Author: Frank Gormlie

By San Diego Monitor News Staff / San Diego Monitor / Oct. 30, 2025

After more than a decade in Congress, Scott Peters is being mentioned as a potential candidate for Mayor of San Diego in 2028. The longtime representative, who first served on the San Diego City Council before being elected to Congress in 2012, has built a reputation as a pragmatic policymaker—someone who favors compromise and long-term solutions over sharp rhetoric.

If Peters enters the race, he would join a growing group of California leaders returning from Washington to local office. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and former Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland have both turned their congressional experience into a platform for local leadership. For Peters, the same move could mark a return to the city where he began his political career.

During his time in Washington, Peters has focused on issues closely tied to San Diego’s economy and environment—clean energy, coastal resilience, innovation, and veterans’ health care. He’s supported bipartisan legislation to strengthen mental health services for veterans and secure infrastructure funding for the city’s coastline and water systems. Those accomplishments have helped shape San Diego’s national profile as both a military and innovation hub. However, a run for mayor would not be without obstacles.

by Robert Reich / Robert Reich’s Substack- Reader Supported News / October 29, 2025

Friends,

He’s now saying it out loud — blurring the line between his so-called “war” on alleged foreign drug smugglers and his war on the “enemy within” the United States. Both now involve the deployment of the U.S. military. Neither requires proof of wrongdoing.

That was his message yesterday when Trump told American troops in Japan that he would send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration:

“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities … . We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In the same speech, Trump defended U.S. military strikes against suspected drug smugglers — more than a dozen on vessels from South America that have killed 57 people so far, without evidence they were actually smuggling drugs. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that the military had carried out three more strikes on Monday.)

Meeting for OBceans Set for Friday, Oct. 31

Members of SOHO (Save Our Heritage Organization) took their opposition to city staff’s package of “reforms” for San Diego’s Historic Resource Board — which included the decapitation of OB’s Emerging Cottage Historic District to the city-wide Community Planners Committee last night, October 28. This committee, or CPC, is the city-recognized body that has reps from every community planning group in the city.

The so-called reforms called for the elimination of OB’s Historic Cottage District as a basis for preventing the application of the city’s Complete Communities to new projects in Ocean Beach. It was this historic district that prevented The Point — 20 ADUs — to be built on Point Loma Ave last year.

And SOHO members told the Rag: “Great news — we had a unanimous rejection of Package A at last night’s CPC meeting!” It still has to go to the Planning Commission and the full City Council.

Presentation Set Up for OB Residents

By Frank Gormlie, OB Rag Publisher/ Editordude

I want to extend my personal congratulations to Shane Harris, the new owner and publisher of the San Diego Monitor and Business Journal, and to warmly welcome him to the local news media community in this town.

Shane has a distinguished record of civic leadership and of advocacy for civil rights. He has been a powerful force for justice, and has spoken out for so many whose voices are too often silenced. Now he will become a force for the mission of journalism, which is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

Yes, indeed. What if they did hold a hearing to abolish OB’s Historic Cottage District and nobody from Ocean Beach showed up?

Well, that’s exactly what happened October 23 — at last Thursday’s hearing held by the San Diego Historic Resources Board. They were scheduled to discuss and accept a city staff’s recommendation that the Ocean Beach Cottage Emerging Historical District not be a basis to prevent massive developments from being built.

To jog your memory, dear reader, the OB’s Historic District was the reason a project called The Point and consisting of 24 units slated for Point Loma Avenue in south OB was unanimously rejected in August 2024 on appeal by the San Diego Planning Commission. The developers were using a San Diego housing policy called Complete Communities which allows builders exemptions from long-held restrictions if they met certain requirements.

As Rag writer Geoff Page recently reported:

Because there appeared to be a legal conflict between the Complete Communities plan and the Municipal Code, the commissioners approved the appeal. However, here is what Vice Chair Matthew Boomhower, who was chairing the meeting, had to say in his closing remarks:

By CBS News – Sacramento /  October 22, 2025 

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday that he will be deploying state National Guard members as well as California Volunteers to help staff food banks amid the ongoing government shutdown.

Newsom said the action mirrors a step he took early in the COVID-19 pandemic when he also dispatched California National Guard members, again to support food banks.

The governor stated that the Guard troops won’t be acting as law enforcement during the deployment.

“I’m expediting state funds for food banks and directing the California National Guard and California Volunteers to help distribute this food to families,” Newsom stated.

Newsom has been warning that the continued government shutdown could disrupt the CalFresh program, known federally as SNAP, which provides food benefits to around 5.5 million California residents. Food banks across the state have said they are bracing for the potential increase in need.

The governor called out President Trump in his Wednesday announcement of the deployment.

The fall-out (pun indented) from the weekend’s live fire by Marine howitzers over I-5 into Camp Pendleton during Vance’s visit is still falling.

Yesterday’s (Tuesday, Oct. 21) main headline at the LA Times spoke out: “How military’s live fire over I-5 went awry”.

Here’s a few points the article made:

• At first when Federal officials first announced the live fire last week they insisted it would be done with “all safety precautions in place” and said no public highways would be closed.
• Then California officials expressed fears about the live rounds being fired over I- 5.
• On Friday, Oct. 17 – the day before the No Kings Day — the Marines did a test run, and fired live rounds over I-5 while motorists drove on the freeway.
• Early Saturday morning, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the closure that day of a 17-mile stretch of the interstate — from just south of San Clemente to just north of Oceanside — during the event.
• During the live fire, a CHP cruiser parked on an onramp of Interstate 5 was hit by falling shrapnel after an artillery round exploded midair. Obviously, way before it was supposed to. A CHP officer heard what sounded like falling pebbles hit his bike and the ground.
• This incident forced “an early end to the artillery demonstration. Upon learning of the midair explosion, the Marines canceled the remaining 55 rounds they’d planned to fire.

4:56 pm Latest march numbers – from No Kings 2.0
4:33 pm PDT Aerial footage from NBC7

4:07 pm Photos from downtown San Diego keep rolling in. Here’s a batch by Rag writer David Hutchinson.

While watching a trio of thirty-something progressive podcast pundits discussing protests of the upcoming “No Kings Day”, they mentioned how they really appreciated the boomers, those gray-haired people with chapsticks and NPB tote bags who continue to dominate in numbers all the anti-Trump protests over these last 9 months.

Wow! I said to myself, that’s it. Our democracy will be saved by the boomers, all those gray and bald headed folks who have been attending all those demonstrations since Donald Trump came back into power. Our country will be prevented from being ravaged by the policies and whims of the Trump White House, not by Senate Democrats, not by the thirty-somethings, not by college kids — but by those of us who have survived these past decades since the 60s and 70s.

We survived and ousted Richard Nixon, we protested Jimmie Carter’s draft, we resisted and survived Ronald Reagan’s “Counter-Revolution” and nuclear war mongering, we helped to bring the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to a close, we helped to end apartheid in South Africa, we tried to get the US from supporting dictators in Central America.

The Trumpian Republican campaign to smear the “No Kings Day” protest is utterly failing, as more and more October 18 events are popping up across the country. There’s now over 2500 events planned — with 17 in San Diego County alone.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the upcoming “No Kings Day” as a “Hate America rally.” He doubled down.

“Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists in full display.”

Other Republicans stumbled over themselves in joining Johnson smears. Representatives Steve Scalise and Lisa McClain also referred to the protest as the “Hate America rally.” Last week, Johnson began the tilt of villainizing constitutionally protected protest when he inexplicably claimed that the “No Kings Day” demonstration was somehow to blame for the government shutdown. “It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base,” Johnson said of Democrats at the time.

Yet, this campaign is backfiring. There is more and more talk about the protests, more and more events are being planned, more and more pissed off Americans are planning to attend. Millions are expected. Just 4 months ago, in June, more than 5 million Americans demonstrated in small towns and major cities across the country. And the coordinated “No Kings” protests became one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history—  definitely the largest since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.

In the fall of 1964, over 60 years ago, the young students on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley found themselves in an untenable situation. Campus activists had set up information tables in Sproul Plaza on campus and had solicited donations for causes connected to the Civil Rights Movement. Some of them had traveled with the Freedom Riders and had worked to register African American voters in Mississippi that previous summer.  At the time, however, existing rules for fundraising for political parties was limited exclusively to the Democratic and Republican school clubs.

In mid-September, a school dean announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, outside political speakers, recruitment and fundraising by student organizations would be “strictly enforced.” Two weeks later, a graduate student sitting at one of the civil rights tables refused to show his identification to campus police and was immediately arrested and placed inside a campus police car on Sproul.

Suddenly and spontaneously hundreds of students who witnessed the arrest, surrounded the police car, sat down and refused to budge. While the graduate student sat in the backseat, student activist leaders mounted the car and began to give speeches on free speech and against political restrictions. Students remained around the car for 32 hours and at one point, there were an estimated 3,000 students blocking its movement. People used the car as a speaker’s podium and held a continuous public discussion on rights, free speech and student liberties. This continued until charges against the graduate student were dropped.

It was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s and was the birth of the Free Speech Movement.

By Erwin Chemerinsky / The Sacramento Bee / September 30, 2025

If there is a path toward authoritarianism for the United States, this is it. The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is just the latest outrage and effort to use the power of the federal government for the sake of retribution.

As we enter just the ninth month of President Donald Trump’s second term, it is essential to recognize that what we have seen is unprecedented in American history.

Trump, by his words and actions, has governed as if there are no checks on his authority. He quoted French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on the social media platforms Truth Social and X, writing “He who saves the country violates no law.” At a televised press conference on August 26, the president discussed his use of troops for law enforcement, saying “(I have) the right to anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.”

Historic presidential overreach
Trump’s assertions of presidential power are broader than any other president has claimed. No president before has ever claimed that he can fire everyone in the executive branch of government or claimed the ability to eliminate agencies created by federal statute. No president has claimed the authority to massively cut off federal spending appropriated by Congress. (President Richard Nixon impounded funds, but not nearly on this scale).