OB Rag

by Tessa Balc / Times of San Diego / March 31, 2026

The next chapter in San Diego’s pursuit of Midway Rising will play out in Sacramento.

State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson introduced a bill last week to exempt the project from review under the state’s landmark environmental law and make way for the plan to redevelop the roughly 50-acre area around Pechanga Arena into an urban district with 4,000 homes, acres of parks, and a new arena.

[Please see original for any and all links.]

Weber Pierson’s proposal follows a California Supreme Court decision not to review a previous court ruling that threw out a 2022 voter-approved initiative to raise the height limit in the Midway area. The lower court ruled that the city failed to consider the environmental impacts of allowing taller buildings there.

Midway Rising’s developers quickly said the court’s ruling would not halt their project, because other state housing laws allowed them to exceed the height limit regardless.

The Home Team Act has been introduced in the U.S. Senate which would if pass keep the Padres in San Diego — at least for another year.

Here’s Phillip Molnar at the San Diego U-T:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is behind a bill that would prevent the Padres from leaving in the future — and would have kept the Chargers in San Diego. Some say the government has no place in dictating where private businesses operate.

Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, recently introduced the Home Team Act, which would require team ownership to provide one year of notice before moving a team to a new location if the team would move across state lines or to a new metropolitan area.

During that year prior to the proposed relocation, the franchise in question would be available for other prospective owners to purchase “at a fair and reasonable price.”

San Diego is especially sensitive about teams leaving after the Chargers went to Los Angeles in 2017. Recently, the Padres have entertained several offers to sell, igniting fears someone may take the baseball club somewhere else.

Editordude: The following is an unsolicited response to a recent Rag post entitled, “Open Letter to the Demonstrators at the Corner of Sunset Cliffs & West Point Loma,” which has garnered quite a bit of attention but not a lot of actual dialog, which was our intent in publishing it. Until this … from Code Pink activists. 

Dear Clandestina Urbanista,

We appreciate you taking the time to write. We also want to be straightforward in response.

We are members of the San Diego chapter of CODEPINK, and we speak for our chapter only. Together with members of Veterans For Peace, Jewish Voice For Peace, and several other organizations throughout San Diego, we gather each week because what is happening in Gaza is not an abstract “complexity” – it is mass killing, carried out with the full support and funding of the United States government. As U.S. taxpayers, we refuse to be silent in the face of it.

We reject the framing that asking the public to hold “all sides” equally, in this moment, is a neutral act. It risks obscuring the scale, power, and ongoing nature of the violence being inflicted on Palestinians, as well as Iranians and Lebanese.

By David Garrick / San Diego Union-Tribune / April 1, 2026

San Diego’s efforts to cement its long-term control over Liberty Station have hit a snag that could force the city to sell the leafy complex of public parks, artist studios, restaurants and shops just east of Point Loma.

The city must get several local school districts, community college districts and health districts to agree to payouts as part of a complicated process required to retain control of former redevelopment agency properties.

Eight of those 14 agencies have recently agreed to Liberty Station payout offers from the city — but the San Diego Unified School District board is raising questions and voted unanimously last Tuesday to delay any decision indefinitely.

That vote came after the board was lobbied by the private company that manages much of Liberty Station to reject the city’s $1.4 million payout offer, contending the payout should be closer to $10 million.

City officials say the management company, Seligman Properties, is disingenuously trying to scuttle the deals so the city will be forced to sell it Liberty Station at a substantially deflated purchase price.

Because Seligman already controls 330 acres of Liberty Station’s commercial areas under no-rent leases that run through 2070, city officials contend it wouldn’t make sense for any other company to bid against Seligman — limiting how much the city can get.

By Dave Myers / Op-Ed San Diego U-T / April 2, 2026

California voters deserve to understand exactly what is happening.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican now running for governor, has launched an unprecedented law enforcement investigation into the November 2025 special election and seized roughly 650,000 ballots. The stated basis is alleged voter fraud — claims that have not been supported by verified data. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, citing Bianco’s own sworn statements, has argued the sheriff failed to establish probable cause to justify this action. Although a California court recently denied Bonta’s request to halt the ballot review, the underlying legal and constitutional concerns remain unresolved.

This should concern every voter, regardless of party.

A sheriff sworn to uphold the law has stepped into the election process, pursuing claims that do not withstand basic scrutiny. More troubling is the use of law enforcement authority to reach into the handling of ballots themselves. That is not routine policing. It is a direct intrusion into a system designed to be insulated from political pressure and protected by strict legal safeguards.

Ballots are not criminal evidence to be collected at will.

The City of San Diego has begun the process of replacing the 44-year old Mission Beach lifeguard station. On March 14, the city began fencing off the existing lifeguard tower from the public and started installing a temporary lifeguard tower and trailer just north of the current dilapidated station.

“These temporary facilities will allow lifeguards to operate safely and efficiently while plans are developed to upgrade the existing station,” the city of San Diego said in a released statement at the time work began.

This is all well and good — a lifeguard station that old deserves to be replaced. And the surrounding community deserves it also.

Yet — what about the Ocean Beach lifeguard station? It’s even older than the Mission Beach one. It was built in 1980-1981. (See comments to that post.)

Sure, the city can argue that the Mission Beach station serves a larger community and there’s more beachgoers there than in Ocean Beach. Okay, replace them both.

This also fits a pattern all too familiar with observant OBceans who’ve seen city resources go to other communities over the years — no, over the decades. South Mission Beach got a new lifeguard station; Pacific Beach got a new station; La Jolla got a new one.

But not OB.

Perhaps due to the marginal size of the neighborhood — not that many voters or property owners — Ocean Beach has been repeatedly passed over on infrastructure projects that have been needed.

Editordude: The following was sent to us unsolicited and requested we publish it as an effort to open some dialogue. 

Hello,

I’ve passed your gathering many Saturdays at Sunset Cliffs and West Point Loma. Almost every time, I feel the impulse to pull over and speak with you – but my throat tightens, my stomach knots, and I keep driving. I’m writing instead because I don’t want to keep avoiding it.

When I moved to San Diego from the Bay Area, I knew I was leaving behind a certain kind of political energy that shaped my 20s. I lived a block from the Occupy Oakland encampment and spent time there almost daily. I marched in early Black Lives Matter demonstrations, long before 2020. I was engaged in activism around global issues, including Israel/Palestine, for many years.

So I don’t see you as apathetic. I recognize what it means to care enough to show up.

At the same time, I want to be honest that I experience what you’re doing very differently than you likely do.

Every Saturday at 10:30 am. San Diego Climate Mobilization Coalition Meetings April 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th

Every Saturday 10 am – 12 pm Peace Vigil for Palestine:

The San Diego River Park Foundation has volunteer opportunities in Ocean Beach:

Every Sunday 1:30 pm – 4 pm Otay Mesa Vigil

League of Women Voters EMPOWERING VOTERS & DEFENDING DEMOCRACY Information on upcoming forums for City Council Primary Races:

April 1st, 8th and 15th Wednesdays 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm Resist Trump Flash Banner Action –

April 2nd Thursday 6 pm – 7:30 pm Surfrider Open House

April 4th Saturday 4pm -7 pm Jewish Voice for Peace San Diego Passover Seder

April 4th Saturday 4 pm – 6 pm Spring GBM with Green New Deal

April 5th Sunday 11 am – 2 pm EASTER SUNDAY OUTREACH — Factory Farms Awareness Action

April 6th Monday 6 pm – 8 pm Friends of Famosa Slough 40th Anniversary

By Bruce D Coons, Barry Hager and Geoffrey Hueter / Op-Ed San Diego U-T / April 1, 2026

San Diegans face housing affordability challenges. But if policy solutions are going to work, they must be based on evidence rather than assumptions.

San Diego’s biggest affordable housing program isn’t on paper — it’s already built. Our older and historic homes are doing more for affordability than any subsidy program in the city.

A new independent analysis released recently by PlaceEconomics, “The Urban Vitality Blueprint: A Data-Driven Analysis of Equity, Affordability, and Vitality in San Diego’s Historic Districts,” examines the role that historic districts and older neighborhoods play in housing, affordability and sustainability across San Diego. The findings challenge several widely repeated claims in the city’s current policy debate.

Historic districts are often portrayed as low-density neighborhoods that limit housing growth. In reality, the opposite is true. Here are a few key facts from the report:

By Mark Joseph Stern  / Slate / April 01, 2026

On Wednesday, April 1, Donald Trump became the first sitting president to attend Supreme Court arguments in person. It must have been a brutal morning for him. The justices heard Trump v. Barbara, a challenge to the executive order purporting to strip birthright citizenship from the children of many immigrants—and it quickly shaped up to be a blowout against the administration. Seven justices expressed profound skepticism toward the government’s revisionist history of the 14th Amendment, with most sounding downright hostile toward the pseudo-originalist theory cooked up to legitimize the policy. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito asked questions friendly to the administration, and none of their colleagues sounded persuaded by their strained defenses. It appears that Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship—in some ways, the centerpiece of his nativist immigration agenda—is about to go down in flames.

From the outset, the justices gave Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, a frosty reception. He pressed an ahistorical, atextual theory of the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause, which declares that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The clause’s central purpose was to grant citizenship to newly freed slaves and their children. When ratifying the amendment in 1868, however, Congress explicitly recognized that it would also apply to the American-born offspring of immigrants. The Supreme Court affirmed that principle in 1898’s Wong Kim Ark, and ever since, these children have received U.S. citizenship at birth regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Nonetheless, Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office ordering the government to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants who lack permanent legal status and temporary visa-holders.

By Kate Callen and Paul Krueger

After decades of neglect and a controversial parking fee that has endangered its attractions, Balboa Park could be rescued as early as next fiscal year through the determined efforts of its rightful owners, the people of San Diego.

More than 80 community advocates for Balboa Park gathered at a March 28 public forum to map out steps for saving San Diego’s embattled crown jewel. The first step: a change of the current park governance, which must happen immediately.

A new governance model would be an engine for addressing two Park priorities: raising the necessary funds to keep Balboa Park healthy and intact, and balancing the fragmented needs of numerous park constituencies.

“It is important to recognize that every blade of grass in this park has a constituency,” said former City Architect Michael Stepner, “and when you want to mow the lawn, you need to talk to everybody.”

Stepner and landscape architect Vicki Estrada led the discussion at “The Future of Balboa Park: A Community Conversation,” co-hosted by the San Diego Community Coalition and Neighbors for a Better San Diego at the Mission Valley Library.

By Lori Weisberg and Alexandra Mendoza / The San Diego Union-Tribune / March 29, 2026

For much of the last decade, a steady, often robust flow of immigrants into the county has been critical to bolstering San Diego’s sometimes sluggish population growth as more and more locals packed their bags and moved to other parts of the country.

Not so anymore.

Newly released population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal the dramatic demographic impacts of the current administration’s crackdown on immigration and deportations, which are now contributing to overall population declines and slowdowns across California and throughout the country.

[Please see original for any and all links.]

Where a year earlier, San Diego County’s population grew by nearly 8,000 from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024 — thanks to a healthy influx of immigrants — it fell by nearly 5,300, to 3.28 million in 2025, reversing a post-pandemic rebound. The change is due almost entirely to the monumental shift in immigration policies last year that contributed to a stunning 65% drop in San Diego’s foreign arrivals — the single largest decline in 15 years.