they do want to stop it,” GOP political consultant Matt Rexroad said. “And so, for Republicans, who are pushing that effort, it’s a direct effort to not only appeal to their base, but independents love it and some Democrats believe that fraud exists on a large scale.”

It’s led to bills seemingly unrelated to fraud such as Bonta’s being pulled into a deliberately misleading political messaging ecosystem claiming corruption and First Amendment violations that she said have led her office to receive death threats.

Separately, another proposal First Amendment groups are worried about, Assembly Bill 1821, is snaking its way through the Legislature.

It would give public agencies more time to respond to public records requests, from the current 10 calendar days to 10 business days.

It advanced from committee last week after its author, Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco of Downey, removed a language that would have allowed agencies to charge the public unspecified amounts for time spent fulfilling requests.

Pacheco said that Downey and other cities have received an increasing number of requests over the past two decades that have cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee time.

“Regardless of the intent, requests at this scale require significant time and resources to process,” Pacheco said at committee hearing last week. City and county governments back the bill and groups such as the League of California Cities have said it will stop people from abusing requests, which can cause delays for other requests.

First Amendment and civil liberties groups initially worried that the proposed law would dissuade people from filing public records requests due to prohibitive costs.

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that dropping the fees was an improvement but the deadline extension could also result in delays, meaning some requests would never be completed.

“Time is of the essence,” Loy said. “Documents delayed are often documents denied.”

In Other News

Democrats advanced a bill that would disqualify federal immigration agents who started work during the second Trump administration from becoming local or state police officers. 

It’s the latest piece in a package of legislation taking swings at the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, although attempts with similar laws have had limited success. A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a 2025 law that forced federal agents to identify themselves.

Other bills, such as the one that advanced this week and another that would make it easier to sue agents for civil offenses, are expected to face similar scrutiny should they become law.

What I’m Reading Now

Is San Diego on the right track with Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget cuts? The San Diego Union-Tribune asks economists to give their take.

Black students at elite Southern California campuses navigate a rise in racist incidents, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans hone in on hospice fraud in California during a special hearing on Medicaid fraud, from The New York Times.

The post Sacramento Report: A Privacy Protection Bill Unleashes an Online Flurry on the Right appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The adults of the future are already achieving recognition for their classroom success. 

Every month, students at local schools are selected by their teachers and honored by Kiwanis Club of Pacific Beach — a chapter of an international group dedicated to uplifting children in every community.

Penelope Zoby | 3rd Grade, Pacific Beach Elementary

“Right away, I recognized a spirit in Penelope, always fun with a smile on her face,” said teacher Shelley Warner. “All that plays out in who she is as a student, classmate, and friend. She’s a leader in our classroom, setting the bar for what should be done: using time wisely, being kind, and having patience.”

Penelope says she learned everything from her family. Stephanie and Pete Zoby couldn’t be prouder of their daughter.

“She’s quick, always willing to jump in and lend a hand. She’s always been like that,” said Pete.

Her older brother William attended the same school. The siblings stood out as having really good relationships with their parents, sharing that care and support with those around them.

“She’s a really nice person, I think she often helps a lot without even realizing it,” said William.

“I do,” said Penelope. “I like helping them understand.”

When Penelope finishes an assignment, she’ll go around the class to help. Warner explains that hearing an explanation from a peer, another kid, often helps her students’ understanding of the lesson. “Having her in the class elevates it to a higher level.”

Penelope has a knack for details, remembering what makes other people happy and always working to include those who may feel left out.

“She brings out the best in people by being kind and interested in others – you don’t always see that,” said Warner.

Sofia Brownlee | 5th Grade, Kate Sessions Elementary

“She’s a leader in our classroom; humble, kind, absolutely brilliant, and so caring to everybody,” said teacher Karen Clifford. 

Sofia distinguishes herself by taking detailed notes and never being afraid to ask questions, ensuring she understands Clifford’s lessons. She exemplifies a “growth mindset” for learning.

When she turns to help her classmates, Brownlee’s understanding allows her to help them with the material. Her compassion guides her approach, always asking “How are you feeling?” when offering her support.

“We’re not in the classroom with her,” said father David Brownlee. “You see it all the time at home, but to know that it carries on when you’re not there is amazing.”

Angelo, her older brother, recently injured his thumb. Sofia didn’t hesitate to help, running over with an icepack from the freezer.

“She’s an incredible athlete as well — gymnastics,” said Clifford. “This girl is a future Olympian!”

Sofia looks up to Jordan Chiles, whose dominant performance won gold at the 2022 Gymnastics World Championship. “I went to watch her before at UCLA, they’re really good,” she said.

David and mother Luna reflected on Sofia’s first gymnastics trick — jumping off the couch and landing on her head. Thankfully, she escaped serious injury, but her responsehighlighted her perseverance.

“She’s crying and I go over there, asking ‘Are you okay? Are you okay?’” said David. “She said, ‘Yeah, yeah, daddy. I think I know how to do it now.’ And then she’d go back and try again.”

Sofia is never afraid to get back up; no failure will ever keep her down.

“I see what my parents and brother do. I get inspiration from them,” she said.

A team effort

Tony Bayona has run the Student of the Month program for 8 years. In that time, he’s seen how important family support is for kids, describing their success as a “team effort.”

Kiwanis often awards students who help others, mirroring the support they receive at home. This recognition is proof for parents that their children will make positive change in the world. According to David Brownlee, “It’s the job of every parent.”

As the weather gets warmer, this weekend will see the return of some local institutions highlighting a slew of options for anyone looking to indulge in everything from the arts to climate science.

Friday, April 24

Climate Dance Party at Birch Aquarium: Who said you have to be stuffy to care about the environment? The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is celebrating the paperback release of Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book “What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures” with a dance party. Local environmental groups like the Climate Science Alliance and the Surfrider Foundation of San Diego County will also be on hand.

The first 300 attendees will get a free copy of Johnson’s book. The aquarium is located at 2300 Expedition Way in La Jolla. Attendance for the general public will cost $34.95 for kids up to 17 years of age and $39.95 for adults.

San Diego Asian Film Festival (SDAFF): The festival will be holding its “spring showcase” with nine films screening thru April 26 at UltraStar Cinemas in Mission Valley (7510 Hazard Center Dr.). Among the offerings in this slate: the Filipino mockumentary comedy “Republic of Pipolipinas”; indie darling Gregg Araki’s racy comedy “I Want Your Sex”; and the closing night showcase “Y Vân: The Lost Sounds of Saigon”, which follows the Vietnamese musical pioneer’s granddaughter Khoa Hà as she learns about his rock-and-roll legacy.

WOW Festival: Technically, this annual cavalcade of immersive musical and multimedia performances kicked off at the La Jolla Playhouse (9500 Gilman Dr.) on Thursday. But thankfully, most of the shows – which run the gamut from digital horror to karaoke to an “adult puppet cabaret” – will be playing throughout the event, which ends on Sunday. Admission to some shows is free, but some performances will require you to buy a ticket in advance.

Saturday, April 25

Adams Avenue Unplugged: This year’s edition of the long-running “musical walkabout” will feature 90 musical performances across the eponymous avenue, stretching from University Heights into Kensington. However, organizers told us on Thursday morning that headliner Alejandro Escovedo’s performance at the Normal Heights United Church stage was canceled due to a family emergency. Refunds for ticket buyers have already been processed, they said.

Attendance to the event itself remains free, outside of the $25 VIP beer and food package which is only available online; tickets for that will not be sold on site.

Chicano Park Day: It’s the celebration of the 56th anniversary of the park’s creation by Barrio Logan residents as well as Chicano Movement activists.

“The struggle for Chicano Park came to symbolize the Chicano Mexicano people’s struggle for self-determination and self-empowerment,” the park’s steering committee notes. “The murals in the park portray the social, political and cultural issues that form the struggle for the liberation of Chicano/Mexicanos.”

Beginning at 10 a.m., the event will feature a lowrider car show as well as traditional music and dance performances throughout the park (1949 Logan Ave.).

CV Slam Fest: This is as much a celebration of the spoken word as it is a slam poetry competition with $1,000 going to the winner. There’s no cost to attend the event, but organizers are urging attendees to show up early to the Memorial Park Bowl Amphitheater in Chula Vista (373 Park Way) – the festival will open at noon with a performance by Eligh and Skarub of the Living Legends collective.

Koningsdag (King’s Day) Celebration in La Jolla: To be clear, this annual event celebrates the Dutch king’s birthday, and the Lawrence Family Community Center (4126 Executive Dr.) will be awash in orange (the Dutch Royal Family’s color) for the occasion. Hosted by the Dutch School of Southern California, the party runs from 1-5 p.m., with admission at no cost for kids and $8 for adults.

Mission Fed ArtWalk: The first – and at 42 years, the longest-running – of the ArtWalk festivals returns to Little Italy along Italy Street, starting at 11 a.m. Saturday and concluding on Sunday evening. Featuring musical performances and interactive art exhibits as well as a diverse group of featured artists including Tijuana native Karla Preciado, ArtWalk is also a benefit for its partner program ArtReach San Diego, which is dedicated to helping children get more exposure to the visual arts.

Panda Fest San Diego: Running from 10 a.m. on Saturday to 8 p.m. on Sunday at Waterfront Park downtown (1600 Pacific Highway), this is not just for panda enthusiasts; it’s the local debut of an outdoor Asian food festival that has already touched down in several cities around the U.S.

Point Loma High School’s “Rhapsody on the Point”: Humphrey’s Concerts By The Bay (2241 Shelter Island Dr.) will host the Pointer music department’s annual fundraiser and showcase, with around 150 student performers joined by alumna Sophia Patella, who will play George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue.”

Proceeds from the ticket sales will go to benefit PLHS’ music department; admission will run $25 for children ages 5-18, while regular adult tickets will cost $60.

San Diego Book Crawl: Fifteen local stores will take part in this event marking Independent Bookstore Day that actually stretches past the weekend into Monday. This “literary treasure hunt,” as organizers describe it, will have prizes along the way for readers who want to branch out from their regular haunts. To take part, just spend $10 or more at a participating store. Read more about the “Super Bowl of books” here.

North County readers will note that the event falls on the same day as the San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival at MiraCosta College’s Oceanside campus (1 Barnard Dr.), which will feature more than 35 authors – including keynote speaker Victor Villaseñor – as well as 120 community groups. Read more about this event here.

San Diego EarthFest: Organizers say that more than 100 “sustainable food, craft and service vendors” will converge on the President’s Lawn in Balboa Park alongside environmental groups, live musical performances and yoga and meditation activities. The festival starts at 11 a.m. and is free to attend, but you will have to register beforehand.

Sunday, April 26

Marine Science Day: Back on the scientific front, San Diego State’s Coastal and Marine Institute will open its doors at 11 a.m. at 4165 Spruance Road for this free event, featuring a live scuba demonstration as well as a silent auction.

Soap marks 30 years of “Soundtracks for Living”: The DJ duo of Crushed Peanut and EZ Du’ brings the weekend to a smooth close at the Whistle Stop Bar (2236 Fern St.) in South Park for a celebration of The Gentle People’s chilled-out pop classic. It’s being reissued with bonus tracks making it “rejuvenated and ready to soundtrack new lives and new fondue parties.”

Admission is free, and the party starts at 9 p.m., with the Soap DJs joined by Dougee Dimensional of the Gentle People and DJ Bijou Clochard.

I. Lo vi una vez en la tele, con mis hijos. Era la final del Mundial 2022. Argentina contra Francia. Mi hijo tenía cinco años y no entendía por qué yo estaba tan callado. No es que no hablara. Es que no podía. Porque ver a Messi jugar esa noche era como ver a mi jefe cuando llega a una obra y se queda quieto mirando el espacio vacío. No dice nada. No necesita. Ya sabe dónde va cada cosa.

Esa final fue un desastre hermoso. 2 a 0. Después 2 a 2. Después 3 a 2. Después 3 a 3. Y al final, 4 a 3. No era fútbol. Era una novela de esas que no puedes dejar porque cada vez que intentas apagar la tele, pasa algo. Y en medio de todo eso, Messi. Callado. Corriendo. Corriendo siempre. Como si los 35 años no le pesaran. Como si las tres finales perdidas no existieran.

Cuando terminó el partido, él se quedó sentado en el pasto. No lloraba. No gritaba. Solo estaba ahí, con la cara entre las manos, como un albañil que termina una jornada de diez horas y se sienta en la banqueta a mirar el cielo. Después, en los vestuarios, lo mostraron abrazado a la Copa, dormido. Con los ojos cerrados, apretando el trofeo como si fuera un balón. El mismo niño que dormía con un balón en Rosario. El mismo hombre que, 36 años después, le dio a Argentina lo que Argentina le había negado.

II. Por eso me compré el libro de Guillem Balagué. Messi. La biografía definitiva. No quería datos. Quería entender. Quería saber cómo se hace un hombre que puede cargar un país en los hombros sin que se le doblen las rodillas.

Balagué es periodista español. De esos que no se quedan en la superficie. No viene a contarnos goles. Viene a excavar. A buscar debajo de las estadísticas. A encontrar al niño que no se conformó. Como dijo Jorge Valdano, y perdón por citar a un señor que habla bonito, pero es verdad: detrás de cada jugador grande hay un niño que no aceptó el “no”.

El libro empieza en Rosario. En una casa con un pasillo angosto. Un niño flaco arrastra una naranja o un calcetín enrollado. Esquiva los muebles. Le habla al objeto como si le respondiera. No es una anécdota tierna. Es el primer síntoma de una enfermedad que no tiene cura. Su abuela Celia es su primera iglesia. Lo lleva a entrenar a Newell’s Old Boys. Le grita “¡Dale, Lío, dale!” desde la línea de cal. Cuando ella muere, Messi no levanta los brazos al cielo. Se tapa la boca con la mano. Es un beso. Un código íntimo que solo él entiende.

En Newell’s, el talento era innegable, pero el cuerpo no le respondía. El diagnóstico fue brutal: deficiencia de la hormona de crecimiento. El tratamiento, inalcanzable. Argentina le cerró las puertas. El libro captura la desesperación familiar en una imagen que duele: el aeropuerto. Leo, con trece años, abraza a su madre Celia y no quiere soltarla. En el avión rumbo a Barcelona llora todo el viaje. Apretando un balón contra el pecho. No llora por la fama futura. Llora por el hogar que deja atrás.

III. Barcelona no fue un sueño. Fue una prueba de resistencia. El club dudó de él. Hasta que Carles Rexach, el secretario técnico, lo vio jugar bajo la lluvia, en un campo de tierra, imposible de marcar. Sin papeles a mano, dibujó un contrato en una servilleta de bar. Un acto de fe que parece sacado de una película, pero que pasó de verdad.

La vida en La Masía fue una soledad disciplinada. Extrañaba a su madre. Su acento argentino era motivo de burla. Pero el balón, como el martillo para un obrero, era su herramienta. Su idioma universal. A los dieciséis años, en un partido juvenil, gambeteó a siete rivales y marcó. El entrenador Alex García recuerda: “Todos en el banquillo nos miramos. No dijimos nada. No había qué decir”.

El salto al primer equipo llegó con Frank Rijkaard, un holandés tranquilo. El libro desmonta el mito del estallido inmediato. Messi no llegó pegando. Llegó aprendiendo. Rijkaard fue un jardinero paciente. Vio en su fragilidad una inteligencia feroz. Le dio tiempo. Le dio confianza. Le repitió una sola consigna: “disfruta”. El primer gran gol llegó ante el Albacete, asistido por Ronaldinho, que lo cargó en hombros. No fue un traspaso de poder. Fue una adopción fraternal. Ronaldinho le abrió el vestuario. Rijkaard le dio las llaves del juego.

La noche del hat-trick al Real Madrid, con diecinueve años, Rijkaard pidió a la prensa: “Déjenlo vivir”. Era una advertencia temprana contra el monstruo que ya empezaba a crecer.

IV. Luego llegó Guardiola. Y aquí el libro se pone bueno, porque no idealiza. La relación entre Messi y Guardiola no fue un cuento de hadas. Fue un caso clínico de genialidad compartida, pero también de tensiones calladas.

Guardiola llegó a un banquillo inestable y encontró una sola certeza: aquel chico callado de veintiún años. Su primer gesto no fue táctico. Fue psicológico. Reunió al equipo y lanzó una frase que fue un cerco: “El que no corra, no jugará. Y el mejor de todos, se irá”. Todos miraron a Ronaldinho. Messi bajó la vista. El pacto quedó sellado.

Guardiola no le daba instrucciones. Le construyó un ecosistema. Lo sacó de la banda. Lo convirtió en falso nueve, un fantasma que destruía marcas y redibujaba el fútbol. El libro entra en la intimidad de esa creación: pizarras infinitas, silencios, asentimientos. Pep le dijo una vez: “No marques. Que te marquen. El espacio será de ellos”, señalando a Xavi e Iniesta. El sistema era una partitura escrita para un solo instrumento.

Pero el genio no se administra sin consecuencias. Guardiola necesitaba control absoluto. Messi jugaba desde la intuición. La comunicación se volvió tensión. Una escena lo define todo: Pep detuvo un entrenamiento, exasperado. “¡Leo! ¿Qué pasa?”. Messi respondió sin mirarlo: “Nada. Que acá no me la dan”. Guardiola no replicó. Dio por terminado el ejercicio. El mensaje fue brutal: el sistema debe servir al genio, no al revés.

Esa dinámica produjo belleza irrepetible: 91 goles en un año, el 5-0 al Madrid. Pero también una dependencia emocional extrema. Guardiola empezó a vivir pendiente de Messi. Messi empezó a sentir el peso de ser la obra maestra de alguien. El quiebre llegó con algo mínimo y definitivo: el regreso tardío de Messi de vacaciones en Argentina. Para Guardiola, fue falta de compromiso. Para Messi, necesidad vital. No hubo gritos. Hubo silencio. Dejaron de hablarse. Tito Vilanova se convirtió en intermediario. El vestuario se dividió.

La eliminación ante el Chelsea en 2012 lo selló todo. Messi falló un penalti decisivo. El balón golpeó el travesaño. Guardiola se hundió en el banco. En el vestuario hubo llanto. Pep lo abrazó, pero el gesto ya fue despedida. Semanas después, anunció su salida. Messi le escribió pidiéndole que se quedara. No hubo respuesta pública. La despedida real fue privada: un abrazo largo en el túnel. “Gracias por todo”, le susurró Guardiola. Fue gratitud y duelo.

La separación no borró el vínculo. El libro cuenta cómo Guardiola, ya en el Bayern, vio un regate de Messi en un avión y rompió a llorar. “Lo he echado tanto de menos”. No extrañaba al jugador. Extrañaba a la parte más pura de su propia obra.

V. Pero el libro no es solo sobre Barcelona. También es sobre Argentina. Y ahí la historia cambia.

En el club, Messi era rey dentro de un sistema que lo protegía. En la selección, era un símbolo al que se le exigía redención. No se le pedía jugar bien. Se le pedía salvar. El libro describe con crudeza el rechazo, los silbidos, la incomprensión. El sociólogo Julio Levinsky explica: “Hubo envidia estructural hacia el que se fue y triunfó. No sufrió la crisis con nosotros”.

Messi no entendía. Daba todo, pero su manera de darlo no encajaba con el mito argentino del héroe ruidoso. Tras la eliminación en Sudáfrica 2010, el preparador físico Fernando Signorini lo encontró “gritando, desesperado, casi con convulsiones en un rincón”. No era llanto. Era el sonido de una fractura.

En 2016, después de tres finales perdidas, renunció. Fue un acto lógico. Un hombre no puede cargar un país solo. Pero el regreso, obligado por el clamor popular, inició una reconciliación que solo se completó con los títulos. La Copa América 2021 y el Mundial 2022 no fueron gestas deportivas. Fueron terapia colectiva. Messi dejó de pedir aprobación y empezó a imponer respeto. Antes de la final en Qatar, no dio un discurso. Puso un video de su familia y dijo: “Miren. Esto es por lo que luchamos. Por ellos”.

VI. El libro de Balagué cierra con una imagen que podría ser una foto de familia: Messi dormido, horas después del Mundial, abrazado a la Copa en un vestuario vacío. Es el mismo niño que dormía con un balón. El círculo se cierra. La obsesión encuentra descanso.

No es una biografía. Es una arqueología. Una excavación paciente en las capas de silencio, gloria, dolor y fútbol puro que componen a Lionel Messi. Balagué no nos entrega una estatua. Nos devuelve, ladrillo a ladrillo, el mapa completo de la casa donde nació, creció y a veces, también, sufrió el mito.

Y uno, desde su casa, con los hijos durmiendo y la tele apagada, entiende que la gloria no es estar arriba de un podio. La gloria es poder dormir abrazado a lo que más querés, después de haberlo dado todo.

Eso es Messi. Eso es cualquier obrero que vuelve a casa con las manos vacías pero el pecho lleno.

Fuente: Messi. La biografía definitiva, de Guillem Balagué (Corner / DEBOLS!LLO).

A man was found shot to death in a residential area of Lemon Grove early Thursday.

Deputies responded around 4 a.m. to the 21000 block of El Dora Street, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.

The man was discovered with gunshot wounds to his upper body, sheriff’s officials said. His name and age have not been released.

At least one person was detained for questioning, according to media reports. No other injuries were reported and homicide detectives continued to investigate.

At a recent art show, Karla Preciado watched from across her booth as a woman walked straight through the crowd to her paintings, put her hand to her heart and gasped, tears in her eyes.

“She said, ‘Oh my God, I feel your paintings,'” Preciado shared. “I think that is the biggest compliment I have ever received. That was so meaningful to me. Because that’s what you do. That’s why you do it, to reach people and connect.”

That kind of moment is what draws 100,000 guests each year to Mission Fed ArtWalk, San Diego’s beloved outdoor festival now celebrating its 42nd year. On April 25-26, more than 250 artists will set up along India Street in Little Italy, filling the neighborhood with original work in every medium, live music and interactive experiences.

Among this year’s featured artists are two women whose paths to painting could hardly look more different, yet both share a deep connection to the natural world.

Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan didn’t plan to become a painter. She planned to be an engineer, and for 19 years, she was. Born in South India, she arrived in San Diego County in 2007 to pursue a graduate degree in electrical engineering at UC San Diego, settling in La Jolla. 

What she didn’t expect was a back injury that would send her outside. Prescribed walking as part of her recovery, Gopalakrishnan discovered hiking, then camping, then backpacking. A decade of outdoor adventure followed.

Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she picked up a brush for the first time. 

“It was a random discovery,” she said. “I learned that I could paint outside, so it became a natural extension of my life outdoors.”

She found she couldn’t stop. After long days at work, she would paint for hours to decompress. By early 2024, she quit her engineering job entirely. 

“Sometimes you get that very strong certainty about things,” she said. 

Gopalakrishnan works in oils, but not just any oils. Her practice is certified as a California Green Business. Troubled by the toxic solvents common in oil painting, she spent years researching alternatives and now uses a fully nontoxic process. 

“It’s important the art I deliver to my collectors is safe,” she said. “If they sleep in a bedroom with my painting, I don’t want it to have any toxic varnishes.”

Now based in Irvine, she carries her easel into mountain ranges across California and the Southwest. The same trails that helped heal her back now feed her work in ways she can trace by stroke. 

“All my paintings start on the trails,” she said. “When I’m happy those colorful, joyful, bold brush strokes show up. I know what mood I was in when I was painting. It’s like an art journal.”

For ArtWalk, Gopalakrishnan is bringing large-scale California works including paintings from the Kern River, Yosemite and Wine Country, plus a nearly finished beach painting from Encinitas she is racing to dry in time. 

Gopalakrishnan will also be accompanied by Ginger, her 4-year-old Labradoodle and trailside companion. 

Her advice to first-time ArtWalk visitors is to slow down. 

“Really take in the art because just glancing through it, you cannot decide how you would feel once you bring it home,” she said. “Be present and enjoy the art.”

Karla Preciado grew up in Tijuana, just across the border from Chula Vista where she lives now. Ask her what the word Mexico brings to mind and the answer is immediate. 

“To me it’s color,” she said. “You see color everywhere, color in the buildings, color inside the restaurants, you have a party and it’s full of color. To me, color is happiness. Color makes me feel just a little bit better and that’s why I paint with saturated colors.”

Color is also, Preciado adds, a kind of alter ego. 

“I’m so shy,” she said. “In a group conversation, I’ll participate, but I’m not the loud person in the room. Color is my alter ego trying to get out.”

Preciado’s path to painting ran through southern Spain, where her husband, a retired Navy officer, received orders to move the family to the coast of Andalucía. She took her first painting class there and eventually developed a fluency in abstraction. She has since shown at ArtWalk’s Carlsbad and Liberty Station events, but this year marks her first time at Little Italy.

“It’s such an honor,” she said of being named a featured artist. “It’s over 250 artists and to be chosen, I’m just thrilled.”

Working in acrylics, Preciado builds up paintings in intuitive layers — covering, reacting, revealing. The process leaves behind discoveries buried in the work. 

“You get these glimpses of history that you can’t see from afar,” she said. “I love that about a painting. You keep rediscovering each time you see it, you notice little things that you didn’t notice the first time.” 

Like Gopalakrishnan, Preciado finds painting and nature deeply intertwined, two routes to the same stillness. 

“Painting is a form of meditation,” she said. “It keeps me grounded. My troubles melt away and I get the same feeling when I’m in nature.”

Preciado is bringing a new collection of abstract landscapes to ArtWalk that she describes as “a little bit more representational but still abstract.” 

She is equally eager for conversations the weekend brings. 

“You create for yourself, and then when you get to talk with people and see what they like, that’s very valuable,” Preciado said. 

Her advice to visitors is ask questions. 

“Get to know the artist,” she said. “And if something pulls on your heartstrings, get it.”

Mission Fed ArtWalk runs April 25-26 along India Street in Little Italy. Find Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan at Booth #154 and Karla Preciado at Booth #358. 

For more information, go to www.artwalksandiego.org/missionfed.

Recently, we’ve written about three transparency issues in county government. 

Supervisors have held secret subcommittee meetings behind closed doors; Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer spent $89,000 in county funds to poll-test potential ballot measures; and we sued the county because it has delayed, and refused, the release of public records. 

On Wednesday, County Supervisor Joel Anderson pushed forward policies to try to usher in more transparency on all of the above – and his fellow board members unanimously approved them.

Our Lisa Halverstadt has a rundown of the proposals. They would make secret committees public, create guardrails and other requirements for county-funded polling and standardize part of the county’s response to public records requests. 

Next steps: All three policy pitches require work and reports back from county staff before they are enacted. We’ll be watching to see what happens next.

Read the full story here.

North County Report: Ex-Fair Leader’s Checkered Past

Earlier this week, our Tigist Layne unearthed a new lawsuit that may be connected to the sudden ouster of former Del Mar Fairgrounds CEO Carlene Moore. The Fairgrounds’ board of directors abruptly fired Moore on April 14.

Turns out, the problems leading to Moore’s firing were just the latest in what Layne reveals were years of troubled leadership both at Del Mar and in Napa County, where Moore led the fairgrounds for nine years before coming to San Diego.

A 2017 citizens’ Grand Jury report found the Napa Fairgrounds had declined markedly under Moore’s leadership. Facilities had deteriorated and the fairgrounds faced a structural budget deficit and declining attendance.

The Napa fairgrounds to shut down completely in 2020, soon after Moore left. 

“This is a hard job here, you’re running a big business,” one Napa Valley resident previously said of Moore’s fairgrounds leadership there. “She can’t do it.” 

Read the full North County Report here. 

In Coronado, a Rooftop Jet Showdown

Call it the granddaddy of all HOA disputes.

A group of Coronado Cays property owners filed suit to halt construction of a home that features an unusual design touch: the fuselage of a 40-foot Gulfstream 550 jet on the roof.

The suit contends the Coronado Cays Homeowners Association failed to follow its own rules when it approved plans for the house. The jet, says the suit, “will create the unmistakable and grotesque appearance of a plane crash site atop a private residence.”

Some residents have even created a website to the fight the plan. “A 40-foot jet fuselage has no place on a residential roof,” it reads. 

Carlos Cortez, a neighbor of what construction plans call “The Jet House,” said residents in the neighborhood of multi-million-dollar custom-built homes plan to speak out at an HOA meeting today. Cortez said residents fear drones and selfie-seekers will swarm their neighborhood.

“If this is allowed to happen, what’s to stop someone from putting an Artemis II rocket on the roof?” he said.

In Other News 

• Correction: Yesterday’s Morning Report contained an error related to the city’s Climate Equity Fund. The mayor’s budget proposal would redirect millions of dollars away from the Climate Equity Fund and into the city’s general fund. It would not raid money already in the fund. 

• State water officials on Tuesday approved rules guiding distribution of up to $50 million in bond funds to clean up the Tijuana and New rivers in San Diego and Imperial counties. State officials said they expect to begin reviewing applications for cleanup projects later this year. (KPBS)

• City councilmembers on Wednesday endorsed a possible November ballot measure that would levy a tax on corporations that own and rent out more than 10 single-family homes. Councilmembers said they hoped the measure would free up houses for individual homeownership. (Union-Tribune)

• The Encinitas City Council on Wednesday was set to consider removing a member of the city’s Urban Forestry Advisory Committee in response to a social media post by the committee member. The committee member, Steven Houbeck, posted a message in February describing a video of African-style dance as “scenes of blacks dressed in tribal gear banging on drums.” (inewsource)

• Former San Diego County Department of Animal Services Director Rachael Borrelli filed an $8.5 million claim against the county alleging her ouster from the animal services department last year was an act of retaliation for complaining about what Borrelli said were a colleague’s repeated defamatory remarks about her. (KPBS)

• Times of San Diego has all you need to know about this Saturday’s San Diego Book Crawl – the “Super Bowl of Books.”

The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and Jim Hinch. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: About Those Secret Subcommittees appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Residents of Coronado Cays, a waterfront enclave adjacent to Coronado’s Silver Strand shoreline, are accustomed to their houses generating headlines. 

An 11,715-square-foot dockside mansion in the community drew television coverage last year when it hit the market for $37.5 million. 

But residents say they were unprepared for a recent construction project that stands out even by today’s standards of ultra-wealthy conspicuous consumption. 

At 15 Sandpiper Strand in the Cays’ Green Turtle neighborhood, crews are erecting what a developer describes as a “fully serviced estate” that features a Bugatti Chiron automobile in the living room, two “presidential-style” suites, a 100-foot dock big enough for two yachts – and the 40-foot-long fuselage of a Gulfstream G 550 jet on the roof. 

It’s the rooftop jet that’s causing a problem. 

Earlier this month, a group of neighbors sued the property owner and the Coronado Cays Homeowners Association, demanding an injunction blocking installation of the jet. 

“An actual airplane fuselage is not in harmony with the neighborhood,” the suit contends. “In fact, unless a catastrophic disaster has occurred, one will not find airplane parts on the roofs of any of the homes in the Coronado Cays. That is because the Coronado Cays is an exclusive waterfront community, not a community of airplane hangars.” 

Neighbor Carlos Cortez, who is not involved in the lawsuit, said nearby residents fear the jet will lower their property values and attract drones, selfie-seekers and other gawkers. 

“There’s no precedent in all of San Diego County for someone having a jet on the roof,” he said. “If this is allowed to happen, what’s to stop someone from putting an Artemis II rocket on the roof?”

In response to emailed questions about the proposed jet, the developer of the $30 million house said the jet was part of a “unified architectural concept” intended to showcase the house’s “individuality and artistic expression.”

The developer, who declined to give a personal name, only the name of the development company working on the house, said it was too late for objections.

“With approvals granted over three years ago by both the [homeowners association] and the city of Coronado, and with construction now three to four months from completion, we are confident that these established facts outweigh speculative or opinion-based concerns,” the developer said.

The developer, whose company is called Donatello Bonasera, disagreed that the jet would lower property values or draw unwanted attention.

“Significant investment and high-quality custom development typically enhance surrounding property values rather than diminish them,” the developer said.

The developer declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The controversy , which Cortez said likely would be the subject of heated commentary at a scheduled homeowners association meeting today, highlights Coronado’s unique place in the wider economy and culture of South San Diego County.

The Cays, where three-bedroom homes sell for close to $5 million, sits directly across San Diego Bay from some of San Diego County’s lowest income communities. 

State Assembly District 80, which encompasses much of South County (excluding Coronado), is home to one of California’s highest percentages of residents who qualify for federal health, nutrition and other aid programs. Forty-five percent of district residents qualify for such programs, according to a recent U.C. Berkeley report. 

In District 77, a coastal strip of land including Coronado, just 16 percent of residents qualify for federal aid. 

The Cays, a community of 1,200 luxury condominiums, townhomes and custom-built single-family homes, is visible across San Diego Bay from most South County cities. Many properties feature their own boat slips. 

“With the sun glistening across each water inlet and your boat in your own backyard, the magic of the water is yours to see, touch and sit on,” the community’s website says. 

Owners range from locals who have lived in the area for most of their lives to international jetsetters who visit their Coronado Cays property a few times a year. 

Cortez said the owner of 15 Sandpiper Strand initially kept a low profile after buying the property a few years ago. More recently, rumors about his identity have flown around the neighborhood, fueled in part by what Cortez said were frequent sightings of Ferraris, Bentleys, Rolls-Royces and other luxury cars outside the property. 

The lawsuit, filed April 10 in San Diego Superior Court, identifies the owner as Abdulelah I. Albusseir, who is also listed in state business filings as the manager of the Donatello Bonasera development company that submitted architectural plans for the house with the jet. 

The plans, which identify the house as “Casa Faten: The Jet House,” show the nose of the Gulfstream fuselage poking slightly over a roughly 2.5-foot-tall glass parapet encircling the roof. Following initial objections from neighbors last year, the developer added to the plans an eight-foot solid wall shielding the jet from some neighbors’ view. 

Renderings provided by the developer show a glass-walled mansion with a sleek modernistic interior and what appears to be a roughly 130-square-foot image of a fake $1 million bill imprinted on the roof beside the jet fuselage. A glass geodesic dome encompasses a jacuzzi on the other side of the roof.

Donatello Bonasera advertises itself on its website as a builder of skyscrapers, “high-end luxury residences” and “bespoke bunkers.” 

An artist who also goes by the name Donatello Bonasera – and who discussed the Jet House with Voice following an email inquiry posted to his website – describes himself as a craftsman of fine gold artworks, “a creator whose work is both timeless and transcendent.” 

The artist’s website features works such as a solid gold skull with a rose clenched in its jaws. 

The Donatello Bonasera representative who replied to Voice of San Diego’s email declined to confirm whether Donatello Bonasera the artist is the same as the Jet House developer — or if either of those people are Abdulelah Albusseir.

“Some of your questions relate to private ownership and personal matters that are outside the scope of the development team’s role and knowledge,” the representative’s email says.

An undated advertorial published on the website of Architectural Digest magazine suggests that Donatello Bonasera — whoever he is — is a man of many talents.

The advertorial describes Mr. Bonasera as an “Artist, Builder & Icon” who has inspired comparisons to Leonardo Da Vinci and now is setting his sights on building a new residential community – on Mars. 

“This isn’t science fiction,” the advertorial says of the developer’s interplanetary ambitions. 

For now, the advertorial says, Donatello Bonasera is focused on jet-themed buildings. The advertorial includes a rendering of another house Donatello Bonasera built that also features a jet on the roof. 

“The result is architecture with the presence of flight itself, balanced between earth and sky,” the advertorial says. 

One outstanding rumor remains impossible to verify. Cortez said some neighbors believe Albusseir is a Sheikh from somewhere in the Middle East. 

Several online business publications of uncertain origin refer to a “Sheikh Abdulelah Al Busseir” as “a real estate and investment magnate who has amassed incredible wealth while keeping a modest profile.” 

One publication identifies the sheikh as “The Phantom Billionaire.” 

Phantom or not, Cortez said neighbors simply want the jet to go away. 

“It’s not about whether it’s tasteful or fancy or nice,” he said. “It’s the precedent.” 

In Other News 

The Chula Vista City Council on Tuesday approved spending up to $398,000 for a comprehensive review of police department facilities that will help determine whether the department needs to build a new eastside substation. City Councilmember Michael Inzunza, who represents part of eastern Chula Vista, said residents identified public safety and slow police response times as top concerns during door-to-door canvasing for the 2024 City Council election. 

Also on Tuesday, the National City Council approved a beefed-up five-year extension of the city’s agreement with the American Golf Corporation for management of the city’s Las Palmas Municipal Golf Course. Residents packed the meeting, fearing the city planned to close the golf course, based on inaccurate information circulating on social media. A crowd at the meeting applauded councilmembers’ unanimous vote to extend the agreement.  

The National City Council also began its budget process for the upcoming fiscal year. A preliminary presentation from city finance officials said the city’s current $9 million deficit will nearly double to more than $16 million absent changes in spending or revenue. 

The post South County Report: Rooftop Jet Roils Coronado Yacht Community appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is abruptly leaving his post, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell issued a brief statement via X:

“Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately.

“On behalf of the Secretary of War and Deputy Secretary of War, we are grateful to Secretary Phelan for his service to the Department and the United States Navy.

“We wish him well in his future endeavors.”

No reason was given for the unexpected departure of the Navy’s top civilian official after just 13 months on the job. Undersecretary Hung Cao, a 25-year Navy veteran, will become Acting Secretary of the Navy.

Phelan’s departure is the latest in a series of shakeups of top leadership at the Pentagon, just weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George. Hegseth also has fired several other top generals, admirals and other defense leaders since taking office last year.

Showing how sudden the latest move was, Phelan the day before had addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the Navy’s annual conference in Washington and spoke with reporters about his agenda.

Phelan was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and founded the private investment firm Rugger Management, but had no military experience.

Cao fled Vietnam with his family as a child in the 1970s. He served in combat in the Navy, and later unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2024.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The San Diego Fugitive Task Force on Wednesday announced the arrest of a suspect in the 2022 shooting death of a 3-year-old boy in Louisiana.

Jayden Jhamar Davis was staying at an apartment in the 1900 block of Stylus Street in Otay Ranch, officials said. He was located and apprehended without incident Monday, according to the U.S. Marshal Service.

On Saturday, the Middle Louisiana Fugitive Task Force received an active arrest warrant from the Baton Rouge Police Department for Davis, who was wanted on suspicion of first-degree murder.

NEW DETAILS: DA says he plans to charge suspect, who was a juvenile when Devin Page was fatally shot, as an adult https://t.co/LDm2WeuOXM

— WAFB (@WAFB) April 22, 2026

Davis is accused of killing Devin Page Jr., who was struck in the head by a stray bullet while sleeping beside his 1-year-old sister inside their home on April 12, 2022.

“The incident stemmed from a shootout in the street that left more than 30 bullet holes in the exterior of the residence, where the family had been attempting to relocate due to ongoing violence in the area,” the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement.

WAFB, a Baton Rouge television station, reported that authorities linked a Glock used in the shootout that led to Devin’s death to two other shootings, one of them fatal. Investigators also found social media posts in which the suspect allegedly handled two of the firearms believed to have been used in the crime.

Davis is in custody pending extradition to Louisiana.

Los hijos de Alejandra Vega, tienen 7 y 9 años. Aunque ella nació en Estados Unidos, quiere que sus hijos hablen perfectamente bien en español. Para eso los lleva todos los días a una escuela de inmersión dual en la ciudad de Poway.

El problema, dice Vega, quien tiene 40 años y vive en Rancho Bernardo, es que no existen suficientes libros en español que le ayuden a fomentar el hábito de lectura de sus hijos. “Los que encuentro tienen un español muy distinto al que hablamos en casa”, dice un poco desilusionada.

Para personas como Alejandra, que siempre está buscando libros en español para sus hijos, el San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival, es una magnífica oportunidad para explorar los nuevos libros en español, pero también para disfrutar de la cultura latina de la que proviene.

El San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival se va a llevar a cabo el sábado 25 de abril en el campus del Miracosta College, en la ciudad de Oceanside. “Tenemos muchísimos atractivos para las familias”, dice Melissa López, una de las coordinadoras del festival.

“El festival contará con la participación de más de 35 autores latinos, incluidos ganadores del International Latino Book Award, y más de 120 módulos de organizaciones locales dedicadas a fortalecer y empoderar a la comunidad latina”, agregó López.

 Los asistentes podrán recorrer distintas áreas temáticas, como el Authors Village, el Health Village con evaluaciones de salud bilingües, y el Education Village, enfocado en rutas educativas y profesionales.

Talleres destacados

11:00 a.m Taller para conocer sus derechos, con la doctora Villarreal y Geraldine VonBorstel

12:00 p.m. Caminos para desarrollar el potencial, por el Community Youth Resources.

1:00 p.m Presentación de Victor Villaseñor, autor de Rain of Gold. Gathering, StarDust y Burro Genius.

El festival se realizará en conjunto con el MiraCosta STREAM Festival (de 12:00 p.m. a 3:00 p.m.), y ofrecerá una serie de actividades que celebran la alfabetización, la cultura latina, la comunidad y las áreas de ciencia, tecnología, lectura, ingeniería, arte y matemáticas (STREAM).

Otro de los atractivos es el Cruisin’ Village, que mostrará arte chicano a través de exhibiciones de lowriders, así como presentaciones en vivo, lecturas de autores, un taller de “Conozca sus derechos”, un espacio de recursos juveniles y una Villa Infantil organizada por bibliotecas y preescolares locales. El evento incluirá además una conferencia magistral del reconocido autor Víctor Villaseñor.

Vega está contenta de que va a asistir al Festival, tanto que ha invitado a otras familias de su escuela para ir juntos. “Me interesa mucho el programa dedicado a la ciencia y la tecnología, creo que nuestros hijos necesitan estar más preparados y esta es una buena oportunidad”, dijo.

Información

Qué: El 79.º San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival (LBFF)

Cuándo: Sábado 25 de abril de 2026, de 10:00 a.m. a 3:30 p.m.

Dónde: Mira Costa College: 1 Barnard Drive, Oceanside, CA 92056

Website: www.elfusa.org.

Alejandra Vega’s children are 7 and 9 years old. Although Vega was born in the United States, she wants her children to speak fluent Spanish. To make that happen, she takes them to a dual-language immersion school in Poway everyday.

The challenge, says Vega, who is 40 and lives in Rancho Bernardo, is finding enough children’s books in Spanish to encourage her kids to develop a love of reading. “The books I find use Spanish that’s very different from what we speak at home,” she says, sounding a bit discouraged.

For parents like Vega, who is always searching for Spanish-language books for her children, the San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival offers a valuable opportunity — not only to explore new books in Spanish, but also to celebrate the Latino culture her family comes from.

The San Diego Latino Book & Family Festival will be held Saturday at the MiraCosta College campus in Oceanside.

“We have a wide range of attractions for families,” said Melissa Lopez, one of the festival’s coordinators.

The festival will feature more than 35 Latino authors, including winners of the International Latino Book Award, as well as more than 120 booths representing local organizations dedicated to strengthening and empowering the Latino community, Lopez added.

Attendees will be able to explore several themed areas, including the Authors Village, the Health Village, which will offer bilingual health screenings, and the Education Village, focused on academic and career pathways.

Featured workshops include:

11 a.m. — Know Your Rights workshop, led by two speakers, including Geraldine VonBorstel.

Noon — Pathways to Developing Potential, presented by Community Youth Resources.

1 p.m. — Keynote address by author Victor Villaseñor, writer of Rain of Gold, Gathering of Dreams, StarDust and Burro Genius

The event will take place alongside the MiraCosta STREAM Festival, scheduled from noon to 3 p.m., which will celebrate literacy, Latino culture, community, and the fields of science, technology, reading, engineering, art and math (STREAM).

Another highlight is the Cruisin’ Village, which will showcase Chicano art through lowrider displays. The day will also include live performances, author readings and a Children’s Village organized by local libraries and preschools.

Vega says she is looking forward to attending the festival and has invited other families from her children’s school to join her. “I’m especially interested in the science and technology programming,” she said. “Our children need to be better prepared, and this is a great opportunity.”

This article first appeared in inewsource. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Daunté Fyall still remembers waking up to an Encinitas city official’s February social media post about West African dancing that he found deeply offensive. 

The since-deleted post was a screenshot of a video of an event put together during Black History Month by the Black Student Union at Canyon Crest Academy in the San Dieguito Union High School District. 

In the post, Steven Houbeck, an appointee on Encinitas’ Urban Forest Advisory Committee, wrote that Superintendent Anne Staffieri of SDUHSD recently sent an email to parents “depicting Black contributions to American history.” He said the video showed “scenes of blacks dressed in tribal gear banging on drums.” 

Fyall, an Encinitas resident who teaches West African dance at UC San Diego and has partnered with Encinitas West African Dance for over a decade, was offended by the post’s use of the word “blacks” and its apparent disparagement of an art form he cherishes. 

For two months, Fyall and others have called for Houbeck’s removal from the city committee he serves on at six separate City Council and committee meetings. 

On Wednesday, the Encinitas City Council will consider his dismissal.

Councilmember Joy Lyndes added it to the meeting agenda. 

“This rose to the level of concern from a group of constituents.” Lyndes told inewsource. “I thought it earned or deserved a full conversation and an explanation. I almost feel like I’m a facilitator here for the conversation. I don’t know how committed I am to which way it goes, but I think it’s incumbent upon us to bring things into the public forum when the public is concerned.”

A conversation on Facebook

The original Feb. 13 post was in the popular Encinitas Facebook group “Encinitas Insider,” where Houbeck is identified as a “top contributor” because of his interactions there. The account has 1,800 members and is a regular forum for debates about city politics. 

When Encinitas resident Stephanie Chatfield wrote on Houbeck’s post to ask what he meant, Houbeck replied that the school district’s superintendent was “exhibiting soft racism.”

“No mention of Justice Clarence Thomas of SCOTUS, economic greats like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams,” Houbeck wrote. “Artists like Prince that donated millions to charities anonymously, Padres great Tony Gwynn who also donated his time and money to the San Diego community. It’s racist for the Left to denigrate accomplished blacks because they’re Conservative.”

Fyall commented on Houbeck’s post that it was a “blatant slap.” 

“Calling us ‘blacks’ like some unseasoned, dusty relic from segregation days?” Fyall wrote. “That’s dehumanizing poison you’re spewing, clown—erasing our humanity and origins, posting a poor highlight of beautiful individuals from our community just to feed your narcissistic minstrel show account.”

Fyall added that reducing the West African dance traditions to “banging on drums” and “tribal gear” was “an attempted erasure of profound art forms.” 

Comments mounted in back-and-forth arguments about the post until an administrator eventually turned them off. 

The group’s moderators then posted that it had blocked several people from the page because they had no connection to Encinitas and wrote, “Do not come here to agitate.” 

For Fyall and his wife, Tia Grant, being blocked felt like a direct attack. They had just moved to Encinitas and their social media profiles did not show that yet. In a city of some 61,000 residents where Black people make up less than 1% of the population, the couple was beginning to feel unwelcome and worried for their 6-month-old twins. 

Moderators of the account did not delete Houbeck’s post at first because of his initial defense of it. The post was eventually deleted in late March.

A conversation in public

Meanwhile, a group that included Fyall, Grant and Theresa Beauchamp and Rachel Leshaw of Encinitas West African Dance has been contacting City Council members and showing up at public meetings with signs and with others advocating for Houbeck’s removal.

Grant said that people in city leadership positions should not be referring to African Americans or Black Americans as “blacks” or disparaging traditions like West African drum and dance. 

His removal, she said, would make families like hers feel more safe.

“If diversity is what they’re encouraging, then people like that need to be called out and removed, so that people like us who are full Black families can feel safe living in these types of neighborhoods and feeling safe to send their kids to the local school.”

Houbeck was appointed to the committee on Feb. 11, two days before his comments on Facebook. He discussed the controversy at his first Urban Forest Advisory Committee meeting last month. He said that his post was made before becoming a member of the committee and that the post “may have conveyed the wrong impression.” 

“My intent was never to degrade members of the community or artistic dancers,” he said. “I celebrate diversity and artistic expressions.”

He added, “I look upon this as a learning opportunity to be more sensitive to the words I use in certain venues and subjects. I do regret any harm that may have caused to members of the community.”

It’s unclear if the four other members of the City Council would vote to remove Houbeck.

Lyndes said her move did not necessarily mean she was going to vote to remove him, but that she wanted the City Council to have the conversation at a meeting.

“I think there’s lots of merit to discussing things as a group,” she said. “I can’t predict how this will go. This is going to be an opportunity for us to give our thoughts if anybody wants to. This is how we do business.”

Money to help underserved residents protect themselves against climate change is once again threatened under San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed budget. 

Gloria’s budget moves $7 million earmarked for climate projects in disadvantaged communities into the city’s general fund and spent elsewhere. These communities, which experience the worst effects of human-caused climate change, are typically lower-income, have a higher population of people of color and suffer historical wrongs like discriminatory housing practices or highways built through their neighborhoods. 

 
The Climate Equity Fund, where that money was supposed to go, was first proposed by Councilmember Vivian Moreno in 2021 to funnel money from San Diego Gas and Electric and state gas and transportation taxes toward those neighborhoods for infrastructure projects.  Gloria proposed cuts across all the city’s departments since the city faces a deficit north of $100 million. 

Gloria’s budget suspends those funds “in order to maintain existing city services,” wrote Peter Kelly, a spokesperson for the city’s Planning Department.  

Kelly said the city “will continue to prioritize infrastructure investments” in these communities. But the Climate Equity Fund, according to Gloria’s Administration, is no longer the primary way the city goes about doing that. He pointed to Council Policy 800-14, passed in December of 2022, which says the city should prioritize projects to eliminate disparities and sets up another definition for these communities called “structurally excluded community.”  

The Climate Equity Fund currently has $13 million dedicated to completing projects like traffic signal improvements in Barrio Logan, and stormwater drainage upgrades in City Heights. 

Gloria’s office did not respond to questions and instead directed them to the department facing the proposed cuts. 

It’s not the first time Gloria tried to move money away from climate equity. In 2024, he proposed moving the $8.5 million in the fund so it could be used elsewhere, before city councilmembers restored it. 

Gloria also proposed eliminating positions responsible for accomplishing pieces of the Climate Action Plan, called program coordinators.  

“We … found that these two Program Coordinator positions were not in alignment with other management positions in the department,” Kelly wrote.  

Instead, Gloria’s budget would add a new senior planner and principal planner positions that would take over this work, according to Kelly. 

Since taking office, Gloria has eliminated the Sustainability and Mobility Department which was focused on climate action work and making communities more bikeable, walkable and have better public transit access. He moved remaining staff from that department under the city’s planning department run by Heidi Vonblum.  

In October, Gloria sacked the former leader of the Sustainability and Mobility Department, Shelby Buso. As part of the reorganization, the mayor eliminated seven vacant positions in Buso’s department, touted as a savings of $914,000.  

The post Mayor Gloria’s Budget Cuts Fund for Underserved Neighborhoods appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

This post has been updated.

It seems like nobody is happy with Mayor Todd Gloria right now.

From supporters of libraries to artists to homelessness services providers to youth advocates, everyone’s got beef with his new budget proposal. The mayor’s plan proposes deep cuts to all sorts of city programs as a way to shore up a nearly $150 million budget shortfall. 

Our MacKenzie Elmer learned about another way the mayor is trying to solve the deficit: by not contributing to a rainy day fund for underserved San Diego neighborhoods. 

The Climate Equity Fund was created five years ago as a way to funnel money from SDG&E and state taxes into infrastructure projects that protect underserved neighborhoods from the impacts of climate change. Gloria’s proposal would redirect a $7 million contribution to the city’s general fund instead.

Read the full story here.

Correction: This section has been updated to correct that the mayor’s proposal is to redirect a contribution to the Climate Equity Fund to the general fund. Not to raid the Climate Equity Fund.

Dem Supes Advance County Reform Measure

San Diego County board Democrats on Tuesday voted to put major governance reforms on the November ballot that, if approved, will give supervisors more power.

The reforms, championed by Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, would give supervisors a potential third term, the power to approve the hiring of top county officials and to fire them with a super majority vote. The measure would also create two positions that report to the supervisors: an auditor and budget analyst. 

Republican Supervisors Joel Anderson and Jim Desmond, who voted against the measure, protested a series of last-minute changes to the measure before Tuesday’s vote. 

Read the full story here. 

Also at Tuesday’s Board Meeting

• Supervisors voted unanimously to approve Supervisor Paloma Aguirre’s proposal to develop a county film initiative that includes creating a county film office and rebate program to bolster the county’s status as production hub.

• Supervisors unanimously backed a plan to reallocate funds previously directed toward public-private partnerships to sleeping cabins for homeless residents instead, in order to expand a diversion program designed to move people out of homelessness. We wrote about how diversion works last year. 

• Board Democrats approved an agreement with the Mexican Consulate to help fund legal representation for Mexican nationals. Lawson-Remer said the agreement will allow Mexico to help pay the county’s costs.

Historic Twist: Kumeyaay Could Own the Padres

We heard this weekend and now The New York Times/The Athletic is reporting that the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation is among the many partners purchasing the Padres alongside lead investors Jose Feliciano and his wife Kwanza Jones. Though it sounds like the partnership is far from set.

How the team became so valuable: Sportico, which covers the business of sports, had an interesting analysis of just how well the Padres have done generating revenue. Most data points about the team’s finances are confidential but the outlet said it had sources who reviewed the numbers as part of the sales process.

The Padres play in one of the smallest media markets in Major League Baseball and yet only 10 teams had more income and they all had better TV deals. “And, depending on what happens with MLB’s next collective bargaining agreement, the Padres’ economics could become even stronger.”

Show Me the Money

Money is pouring into the race for California’s 48th Congressional District — which is being vacated by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa. Democrats now have a slight edge in the district, post-redistricting.

On the surface, Democrat Brandon Riker appears to be in the strongest position with more than $1,000,000 in cash on hand. But there’s more going on here, writes contributor Mason Herron. The vast majority of Riker’s dollars come in the form of loans to his own campaign — which are different than contributions. 

When it comes to contributions alone, San Diego city councilmember Marni von Wilpert has outraised the other Democrats in the field in recent reports. 

Republican County Supervisor Jim Desmond also had a strong war chest with more than $1,000,000 cash on hand. 

Read the full story here.

In Other News

• A San Diego Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that right-wing news outlet One America News Network can’t stop a social media influencer from calling politician-turned-commentator Matt Gaetz a pedophile. The decision comes after the San Diego-based network applied for a restraining order against the social media provocateur. (Times of San Diego)
• SDG&E customers are getting cheaper electricity. During midday hours, customers can run appliances like dishwashers and air conditioning at a much lower price. (Union-Tribune)
• Juvenile great white sharks that have called the San Diego coast home in the last few years have left the area, researchers discovered. But if you’re missing the sharks don’t worry. Warmer-than-usual water, and potentially a full-on El Niño, are expected this year and that may bring in lots of new and different sharks! (Union-Tribune)
• Former female athletes from San Diego State University will receive a combined $300,000 in damages after they sued the school for violating federal gender equality laws. The settlement marks the first case in which a school will pay damages to female athletes for unequal athletic financial aid. (USA Today)
• Google’s AI-powered search is favoring a city-run website rather than actual news outlets. That means citizens seeking out news written by a reporter, are instead finding updates written by public relations specialists whose job is to cast the city in positive light. (Axios San Diego)
• Big study find pot make kid dumbr. (UCSD)

The Morning Report was written by Mariana Martínez Barba, Jakob McWhinney and Lisa Halverstadt. It was edited by Will Huntsberry.

The post Morning Report: Climate Equity Fund Takes a Hit appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Last week, I received a surprising press release from the Del Mar Fairgrounds in my inbox. 

“22nd DAA Board votes to part ways with CEO,” the presser said. 

The 22nd District Agricultural Association Board of Directors, which oversees the Del Mar Fairgrounds, voted in a closed session meeting on April 14 to fire its CEO Carlene Moore. The board also named Board Chairman Sam Nejabat as interim CEO for 10 days. 

Fairgrounds officials gave no reasons for Moore’s termination. 

Some residents have speculated to me that it could be a response to a string of scandals and lawsuits the Del Mar Fairgrounds has faced during Moore’s six years as CEO. We’ll get into that, but first I want to look back further—before Moore came to the Del Mar Fairgrounds. 

Trouble in Calistoga 

Moore joined the 22nd DAA as deputy general manager in 2019. Before that, she was CEO of the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga for nine years.  

Leading up to her departure from Napa County, she wasn’t a favorite among some Calistoga residents. 

The Napa County Fairgrounds, which is home to the Napa County Fair, a speedway and a golf course, faced serious decline during Moore’s tenure, according to a Grand Jury Report from May 2017. (Grand Juries like the one in this case are local citizens commissions that have some power to audit local institutions. They are not a part of the court system.) The Fairgrounds faced a structural budget deficit, deteriorating infrastructure and a gradual decline in attendance. 

The Grand Jury found the Fairgrounds in a “disturbing” state, the report noted.  

It found pervasive “neglect and lack of maintenance” affecting “every element of the Fairgrounds properties, including the buildings, the grounds, and all the facilities intended for public use,” the report continued. “Further, the Grand Jury found a disconcerting lack of transparency in the financial reporting of the Fairgrounds Association and signs of divisiveness in the conduct of its Board of Directors.” 

When the Grand Jury released the report in 2017, the Fairgrounds revenue had not exceeded its expenses since 2011. Moore became CEO in January 2010.  

Some residents blamed Moore for the Fairground’s troubles. News reports from Moore’s last few years in Calistoga detail a growing resentment from many community members toward her leadership.  

For example, during a Napa County Fair Association Board of Directors meeting in August 2017, one resident named Ted Surber said he thought the problems with the fairgrounds started when Moore took over management, according to a 2017 report by the Napa Valley Register. 

“Since she came here, this fairgrounds has gone steady downhill. We’ve all seen it happen. The fair manager needs to be able to handle a lot of different hats and have a lot of experience … this is a hard job here, you’re running a big business. Uh uh, she can’t do it,” he said. 

Another resident, Scott Atkinson, called for Moore’s resignation at the same meeting. 

Eventually, in 2018, the Napa County Fairgrounds shut down a majority of its operations before completely shutting down in 2020. Moore started working at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in February 2019 as a deputy general manager, before becoming interim CEO and eventually CEO. 

 In 2024, the city of Calistoga purchased the dilapidated Fairgrounds from the county of Napa, and it’s now known as the Calistoga Fairgrounds. Calistoga officials have said it may take several years before the Fairgrounds can be used again because it’s in need of significant infrastructure repairs. 

Trouble at the Del Mar Fairgrounds 

Criticism of Moore’s leadership has continued at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, even up until her last day. 

At the April 14 22nd DAA board meeting, several public speakers urged the board to fire Moore. 

Former board president Russ Penniman told the board there was widespread dissatisfaction with Moore among longtime staff members. And Donna Ruhm, a former commercial director for the San Diego County Fair, said she retired after the 2021 fair because of what she called toxic leadership. 

And that’s not all. I recently wrote about the Fairgrounds getting hit with another lawsuit just last week. 

Brad Oates is suing the agency for age discrimination, wrongful termination and rest and meal break violations, according to a complaint filed on April 16, two days after Moore was fired. He alleged Moore passed him over for a job because of his age and hired her nephew instead.  

Last year, former fairgrounds executive Melinda Carmichael also sued the Del Mar Fairgrounds and the 22nd DAA alleging retaliation and a toxic work environment.  

Moore was also at the center of that complaint.  

In her 2025 complaint, Carmichael stated that, starting in 2022, she repeatedly raised concerns of alleged illegal conduct, racist remarks and other actions by a former human resources director. But Carmichael faced retaliation for her complaints from Moore, she claims.   

In 2024, the Farigrounds agreed to pay the federal government $5.5 million to settle allegations it had received funds from the pandemic-related Paycheck Protection Program even though it was not eligible. 

In 2021, the Fairgrounds and 22nd DAA faced a lawsuit from carnival operator Talley Amusements, which alleged that Moore and Fairgrounds officials rigged a contract process to ensure that a different carnival operator would get the exclusive rights to run the games and rides at the County Fair.  

That lawsuit eventually settled in court with the Del Mar Fairgrounds having to pay $500,000 to Talley Amusements.  

Have any information, tips or story ideas you want to share? Email me at tigist@vosd.org. 

In Other News