Category: Media

By Wild Oscar / Escondido Grapevine / January 12, 2026

“One Battle After Another,” the new Warner Bros. picture written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opened recently— and it doesn’t merely visit San Diego. It moves in, rearranges the furniture, and leaves its footprints all over the place.

Last year the production spent roughly six weeks roaming the region with cameras and cables, collecting scenery the way tourists collect fridge magnets. Border areas. Otay Mesa. Borrego Springs. Downtown. If you squint during the trailers, you can practically hear the local traffic reports.

“Definitely when you see this on the big screen, you’re going to see a lot of San Diego in it,” said Guy Langman, the city’s film program manager, sounding like a man who’s already spotted familiar palm trees in the rushes.

The county, never one to waste a good ledger entry, says the shoot pumped nearly $7 million into the local economy—hotels, catering, wages for extras and crew, and assorted cinematic odds and ends that don’t usually show up on a tourist brochure.

The filmmakers, meanwhile, were not motivated solely by sunshine and civic pride. California’s tax credits played their part.

In Minneapolis and other cities where federal agents have led immigration crackdowns, residents have formed loose networks to track and protest them.

By Julie Bosman / New York Times / Jan. 14, 2026

It began in Los Angeles, in Signal chats and strategy sessions on Zoom. Last year, as immigration raids proliferated throughout the city, Latino activists and neighbors began organizing a response, monitoring for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents along sidewalks and in Home Depot parking lots and texting their networks when they spotted an arrest underway.

By late summer, activists in Chicago were trained and ready. Before the Trump administration had announced a crackdown called Operation Midway Blitz, immigrant rights organizations had handed out orange whistles for volunteers to use as a public warning system, formed “rapid-response” groups and advised people to report sightings of ICE agents and memorize their own legal rights. Chicagoans, even many without formal ties to protest groups, showed defiance against ICE with “Hands Off Chicago” signs adorned with the city’s beloved starred-and-striped flag, placed prominently in windows of restaurants and bungalows.

And in recent weeks in Minneapolis, the latest focus for a Trump administration surge of immigration enforcement, a loose but growing network of neighborhood volunteers has shown up near reported arrests, yelling at agents and recording them on iPhone cameras. Some gathered near hotels where agents were believed to be staying, pounding drums and making noise.

Please join Ocean Beach Historical Society, for A View From My Trike, Thursday evening, January 15, 2026 at 7:00 pm, at Water’s Edge Community, 1894 Sunset Cliffs Blvd.

OBHS Board Member and talented writer Mercy Baron presents an engaging selection of her stories from the San Diego Reader.

This fun and lively presentation will kick off Ocean Beach Historical Society’s 32nd season of free monthly programs.

By Steve Rodriguez

The start of a new year always brings forth a flurry of predictions for what to expect in the coming months. Predictions can range from the wild to the more reasonable, with prognostications coming from a variety of individuals to include mystical clairvoyants, creative visionaries, and more research-based futurists.

Instead of just waiting to review such predictions, I thought this year I would do some hard thinking and come up with my own look into what 2026 might bring forth at both local and national levels.

My approach is a mixture of amateur psychic, sophisticated seer and analytical trend forecaster.  Not to intentionally downplay my prophetic talents, but some of these predictions are easier to make than others. After all, predictions are often based on data and patterns reflecting past behavior. On the other hand, some of the more extraordinary prophecies can be attributed to my exceptional gut instinct.

Quite frankly, I enjoy being called a “futurist.”  In fact, just the other day as I was walking through the neighborhood, I heard someone say, “Look, it’s the smarty pants futurist, too bad he can’t bother to look ahead to figure out which week to put out the blue recycling bin.”

In any event, here is my list of the top 26 headlines we can expect to see sometime in 2026.

1.     Padres Hire New Batting Instructor

Compare Editorials from Washington Post with New York Times

Below the masthead at the Washington Post sits this small phrase: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

But with the almost giddy editorial by the Post on Saturday, Jan. 3, in total full-throated support for Trump’s illegal strike in Venezuela, the Post editorial board have now proven that they’re willing to help snuff out whatever light is left in American democracy. They need to remove that phrase from the masthead for the American people can no longer rely on the Washington Post for truth and any light in the darkness.

If Jeff Bezos had owned the Post back in the early 1970s, we would never have known about the Watergate scandal — that eventually forced President Nixon to resign.

With Bezos’ manly bear hug of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, America not only lost one of the country’s great pillars of truthful journalism, it’s just one more incredible sign that US corporate media are bending their knee to our tinpot dictator wannabe. One more institution has fallen.

Here are a few key segments of the Post’s editorial:

By South OB Girl

It will be a challenge to come up with something more poignant than Ernie’s poem, with his great knack for words and rhyme.

I’ve lived in a few places in the world, but San Diego will always be home. It has sadly become a little harder to say “home sweet home.”  It is not so sweet here anymore.  Being ranked #1 in the United States for inflation is nothing to be proud of.

San Diego has the potential to be a really great city. For many years it has been great.

Here in OB, we have enjoyed over a hundred years of greatness! Why are so many people doing such a great job trying to wreck it? Along with many other San Diegans, I have lost positivity about many aspects of local politics.

Here’s a bunch of seemingly unrelated articles that have been sitting in my “in-basket” for a while — some for months. Yet, they deserve attention –so here they are:

It was supposed to be a California utopia. It turned into a ghost town.

By Tessa McLean, California Editor – SFGate / June 17, 2024

Just off the Pearblossom Highway, 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles, six crumbling stone columns rise from patches of dusty brown weeds. Two of the wider set pillars contain capacious brick fireplaces, the blocks deteriorating inside. The foundation of a once-grand building stretches out into the flat plain, carpeted with shards of glass and rusty beer cans. At its northern end, a short staircase leads to nowhere.

From 1914 to 1918, an actual building stood here — a bustling gathering place for California’s most important utopian commune-turned-doomed desert experiment. When wandering the site today, close your eyes and you might be able to imagine happy residents dancing or talking politics on a cool California desert evening, the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains in the distance.

The remains of a grand hotel and social hall are the only recognizable infrastructure left of the failed town, which is visible even from the highway — if you don’t blink. The foundations of other nearby buildings sink into the ground, faded blue and purple graffiti covering the splintering stone, the lettering disappearing into low concrete walls. From the middle of the ruins, trailers and warehouse structures under the power lines jolt you back to the modern day from any dreams of early 1900s life.

Here is a screen recording of a 60 Minutes segment about the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) prison in El Salvador, which was intended to be aired December 22, 2025 but was pulled last minute for unclear reasons. Despite being pulled, it aired on Global-TV in Canada anyway.

It was pulled due to corporate censorship.

Here is an analysis by Salon – Reader Supported News

CBS News segment yanked off the air at the last minute by editor-in-chief Bari Weiss was apparently showcased in Canada, with its content quickly spreading online.

The “60 Minutes” story, “Inside CECOT,” featured testimonies from Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration from the U.S. to CECOT, a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. Weiss canned the segment on Sunday, just three hours before it was set to air, saying it “wasn’t ready” to be presented.

Town Hall Hosted by San Diego Community Coalition on Dec. 13

Rag Staff Report

At the December 13 San Diego Community Coalition Town Hall, Union-Tribune City Hall Reporter David Garrick spoke candidly, listened carefully, and laid out the challenges facing journalists who cover local government.

As the City Hall reporter for the city’s major metropolitan daily, Garrick is the unofficial dean of the San Diego press corps. When he started covering City Hall in 2014, Kevin Faulconer was the new Mayor, Todd Gloria was City Council President, and Sempra Energy occupied the tower at 101 Ash Street.

In an hour-long exchange at the Logan Heights Library with community activists from across the city, Garrick was straightforward and thoughtful.

He explained that while journalists rarely report things perfectly, they always try to report things accurately. Throughout the discussion, he was open to hearing views that had not occurred to him.

By Alyssa Ray / Yahoo News / December 8, 2025

Jon Stewart accused the Trump administration of giving him Iraq War déjà vu over their reasoning for the looming conflict with Venezuela.

The comedian addressed the “eerie” similarities between the two separate conflicts during Monday’s monologue for “The Daily Show,” where he slammed the president and his administration for recycling old Iraq War-era justifications amid the growing conflict in South America.

“So the two dictators [Nicolás Maduro and Saddam Hussein] share a remarkably similar taste in facial hair, body shape, ceremonial sabers and headgear. It doesn’t mean that the pretext for the wars will be the same,” Stewart joked before airing news footage of MAGA supporters accusing narco-terrorists of being in possession of fentanyl, which they called “weapons of mass destruction.”

“Are you f–king kidding me right now?” Stewart sounded off. “You guys have the balls to tell us that the pretext for Iraq was bulls–t, and that war was a mistake, and we’re not like that, and also, Venezuela has weapons of mass destruction, and we have to stop them. Or is WMD just the new slang, like, ‘Yo, bro.Venezuela’s total WMD, 6-7.’”

He also fact checked the fentanyl claim, sharing “almost none of it [in the U.S.]” comes from Venezuela.

By Paul Krueger / Times of San Diego / December 13, 2025

Mayor Todd Gloria is spreading the word about a national survey that shows 76% of San Diego residents are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their city.

According to Gensler Research, San Diego ranks second in “satisfaction with their city as a place to live,” trailing only San Antonio with a 78% score.

But Axios, which published the results, cautioned that “satisfaction” is a “broad” term, defined as “a general vibe check on how people are feeling about job opportunities, housing costs, safety and other key urban issues.”

And the survey’s methodology reveals a very significant — even disqualifying — limitation: The poll was conducted more than a year ago, from July 18 to Nov 24, 2024.

Since then, there’s been a flurry of activity at City Hall, and most of it is having a negative impact on our personal finances.

By Teri Figueroa / San Diego Union-Tribune / December 8, 2025

Two years after a split San Diego City Council agreed to install 500 automated license plate recognition cameras throughout town, the technology is up for review — and it’s still controversial.

On Tuesday, the council is slated to look at the plate readers as part of a review of 54 surveillance technologies that police use, which also includes cameras officers wear on their uniforms and SWAT robots and tactical equipment.

San Diego police hail the readers as a force multiplier that helps solve crimes. In 2024, San Diego had 36 homicides in San Diego. Information gleaned from the license plate readers aided in nearly a third of the investigations and helped lead to six apprehensions, police said. Without the technology, a spokesperson said, four of those cases would not have been solved.

Police also note that since the system was launched, they have recovered $6 million in stolen property, including more than 400 vehicles.

Critics argue that the automated license plate readers create a mass surveillance network and intrude on civil rights. And as communities reel from the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, many fear the federal government could muscle access to local surveillance systems despite laws barring such. An Associated Press investigation published last month said the U.S. Border Patrol is using a license plate reader program that flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on travel routes and locations.