OB Rag

From Governing / May 12, 2026

It’s a warm April day, bordering on hot, with the midday sun overhead. Still, Savannah Flores stays beneath a black tarp she has fashioned into a tent. If she tries to climb out, she says, it might collapse. So she agrees to talk through a small hole in the plastic.

Two or three days a week, she says, city crews sweep through this half-block stretch of 17th Street. The roughly two dozen people who usually camp there get 24 hours’ notice to pack up. Flores, 35, has been homeless for about a year. Whenever police come to clear out the area, she goes around the corner and returns later.

“They come and they treat us pretty much like we’re part of the trash,” she says. “They tell us to disappear somewhere, to be invisible.”

by Jenna Ramiscal / inewsource / May 19, 2026

Hundreds of residents whose taxpayer dollars fuel daily operations have taken to City Hall in recent weeks to air their frustrations over Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed answer to San Diego’s budget crisis this year.

That’s because Gloria’s budget slashes millions of dollars in funding for arts, parks, libraries and more in order to close a more than $140 million deficit. Those cuts would impact the city’s lower-income, racially diverse areas the most, according to the Independent Budget Analyst office. About 40 city jobs would also be eliminated.

In many ways, a city’s budget is an outline of its leaders’ priorities. It drives community services like public safety, parks, libraries and transportation. When cuts are made, certain departments and services have to roll back.

Here in San Diego, cuts will impact the city’s 1.4 million residents who rely on those services.

Gloria’s $6.4 billion spending plan is not final. It will have gone through several revisions once the City Council approves a budget in June.

Here’s the timeline:

To Donate, Go Here

Everyone is invited to come out and celebrate a 50-year old community victory for Ocean Beach. It’s the half-century celebration of the very first election to the OB Planning Board — and we’re having it this Tuesday, May 26th, at Dirty Birds OB. From 6 to 8pm.

We’ll have some finger-foods, good vibes and brief statements in solidarity of this election. There will be representatives from different OB groups including members of the current OB Planning Board.

If you’ve ever been a volunteer for anything in OB, then you’ll appreciate this event — and help honor the hundreds of OBceans who have volunteered for the planning board over the many years it has been in existence.

Top Lawyer at Treasury Resigns in Protest and Disgust at $1.8 Billion Grift

The Treasury’s most senior lawyer has dramatically quit, just hours after the Trump administration unveiled a vast $1.776 billion fund to enrich Jan. 6 rioters and other MAGA loyalists. Brian Morrissey, the department’s general counsel, stepped down a mere seven months after his Senate confirmation, three sources aware of his decision told the New York Times.

His abrupt departure came on the same day that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” Morrissey, who also served in Trump’s first administration, is a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H. W. Bush appointee.

Go to Daily Beast for more

Trump’s Justice Department announces $1.8 billion fund slammed as ‘slush fund’

By Steve Benen / Maddowblog / May 19, 2026

The fact that we knew the scheme was coming didn’t make it any easier to accept. Three months after Donald Trump filed a radical (and by any fair measure, frivolous) $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the president’s lawyers announced Monday morning that they had agreed to withdraw the case.

Hours later, the other side of the agreement came to public light: In exchange for dropping his rather silly lawsuit, Trump’s own Justice Department announced the creation of a pool of money that it’s calling “The Anti-Weaponization Fund” — which Democrats and legal experts are more accurately characterizing as a “slush fund.”

A person of interest in the death of a man who was assaulted in the Midway District last October has been arrested in Mohave County, Arizona. 60-year-old Noel Frischknecht remains in jail for an outstanding San Diego County Superior Court arrest warrant connected to the death of a 68-year-old Brian Salatino. He was arrested by the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department.

Frischknecht is alleged to have assaulted Salatino around 5:40 p.m. on Oct. 26, 2025 in the 3300 block of Midway Drive in San Diego. Salatino was transported to a hospital, where he remained in a coma. After being hospitalized for approximately 100 days, he succumbed to his injuries and died on Feb. 3, 2026.

by Anthony Dang / Times of San Diego / May 12, 2026

We posted a video last week recapping a recent protest against Sempra’s latest earnings report, and one comment captured exactly how many San Diegans currently feel: “big personal beef with SDG&E.”

Isn’t that the truth? How many conversations with friends and family eventually spiral into frustrations about skyrocketing energy bills? As summer approaches, many of us are preparing to do what we do every year: ration electricity, avoid turning on the A/C during heat waves, and hope we can stay afloat in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Meanwhile, Sempra called its latest earnings a “great start” to the year. Of course it was. Last week, Sempra reported more than $1 billion in profits in just the first few months of 2026. Its CEO earned more than $22 million the year prior. For executives and shareholders, this system is working exactly as designed.

But for the rest of us — the ones paying some of the highest energy bills in California to fund these profits — it’s a horrible reality.

Here’s the agenda for this week’s meeting of the Project Review Committee of the OB Planning Board, Tuesday, May 19.

Projects come before the review committee for a first pass – and usually the committee gives a recommendation to the full board.

The first is a permit to demolish 2 existing one-story houses and construct a 3-story unit and a a 2-story home at 4866–4870 Del Mar Avenue.

And the second is a permit to remodel two existing homes to include a second-story to each, at 1759 to 1761 Ocean Front Street.

On Friday, May 15, around 12:40 a.m., a 37-year-old man was struck by a hit-and-run driver at an intersection in San Diego’s Midway District neighborhood and suffered life-threatening injuries. This occurred near the intersection of Camino Del Rio West and Kurtz Street, according to the San Diego Police Department.

Police said the pedestrian was walking westbound near the south crosswalk when an unknown vehicle traveling southbound on Camino Del Rio West drove through the intersection and hit him. The driver fled the scene immediately after the crash.

By Michael Chen / 10News / May 14, 2026

A 16-year-old San Diego teen is on the island of Saipan distributing supplies — many of them donated by ABC 10News viewers — a month after a super typhoon devastated islands near Guam.

Devi Balachandra, a junior at High Tech High International, spoke via Zoom from central Saipan, part of the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Super Typhoon Sinlaku made landfall a month ago, destroying and damaging thousands of homes across the islands. Balachandra, who was born in Saipan, was first interviewed in late April as she helped launch an online fundraiser and donation drive.

From 7SanDiego

More than 100,000 pounds of food were collected across San Diego County during the 34th annual Letter Carrier’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive last weekend, organizers announced Tuesday, May 12.

The National Association of Letter Carriers and the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank collaborated on Saturday’s – May 9 regional food drive. Residents across San Diego County donated bags of non-perishable food by their mailboxes and mail carriers collected the donations along their routes before delivering them to the food bank for distribution through its network of more than 450 nonprofit partners.