Category: San Diego

Billionaire Geoff Palmer Sued the City for Having to Include Some Affordable Housing Units While His Company Builds 1,000s of Units in San Diego.

By Dorian Hargrove / CBS8 / January 22, 2026

A Los Angeles landlord who owns more than 15,000 units in Southern California and is set to build more than 2,500 apartments in San Diego has lost his lawsuit seeking to get out of including affordable housing units in his projects.

According to court documents obtained by CBS 8, on Jan. 16, a federal judge dismissed billionaire Geoff Palmer’s lawsuit, which claimed the city’s inclusionary affordable housing rules were unconstitutional and akin to the government seizing private property.

Currently, Palmer’s company, G.H. Palmer, is finishing a 1,642-apartment project on Convoy Street in Kearny Mesa and is waiting to build nearly 1,000 additional units at a separate project in Grantville.

In Dec. 2022, before construction began on the Kearny Mesa project, Palmer’s company requested that the city exempt the project from the City’s Inclusionary Affordable Housing Requirement. The program required Palmer to set aside 10% of the units, or 164 in the case of the Kearny Mesa development, or to pay “in lieu of fees” for opting out.

The city denied Palmer’s request.

In Sept. 2023, Palmer sued the city, alleging the law was unconstitutional and violated private property safeguards.

Thousands of Minnesotans chanting “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here,” are marching through downtown Minneapolis to demand ICE leave the state.

The chants ring through the crowd—clearly energized and undeterred by freezing temperatures—that includes teachers, electricians, community members, and others from seemingly countless organizations

Many of the signs refer to Renee Good, a poet, Minneapolis resident and 37-year-old mother of three who was killed on January 7 by an ICE agent.

Good’s killing has been raised throughout the day, including during an act of civil disobedience by faith leaders at the airport, and during an accompanying news conference there.

The civil disobedience from Minnesota faith leaders resulted in the arrests of about 100 clergy who engaged in civil disobedience by blocking a key road at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport Friday morning, according to the ICE Out of MN coalition.

/By Michael Sainato and Rachel Leingang / The Guardian / Jan. 23 2026 

A “no work, no school, no shopping” blackout day of protest was kicked off by community leaders, faith leaders and labor unions on Friday, January 23, in protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surge in the state.

The “Day of Truth & Freedom” protest comes in the wake of the killing of Renee Good, the unarmed woman killed by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.

By Anonymous Point Loma Resident

I noticed that City Councilmembers Jen Campbell and Joe La Cava — who is council president — have items before the City Council meeting on January 27, excusing them from attending council meetings.

La Cava gives specific dates, Campbell does not.

Given Jen’s general lack of concern for residents of District 2 and her absence from District matters, this open- ended recuse from some/ all/ unspecified meetings is troublesome.

by Michael Zucchet / Voice of San Diego / January 21, 2026

In his Jan. 13 op-ed published in Voice of San Diego, former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey argues that increased spending and poor management are the real culprits of the city of San Diego’s budget woes.

But in many of the issue areas that Bailey cites (personnel and pension costs, lack of public safety spending and trash collection fees) San Diego is in line with or even outperforming other cities – including the city of Coronado under Bailey’s leadership as councilmember and mayor for 12 years:

• According to the Census Bureau, the city of San Diego’s population steadily grew more than 7 percent between 2010 and 2024 to 1,404,000. During the same period, the population of Coronado decreased 5 percent to 18,000. Despite this decline in residents, Coronado’s general fund personnel budget rose 89 percent from FY 2014 (Mr. Bailey’s first full fiscal year in office) to FY 2026.  During the same period – with a rising population – San Diego’s general fund personnel expenditures rose 76 percent. Coronado has one city employee for every 70 residents; San Diego has one employee for every 107 residents.

By Kate Callen

Balboa Park’s institutional stewards joined forces to denounce Mayor Todd Gloria’s paid parking fees in a January 21 press conference that delivered ominous news about the fees’ early impacts.

The 19 park leaders were brought together by the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership to announce a new website, that will serve as a portal for pressuring the City Council to shelve the fees.

The leaders stopped short of demanding a total repeal. They chose a milder stance: “to express our serious concerns and go on record requesting the reconsideration of the vote supporting paid parking.”

But they did (finally) challenge Gloria’s hype that the new fees will go straight into overdue park maintenance. And they would not rule out the idea of a public-private partnership, modeled after the New York City Central Park Conservancy, that would wrest management of the park away from City Hall.

“I think our community should and can have that larger discussion,” said Peter Comiskey, the partnership’s Executive Director.

Early data on attendance and revenue have borne out dire predictions that paid parking will drive away the visitors who keep the park solvent.

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.

A little local airfield was home to the country’s first regularly scheduled airline

By Eric DuVall / Point Loma — OB Monthly SDU-T / January 14, 2026 

When we left our expedition into the soggy bogs of Dutch Flats last month [see here for Part 1], the 1920s had come roaring into San Diego, and the Marines had landed. The Point Loma Golf Club had flourished for a brief 13 years before missing the cut.

Taking flight
The second decade of the 20th century had seen San Diego become one of the world’s hotbeds for innovation and development in the nascent field of manned flight. Many aeronautical firsts occurred in the equable skies above this city. The first seaplane flight, the first aerial loop-the-loop, even the first night flight — considered an extremely dangerous and even foolhardy experiment — was successfully executed by Maj. T.C. Macauley in 1913.

Col. Jimmy Erickson had taken the first aerial photographs from a plane in 1911. Army Air Service Lts. Oakley Kelly and John Macready are credited with several firsts, including the first nonstop transcontinental flight, from New York to San Diego, in 1923. The first transcontinental flight of an airship, the Navy’s enormous USS Shenandoah, terminated, rather precariously, at North Island’s Rockwell Field the following year.

You may have noticed that all of these air innovations were of the military variety. Commercial aviation, in particular air travel, which we take for granted these days, was not a thing at all a century ago.

By Kate Callen

Years ago, when attorney Everett DeLano challenged the City of San Diego for violating the Clean Water Act, the city insisted it should not have to pay penalties because taxpayers would have to foot the bill.

“In the legal system, we call that ‘externalizing the costs,’” DeLano told a packed audience at a January 17 San Diego Community Coalition forum. “You make other people pay. And that applies now.

“State laws are encouraging a tremendous amount of development. But we’re in a situation where we have a lack of infrastructure, so communities are paying the costs.”

Today, DeLano is one San Diego’s foremost land use attorneys. His recent victories against high-density projects include the Save Our Access lawsuit to restore the 30-foot height limit in the Midway/ Pacific Highway area, which includes Mayor Todd Gloria’s pet Midway Rising project.

DeLano didn’t start out fighting predatory development. He began his career as an environmental lawyer with the Sierra Club in Denver and the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles pursuing what he calls “natural resources defense.”

His abiding belief in environmental protection – whether the “environment” is an estuary or a neighborhood – has propelled DeLano into a string of court wins to mitigate the harsher impacts of rampant growth.

BBy Mandy Taheri / Newsweek / Jan. 20, 2026

What Is the 25th Amendment?

The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967, in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was instituted to prepare for medical emergencies and incapacitation that could prevent a president from performing normal duties.

The Amendment has four sections.

Section 1 says that if a president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president becomes president.

Section 2 notes that if there is a vacancy in the vice president’s office, the president shall nominate a stand-in who shall take office after being confirmed by a majority vote in both chambers of Congress.

Section 3 allows a president to temporarily hand over power by sending a written declaration to the House speaker and the Senate’s president pro tempore, saying he is unable to perform his duties. The vice president then becomes acting president until the president sends another written declaration, saying he is able to resume the job. This section has been invoked when the president undergoes medical procedures.

Finally, Section 4 allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare in writing that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office, making the vice president the acting president. If the president contests that declaration, Congress must decide the issue. The president remains sidelined only if two-thirds of both the House and Senate vote that he is unable to serve. Congress has 21 days to reach a decision once the question is formally before it.

Trump’s Letter Renews Talk

7 Events Planned for San Diego County; National Walk Out of Work, School and Commerce

One year into Trump’s second regime, we face an escalating fascist threat: ICE raids on our communities, troops occupying our cities, families torn apart, attacks on our trans siblings, mass surveillance, and terror used to keep us silent. It is time for our communities to escalate as well.

On January 20 at 2 PM local time, we will walk out of work, school, and commerce. We will withhold our labor, our participation, and our consent. A free America begins the moment we refuse to cooperate. This is not a request. This is a rupture. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.

WALKOUT FOR OUR FREEDOMS
WEAR RED, WHITE, & BLUE

“We will be ungovernable”: Resistance 2.0 pivots to disruption

By April Rubin / Axios / Jan. 19, 2026

Mass movements against the Trump administration are poised to take a different form in year two: more disruptive and potentially more violent.

Why it matters: Tens of thousands of Americans are expected to participate in walkouts on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, setting the stage for what future resistance could look like.