Category: California

By Marc Snelling

Canadians love Americans. We know it’s mutual.  We don’t need “Palm Springs Loves Canada” banners or multi-million  “California Love” commercials from Gavin Newsom to prove it.  Marketing campaigns from Palm Springs and California, among many other US cities and states, seeking to win back Canadian tourist dollars have all fallen flat.  They don’t work because they tell Canadians what they already know.  It is the rhetoric, threats and violence of the current US regime that fuel the grassroots boycotts of US travel and products.  Americans may want to concentrate their efforts there if more Canadian tourist dollars.is what they want.

January 2026 saw the trend continue with the latest Stats Canada reporting showing a 26.8% year-over-year drop in Canadian return trips across the border.  There remains no US alcohol on the shelves of government liquor stores in 11 of 13 provinces and territories. This isn’t because Canadians don’t enjoy California wine or Kentucky bourbon.  It’s the taste of fascism they don’t care for.  Many Canadians have grandfathers lying in the graveyards of Europe who fought fascism to build a better world for their children.

By many indications, it appears that California will be one of the targets of the next “ICE surge.” Even though there won’t be any surge during this current government shutdown, ICE still is currently expanding its physical presence across the country. Its parent, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is carrying out a hush-hush campaign to open up 250 facilities and offices in nearly every state, and the Golden State — long a demises for Trump — is at the top of the list.

Check out the following coming down in California:

• Irvine: New offices at 2020 Main Street, located directly adjacent to a childcare agency.
• Los Angeles: General expansion of existing federal office spaces.
• Sacramento: Security upgrades and expansion at the John E. Moss building, which houses a DOJ immigration court.
• San Diego: Growth at the Edward J. Schwartz Courthouse and federal building.
• Santa Ana: Expansion at the Santa Ana federal building, situated blocks from a church and a major high school football stadium.
• Van Nuys (Los Angeles): Expansion at the James C. Corman federal building.

This secret federal government campaign to purchase warehouses for the massive expansion of ICE is now known due to documents posted online late last week by  Republican New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Also, a federal official said that California — and New York are among the “next” for a surge similar to the campaign in Minneapolis. These plans include embedding hundreds of new ICE offices in Sacramento, Irvine, Santa Ana and Van Nuys, according to an explosive report by WIRED magazine.

Please join the Ocean Beach Historical Society on Thursday, February 19, 2026, 7pm, at Water’s Edge Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. Local author Jill Hall discusses her recent novel “On a Sundown Sea”

Coastal Commission Public Hearing Keeps Getting Postponed

By Quinn Welsch / Courthouse News Service / January 30, 2026

For Ghalia Mohder, “the Knoll” is more than just a tall mesa overlooking the view at Scripps Coastal Reserve along the San Diego coastline.

Mohder said that she first discovered the Knoll — and its historic view of the Pacific Ocean — during her freshman year at University of California San Diego after a resident advisor in her college dorm took her and some other students for a visit.

“To be honest, ever since then I was hooked,” she said. “You could always go to La Jolla Shores and it’s a big public place, there was partying going on. This place was different. The people who went there, went there to enjoy the scenery.”

But public access to the Knoll has remained locked behind a gate along the mansion-lined La Jolla Farms Road community since 2020.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the university has restricted public access to a small number of people each week. Despite the passage of six years and multiple scheduled public hearings at the California Coastal Commission, that access remains limited and no resolution is apparent.

The Scripps Coastal Reserve is a nearly 1,000-acre reserve owned by UCSD that encompasses sandy shores, coastal canyons, a steep cliff face, and mesa top — the latter of which is known as the Mesa or Knoll, which overlooks a sweeping view of the ocean.

The beach remains open from other publicly available locations, but the gate to the Knoll and its beach trail has remained locked, despite the state’s lifting of Covid-19 precautions in 2023.

Efforts by the California Coastal Commission to bring the UCSD’s future plans for the Scripps Coastal Reserve to a public hearing have so far not been fruitful. Starting in 2024, permit applications for a managed access plan have been submitted, extended and withdrawn, only to start all over again.

By Julie Gallant / San Diego Union-Tribune / January 22, 2026

Poway’s Kumeyaay-Ipai Interpretive Center is considered a sacred site in part because the rock formations around it resemble animals.

A large rock outcropping at the top of the 5-acre site off Poway Road includes shapes in the form of a turtle, bottlenose dolphin and a small whale, Docent Robert Holton pointed out on a Jan. 17 tour.

According to the Native American creation story, humans and animals and even plants are all equal, Holton told his group.

“They spoke to each other and had a partnership in life,” he said. “What might be natural shapes in stones reminds them of animals and makes this site sacred.”

The interpretive center at 13104 Ipai Waaypuk Trail is one of five Kumeyaay villages in the Poway area. The others are on Garden Road and at Sycamore Canyon, Twin Peaks and Sabre Springs.

Kumeyaay translates as “those who face the water from a cliff.” Ipai indicates their territory. The Kumeyaay indigenous people who live north of the San Diego River in Mission Valley are known as Ipai and those who live south of the river in Southern California and Baja California, Mexico are referred to as Tipai.

By Donna Frye

Back in the mid ‘90s, I remember going to city council meetings to speak on issues that were important to me such as clean water and the public’s right to know what its government is doing and why.

I showed up because I hoped it would make a difference and also to help educate the public about their right to participate in government decisions, before, and not after, the decision was made. The open meeting laws that require public decisions to be made in public are known as the Brown Act. It also includes laws about public participation and remedies if the laws are not followed.

More often than not, however, I would wait hours to speak for my two or three minutes only to be made to feel like what I had to say didn’t matter; it felt like the decisions had been made in advance of the public meeting.

I referred to this exercise as “going through the drill.” The Brown Act refers to it as a collective concurrence and it’s not allowed. But it was usually really hard to prove.

By Mark Sherman / The Associated Press – 7SanDiego / February 4, 2026

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed California to use a new voter-approved congressional map that is favorable to Democrats in this year’s elections, rejecting a last-ditch plea from state Republicans and the Trump administration.

No justices dissented from the brief order denying the appeal without explanation, which is common on the court’s emergency docket.

The justices had previously allowed Texas’ Republican-friendly map to be used in 2026, despite a lower-court ruling that it likely discriminates on the basis of race.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote in December that it appeared both states had adopted new maps for political advantage, which the high court has previously ruled cannot be a basis for a federal lawsuit.

Republicans, joined by the Trump administration, claimed the California map improperly relied on race as well. But a lower court disagreed by a 2-1 vote. The Justice Department and White House did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The justices’ unsigned order keeps in place districts that are designed to flip up to five seats now held by Republicans, part of a tit-for-tat nationwide

Amid all the crap that we as Americans are having to deal with coming out of the Trump administration, there is good news.

Local communities across the country along with some state and local officials are resisting attempts by President Donald Trump to house thousands of detained immigrants in their areas in converted warehouses, privately run facilities and county jails. These are immigrant prisons.

In red states, red counties and red towns and  cities, people are pushing back so hard that ICE officials are having troubles finding locations for their detention centers. In Texas, in Oklahoma, in Utah, in New Mexico, in Virginia, proposed ICE facilities are running into brick walls by grassroots resistance.

Why is this happening? MSNOW reports:

Federal officials have been scouting cities and counties across the U.S. for places to hold immigrants as they roll out a massive $45 billion expansion of detention facilities financed by Trump’s recent tax-cutting law.

The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota have amplified an already intense spotlight on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, increasing scrutiny of its plans for new detention sites.

For instance, officials in Social Circle, Georgia, El Paso, Texas, and Roxbury Township, New Jersey, all have raised concerns about their locales being used and they all cite a lack of water and sewer capacity to transform warehouses into detention sites.

By David Helvarg / Golden State / Jan. 13–20, 2026

In November, the Trump administration released a map that alarmed a lot of Californians. It showed the waters off the entire 1,100-mile state coastline carved into potential “program areas” for new oil and gas drilling.

For 40 years, there’ve been no new oil lease sales in the state’s coastal waters, and Californians of all political stripes overwhelmingly – 72% according to a Public Policy Institute poll – hope it stays that way. When its legacy offshore wells run dry, the state  should be done with ocean drilling for good.

President Trump, of course, likes nothing better than to bait California, love-bomb the oil and gas industry, attack clean energy and overturn Biden-era actions (President Biden banned new drilling in the same federal waters Trump now wants to exploit). The latest Interior Department plan for six lease sales between 2027 and 2030 is one more White House jab at Golden State values.

But here’s the thing: It’s far, far from a done deal.

First a little  background.

By Jane Kim / 10NewsSanDiego / Jan. 11, 2026

California shoppers are adjusting to a new reality at checkout counters across the state as plastic bags have been officially banned since January 1.

The statewide prohibition, established under Senate Bill 1053, eliminates plastic bag options at grocery stores and retail locations, leaving customers with paper bags or their own reusable alternatives.

At Barons Market in Point Loma, the transition has been smooth according to both customers and staff. Customer Jim MacDonald said he typically brings his own bags but supports the environmental initiative.

By David Helvarg /  Op-Ed LA Times / Jan. 8, 2026

Recently, while sailing with friends on San Francisco Bay, I enjoyed the sight of harbor porpoises, cormorants, pelicans, seals and sea lions — and then the spouting plume and glistening back of a gray whale that gave me pause. Too many have been seen inside the bay recently.

California’s gray whales have been considered an environmental success story since the passage of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and 1986’s global ban on commercial whaling. They’re also a major tourist attraction during their annual 12,000-mile round-trip migration between the Arctic and their breeding lagoons in Baja California. In late winter and early spring — when they head back north and are closest to the shoreline, with the moms protecting the calves — they can be viewed not only from whale-watching boats but also from promontories along the California coast including Point Loma in San Diego, Point Lobos in Monterey and Bodega Head and Shelter Cove in Northern California.

In 1972, there were some 10,000 gray whales in the population on the eastern side of the Pacific. Generations of whaling all but eliminated the western population — leaving only about 150 alive today off of East Asia and Russia. Over the four decades following passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the eastern whale numbers grew steadily to 27,000 by 2016, a hopeful story of protection leading to restoration. Then, unexpectedly over the last nine years, the eastern gray whale population has crashed, plummeting by more than half to 12,950, according to a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the lowest numbers since the 1970s.

Today’s changing ocean and Arctic ice conditions linked to fossil-fuel-fired climate change are putting this species again at risk of extinction.