OB Rag

by Deborah Brennan / Cal-Matters / January 23, 2026

[Please see original for more photos and links]

For decades, parking lots at San Diego’s Balboa Park were packed, with lines of drivers snaking through lanes in search of a rare open spot.

Last Saturday there were plenty of open spaces, and on Wednesday several lots were half empty, while people lined up behind kiosks to pay newly imposed parking fees.

This month San Diego city imposed the first parking fees for the century-old cultural site, provoking confusion and contempt. Museums reported that visitation dropped 20% immediately, vandals defaced the meters and San Diego County mayors urged the city to reverse the unpopular policy.

“The negative impacts paid parking on Balboa Park have been immediate and they have been measurable,” Jessica Hanson York, executive director of the Mingei Museum and president of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, which represents the park’s museums, said at a press conference Wednesday. “Our visitors are feeling it and our cultural institutions and our museums are feeling it across the park.”

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has said the parking fees will provide stable revenue for the park and its museums, and help close a city budget gap of roughly $300 million this fiscal year and $110 million next year.

It’s amazing. Saturday morning, January 24 — the morning that ICE / border patrol agents shot and murdered Alex Pretti — was 3 days ago – and today we still don’t know who shot him. We still don’t know which agent or agents fired the 10 bullets into his body at point-blank range.

Is it because there were so many agents surrounding Alex and pummeling him that investigators can’t figure out the individual identities?

No, authorities know who it is – they’re just not saying. ICE agents operate with impunity, under masks and with loaded machine guns.

Okay, so Greg Bovino is leaving with a few other agents and ol’ Tom Horman is coming in to quiet everybody down. You know Horman, he’s the gruff-speaking, bulldog looking guy from central casting — he reminds me of actor Broderick Crawford of the TV show Highway Patrol — who allegedly accepted a bag of $50,000 cash from FBI agents during a crime investigation — and got to keep it and who of course was not charged.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are getting ready to shut the government down unless funding for ICE is removed from the spending packages.

Well what do we know? What have authorities said about the trigger happy agent? (What happened to the idea that multiple agents actually fired into Pretti?)

This past weekend, the Point Loma and Ocean Beach Democratic Club endorsed local candidate Mandy Havlik for the City Council race in District 2.

In their emailed announcement, the Club reported:

Both Nicole Crosby and Mandy Havlik attended and answered a wide arrange of questions moderated by Dave Fisher, President.

They also noted:

The morning of our endorsement consideration Josh Coyne’s campaign notified us that he would not be attending our meeting, they also failed to complete our candidate questionnaire that had been sent to all our Democratic candidates.

by Ernie McCray

The murder of Renee Michele Good

in her neighborhood

for reasons as unjustified

as a motive

could possibly be

has grabbed my attention dramatically

due to such action being extremely unlikely

considering

that law enforcement people

By SD Union-Tribune Editorial Board / January 25, 2026

After City Hall initiatives go awry, they often end up triggering relatively specific reactions.

When Mayor Kevin Faulconer and the City Council rushed into a costly lease-to-own deal in 2016 for an Ash Street office tower only to find out that asbestos contamination and other issues made it unusable without extremely expensive renovations, public incredulity was universal.

Last year, after Mayor Todd Gloria and the council completed a long-term con job that imposed trash fees on 220,000-plus homes at rates that were far higher than promised in 2022, anger was common.

And after the imposition of first-ever parking fees at beloved Balboa Park on Jan. 5, anguish has been a frequent response. Brad Taylor’s essay on our pages about how the change had created a sense of “tremendous loss” resonated with many locals.

By Angelo Haynes

At approximately 10:00 a.m., on Friday, Jan.23,  about a dozen individuals claiming to be a coalition of community activist groups from across San Diego County converged at the front office of Mayor Todd Gloria to protest his current SDPD policies regarding cooperation with Federal ICE officers. The chief concern expressed in a demand letter brought to the scene was an immediate clarification of SDPD policy and operational directives, including the requiring of the removal of face coverings during ICE operations.

The protestors then conducted a sit-in, a classic form of non-violent civil rights protest to get the attention of Gloria after repeated attempts to schedule a meeting. Nine  protestors occupied the waiting room space and the elevator bay of the 11th floor. Multiple staffers ranging from IT contractors strode through the scrum, while arriving for work in the morning.

Protest leader Bleu Wong of SD Bike Brigade was leading the protest and had indicated that she had been in contact with Todd Gloria’s office since last summer and had yet to have an actual conversation with the mayor regarding this issue. In response to the mayor’s office’s lack of communication, this collection of activists mobilized and showed up at his office with a list of demands printed on plastic polymer board signage.

San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer Sunday ordered all County and U.S. flags to be lowered to half- staff on County property in recognition of the lives lost in Minnesota at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

To the editor LA Times:

By Paul Krueger / Jan. 24, 2026

San Diego has indeed laid out the welcome mat for apartment builders and their investors (“San Diego shows what happens when a city actually lets builders build,” Jan. 20). But my city’s laissez-faire approach to development has failed to supply truly affordable housing while virtually ignoring the obvious need for additional parks, schools, fire and police stations and parking for car-dependent, working-class families.

Some of these new rental projects offer small studios for $2,500 per month and one-bedrooms for $3,000. Parking, when available, can cost $300 a month more. The so-called affordable units required by the city in some of those high-density buildings still cost more than $2,000 per month, well beyond the reach of our low- and very low-income residents.

Our mayor and his building-industry allies now claim their fast-track approval processes — which disregard neighborhood concerns about the negative impacts of these high-density/high-rise projects — are pushing down rental rates. But according to data from RentCafe.com, the recent 1.85% drop in monthly rental rates equates to just $55 per month in savings and a still expensive $2,938 average monthly rent.

The San Diego Community Coalition publishes this email bulletin to keep our members and the general public informed about important Council and Planning Commission hearings.

Monday, January 26: City Council, Closed Session, 10:00 a.m.

Agenda.

Item CS-1: Conference with legal counsel regarding 56 flooding litigation suits brought by nearly 2,000 residents.

Why it matters: It’s been a full two years since Southeastern San Diego neighborhoods were flooded because the city failed to maintain storm drain channels. Victims are still seeking reparation.

There’ a new rule in America: ICE agents are now allowed to execute American citizens with impunity — and the federal government will lie about it and cover it all up.

That’s what happened this weekend in Minneapolis when unidentified agents shot and murdered Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse, as he was trying to come to the aid of a woman being pushed by ICE men.

All the videos that have been viewed by Americans since the shooting clearly show he was holding a camera or phone filming agents, when he was pushed violently, then tackled by a half dozen ICE agents. During the scuffle, an agent can be seen removing a gun from Pretti, which he was not brandishing and who had a legal right to own and carry at the time.

By JW August – Special to the OB Rag

The San Diego region, which has a history of birthing hate groups, most notably white supremacy organizations, has seen an increase in the number and the power of these groups locally – and there have been also increases seen across the country.

White nationalist groups aren’t just about the hatred of Black, Latino / Hispanic and Jews but they’re also about “remaking the country as an ethnostate, where citizenship is limited to whites,” Rachel Carroll Rivas of the Southern Poverty Law Center told Times of San Diego.

Rivas says the National Coalition For Men, now headquartered in San Diego, is “very much impacting young men who are joining this male supremacist movement with claims of what true masculinity is.” Researchers are finding that the anti-feminist appeal to young male voters, instrumental in Trump’s recent election, is helping recruit people to the male supremacist movement.

This recruitment and indoctrination of men by these types of extremist groups is expanding, not just locally but across the globe, Rivas says.

For more about these Men’s Rights Activists go to SPLC website .

The OB Rag also interviewed criminologist and civil rights attorney Brian Levin who provided  information on the hate trends from 2025, when President Donald Trump entered office. Levin is projecting we will be seeing a drop in reported hate crimes in San Diego and elsewhere.

By Sarah K. Burris / AlterNet / January 22, 2026 

Former special counsel Jack Smith spoke to the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday where he clarified some details that Republicans have tried to use as talking points against him.

Legal, analyst, reporters and commentators took to social media to attack the questioning of Smith.

“Republicans on House Judiciary don’t want answers from Jack Smith. They keep on interrupting him as he responds to their questions,” said legal analyst Katie Phang.

“Jack Smith reminds us that the cases against Trump were dismissed ‘without prejudice.’ Meaning they could be brought again,” legal analyst and podcast host Allison Gill, of @MuellerSheWrote pointed out.

National security analyst Marcy Wheeler cited Rep. “Hank Johnson still has it: While we’re deposing Marshall Miller (the guy who got Jack Smith hired) perhaps we can depose Donald Trump why he hired his personal lawyer to run DOJ.”