Category: San Diego

DOJ Claims Some State Election Officials Knowingly Allowed Non-Citizens to Vote But Offers No Evidence

By Yunior Rivas / Democracy Docket / August 17, 2026

The Trump administration plans to deploy approximately 1,000 Department of Justice election monitors across the country in November, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said Monday, August 17.

In an interview on Bloomberg’s Balance of Power, Dhillon also said the Justice Department could take its failing campaign to obtain unredacted state voter rolls all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Dhillon’s interview offered one of the clearest previews yet of how the department’s Civil Rights Division intends to approach the 2026 midterms.

by Nadia Lathan / Voice of San Diego / August 18, 2026

They’re going for the wholesale workaround.

San Diego lawmakers are weighing new legislation to allow San Diego’s Midway Rising project to bypass state environmental review — a pivot from earlier proposals that sought to exempt parts of the project from certain environmental rules.

The Midway Rising plan involves a 16,0000-seat arena and roughly 4,250 housing units.

Under the new proposal, the city’s own study of the project’s environmental impacts would be enough to meet requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, according to proposed amendments of the bill obtained by Voice of San Diego.

A public hearing on the bill — which amended previously unrelated legislation about human remains — is expected to take place later this week. Lead author Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson could not be immediately reached for comment.

Assemblymember Chris Ward, who’s a co-author on the bill, said lawmakers are introducing the bill now after facing roadbacks locally.

by Nadia Lathan / Voice of San Diego / August 14, 2026

A new bill related to San Diego’s Midway Rising project was set in motion Thursday, August 13, as lawmakers began a process to gut and amend an unrelated bill that would potentially give broader environmental exemptions for the planned dual sports arena and housing complex.

New bill language isn’t available yet, but it’s expected to appear next week ahead of an Assembly Natural Resources Committee meeting

By Kate Callen / San Diego Union-Tribune Commentary / August 16, 2026

The city’s decision to restore free parking in Balboa Park has silenced public demands for a change in park governance. The sense of urgency has abated. But the reality of park mismanagement hasn’t.

City Hall still has total control over park administration. It can keep shirking its responsibility to perform adequate maintenance. And it can always seek new ways to tap the park for cash.

Right now, the issue of park governance is in a holding pattern. It has been placed on the docket of the 2026-2028 Balboa Park Master Plan Update. This periodic assessment identifies park priorities, like capital projects and infrastructure upkeep, that the city isn’t likely to have the money to support.

The original 1989 Master Plan Update was highly aspirational. Some of its recommendations, like park tram service, were adopted. Others, like a pedestrian bridge between Golden Hill and Inspiration Point, were not.

It’s time for SUMMER FUN at …
OB Historical Society’s first Ice Cream Social!

Thursday, August 20, 2026, 6 pm.

by Raul Campillo / Times of San Diego / Aug. 15, 2026

From the moment Mayor Todd Gloria proposed closing public restrooms at Mission Bay Park as part of this year’s budget cuts, I opposed the idea. San Diego faced a difficult budget year. I ultimately voted for the city’s balanced budget, but I made clear during the budget process, twice, that I did not support closing Mission Bay restrooms.

Cities have to get the basics right: clean streets, safe neighborhoods, smooth roads and parks people can actually use — which means open public restrooms. A restroom is not a luxury in a public park. For families with young children, seniors, people with disabilities, pregnant women, workers and tourists, access to a restroom can determine whether they comfortably and safely use that park at all.

Mission Bay receives an estimated 15 million visitors each year. Closing 13 out of its 28 public restrooms was a dramatic service reduction at a beloved public space and one of our economy’s most important tourist attractions.

That is why, on July 15, I sent Gloria a memorandum identifying $1.8 million that had been recently freed up. I proposed using less than a third to reopen and maintain the Mission Bay restrooms.

On July 24, the mayor rejected my proposal. He emphasized that the $1.8 million consisted of one-time resources and argued that the city lacked sufficient ongoing funding to sustain existing service levels.

By Michael Angelo

On day one of the second Trump administration, a flurry of executive orders were signed reshaping immigration enforcement in the country by declaring a national emergency at the southern border, redirecting military funds for border enforcement, and restricting asylum access to anyone engaged in a so-called invasion of the United States.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was also directed to immediately and aggressively escalate operations and surge arrests by establishing high daily quotas which management would be held accountable for missing (increasing the likelihood of non-criminal arrests).

Just shy of 600 days later, we can see the direct and harrowing results of these actions. A recent ACLU research report titled Agents of Chaos and Cruelty documents the widespread violation of civil rights being committed by ICE agents during the second Trump administration’s first year. Across eight states, the report found more than 400 of the over 1,200 ICE incidents examined involved misconduct by agents. The report also emphasizes no one was off limits, and found dozens of instances of agents detaining U.S. citizens, asylumsees, and people with disabilities.

Agents were also reported to have “targeted, used force and intimidation against, and arrested” legal/ community observers, protesters, journalists, elected officials and their staff, and even members of the clergy. This cruelty has resulted in the killing of at least seven people during enforcement operations including 23 year-old Colombian immigrant and father Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero, whose car was allegedly rammed by agents before he was fatally shot through the windshield a little over a month ago, and 37 year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti, who was shot multiple times and killed by ICE agents back in January.

At the end of May, the Rag published an article titled ICE Capades in San Diego, compiling actions taken by ICE in recent months to explore how the agency has been conducting itself in America’s Finest City. Here is an update on recent events and articles involving ICE in San Diego:

Chaotic scene unfolds around Federal Agents in City Heights

By Ed Pilkington / The Guardian / August 12, 2026

Military families and Congress members are sounding the alarm about an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as its 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran.

Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point. The crew is in its ninth month at sea, and has spent 250 days consecutively without making land – a record for an aircraft carrier in modern times.

Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.

The families’ worries were expressed directly to navy leadership, represented at the town hall by the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, and other top officials.

A woman at the meeting told Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported.

The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended.

Safe Harbor Marina

By Angelo Haynes

On a balmy, calm August afternoon, budding sailors-to-be, met with an energetic and fatherly sea captain, to “learn the ropes” of sailing. That captain is Robert Capita, the current head coach of the UCSD sailing team and President and CEO of Project Bluewater Racing  (PBWR – or simply “the Project) — an environmental non-profit in San Diego that aims to connect a new generation with the water through competitive sailing, education, marine science and environmental activism.

The Project’s mission statement is to “cultivate the next generation of offshore sailboat racers as the sole non-profit in San Diego providing adults access to offshore sailing education and training while upholding the values of environmental stewardship.”

In addition to instruction on sailing, the Project integrates marine technology to perform a critical environmental monitoring role, using data loggers, hydrophones and Lagrangian drifters to study the flow of the ocean’s currents.

PBWR’s unique vessel allows them to monitor what they refer to as nontraditional places — shallow areas of San Diego’s near shore environment and restricted waterways inaccessible to larger, motor-powered vessels. In this way PBWR fills in valuable gaps in oceanographic data painting a better picture of San Diego’s nearshore environment for scientists.

Currently, the Project is collaborating with the Deheyn Lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where the water samples their DK46 boat, named Maasai, collects water samples that are being used to generate data on concentrations of microplastics and microfibers in San Diego Bay.

As we wind down the first week of the OB Rag annual summer fundraising campaign, we’ve now reached nearly half of our goal of $3,500. And we have to remind our friends and readers that keeping the Rag alive does take donations from our readers and supporters, for afterall, a free press is not “free.”

We do have expenses — our annual server bill is $900 alone; plus subscriptions, utilities — and we actually pay many of our writers and reporters for reporting on community meetings and on issues that no one else covers.

Here are Reasons to Support the OB Rag:

1. Our Progressive Politics: we stand for the Constitution, liberty, democracy, the rule of law, a woman’s right to choose and for racial and gender equality. We are diametrically opposed to Trump’s banana republic and against his push into authoritarianism — which include possible plans for rigging the upcoming Mid-Term elections.
2. We Oppose the Direction that City Hall Has Been Taking: the current city leadership has been taking us down the wrong road in its imposition of un-democratically-forced rules that threaten our neighborhoods, like the Bonus ADU program and Complete Communities. We can add the failed paid parking at Balboa Park and the closing of half of the public restrooms in Mission Bay Park — since reopened.
3. We have been one of the voices at the forefront of forcing reforms to the city’s ADU policies along with neighborhood groups and networks like the San Diego Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego.
4. We stand for more affordable housing, renters’ rights and an end to the investor and corporate ownership of our housing stock. We also find it unacceptable that large campaign donors can reap the award of public land and development projects.
5. We also focus on maintaining parks and the public common — such as Mission Bay Park. We broke the story of how the Mayor wants to break off sections of Mission Bay and make them “surplus lands” in order to lease them to commercial and private interests in order to bring a cash-strapped city with a few bucks.

California bill balances law enforcement interests and protects public privacy

By Erwin Chemerinsky / Sacramento Bee / August 5, 2026 

A proposed California law would provide essential protection of privacy and prevent mass surveillance by the police in limiting how the government can keep and use information from automated license plate readers — which are ubiquitous, and give police the ability to monitor our whereabouts. Senate Bill 1013, also known as the Automated License Plate Recognition Data Accountability Act, would properly balance the interests of law enforcement with the need to protect privacy.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, would require that state and local law enforcement agencies delete automated license plate recognition data after 30 days unless there is a need to retain it because the license plate is on an authorized “hot list” (such as a stolen-vehicle, an AMBER/missing-person or a wanted list) or if the data is in the evidence file of an active investigation.

SB 1013 would also prohibit the sharing of information for the purpose of immigration enforcement, arrests or deportation — something that is already illegal under California law.

Simply put, the bill would prevent the government from compiling a massive database on those who are not suspected of anything. A great deal of information can be learned about a person from analyzing their location over time. In several cases — including a decision on June 30 — the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the invasion of privacy when the government can use technology to monitor our movements.