I was blocked from entering Otay Mesa Detention Center today to conduct oversight after receiving concerning allegations about conditions there. We've heard reports that detainees are throwing notes over the fences asking for help. What are they trying to hide here? What are they doing?

San Diego Democratic Rep. Juan Vargas has been refused entry into the Otay Mesa Immigrant Detention Center. He sought to inspect after reports of substandard conditions. He's previously been allowed in. "Something has changed," he says.

Detainees at the Otay Mesa immigrant jail in San Diego have resorted to throwing notes over the wall to activists. They can work for $1 per day to pay for one $5 phone call. Some have been there for over a year. lataco.com/captive-lotion-bottle-note

What is the San Diego Politics Show?

El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells tells blatant lies about protesters being paid $80,000 - $120,000 per year to protest. www.instagram.com/reel/DUPWABm...

A mansion tax is smart, but Measure ULA is dumb. Every city in California will pay the consequences if LA can't quickly figure out how to exempt apartment buildings from their sloppy mansion tax.

January 2026 temperature rankings compared to all Januarys since 1895.

People are getting really fooled by things in the Epstein files. This is NOT a "Declassified FBI memo". It is a story told to the FBI by a CHS ("confidential human source"), who could be anyone from a petty criminal to a whistleblower to a propagandist trying to deceive (as here). Be smarter. 1/

Viable baby names inspired by @sandiegomts.bsky.social Trolley stops: Iris, Amaya, Logan, Fenton, Gillespie?

Redevelopment coming soon to Downtown San Diego? Cal Coast Credit Union has vacated their building at the corner of Fifth and Beech. The entire west side of Fifth between Beech and Cedar is now vacant buildings.

A small group of retirees riding bikes in San Diego County tell elected officials & traffic engineers the design at left is safer and preferable to the one at right. It doesn’t matter they’re wrong, that it would halve ridership, they get an audience because their preference is a car-centric design.

San Diego reps Juan @vargas.house.gov and @mikelevin.org voted to ban the U.S. State Dept. from citing Gaza Health Ministry death toll in 2024. Israel has reversed course and now accepts the GHM number.

So wild seeing a City Councilmember post about masked federal agents assaulting and killing people, and the comments are all ”What are you doing about the parking fees???”

San Diego Unified‘s board on Monday night voted to move forward with proposals to build nearly 1,700 units of affordable education workforce housing on district owned land. The projects now in negotiations are more than double the amount of such units that currently exist in all of California.

A good overview of why those "America's 50 Safest Cities" listicles are garbage. The methodology is totally made up and inconsistent. open.substack.com/pub/jasher/p...

San Diego's leading Chamber of Commerce is promoting and supporting GEO Group, the for-profit corporation that jails immigrants. @seanelorivera.bsky.social calls on the Chamber to disown GEO group and publicly condemn the Trump administration's abuses of San Diegans.

NEEE PARKING

If you're going to post ai generated propaganda, at least spell check it.

Duolingo getting a little too topical today.

In an emailed statement, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria calls ICE protesters barricading themselves into his office “unacceptable,“ writing “I will not be coerced, and I will not tolerate behavior that puts hardworking City staff or the public at risk.”

📸 Mariana Martínez Barba

Am told a group of activists had barricaded themselves in San Diego’s City Hall demanding Mayor Todd Gloria meet with them to set new standards for how SDPD responds to calls related to ICE.

ChatGPT nonsense in Terra Lawson-Remer's email newsletter: *Proposes the creation of a new government agency* "This isn't about creating more government!"

Left-handed handshake?

The fact that fewer and fewer people are willing and/or able to read say 1000 words at once seems as dangerous to liberal democracy as anything else that might be happening but that is where we are

So, what does everyone think about the big takedown of Todd Gloria in Voice of San Diego today? voiceofsandiego.org/2026/01/14/t...

Amtrak will add a 13th daily trip between San Diego and LA. The newest trip leaves Downtown SD at 7:01 a.m. (between the current 6:01 and 8:01 a.m. departures), arriving in downtown LA at 9:57 a.m. The newest trip from downtown LA leaves at 7:10 p.m., arriving in downtown SD at 10:07 p.m.

Nearly 5,000 "laugh" reacts on this dead-serious Facebook post from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department about a barista who drew a pig on a coffee cup and gave it to a cop. Congratulations on accidentally going viral.

So, no Rob Bonta. No Kamala Harris. No Alex Padilla. We're left with Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, and some other people. www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

A little bit of good news

Hundreds are marching through Downtown San Diego tonight in protest of ICE following the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis yesterday.

Anti-ICE protesters in Downtown San Diego just encountered an ICE van with masked agents.

I’m at a rally for Renee Good in San Diego right now.

More evidence that LinkedIn is becoming the place to discuss San Diego politics and public affairs.

Human brains feed off of negativity. Negative thoughts are easily digested and play in a loop in your mind all of the time. The reality, however, is that there is also A LOT OF GOOD happening every single minute. You have to do more work to pay attention to the good but it's worth it.

All of this San Diego councilmember outrage at paid parking is so disingenuous. It's giving "We're all trying to find out who did this" energy. You did this! voiceofsandiego.org/2026/01/07/m...

A disturbing number of San Diego public figures are still posting on this man's personal website.

Can we get a list of San Diego public figures who are still providing free labor to Elon Musk on his child porn website?

I genuinely have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to run for Mayor of San Diego. You're running to be the most hated person in the city.

I would love to know why people in San Diego's labor movement are still producing free content for Elon Musk's companies.

In the last 52 days, San Diego has recorded 6.5 inches of rain. That's more than 2/3rds of the average annual total of 9.79 inches. Since Oct. 1, the start of the water year, the total is 6.91 inches. Last year at this time, the city's total was 0.14 of an inch. #sandioegoweather #CAwx

The IHRA definition of antisemitism is a case where there is a real split between the Jewish advocacy world, which sees it as the gold standard, and Jewish Studies scholars, who, with few exceptions, find it conceptually problematic. Even the scholar who wrote it opposes using it this way.

Welcome to the Public Domain, AS I LAY DYING (1930) 📖 🧠 William Faulkner’s groundbreaking modernist novel uses multiple narrators & stream-of-consciousness storytelling to reshape American literature. Learn more ➡️ blog.archive.org/public-domai... #PublicDomainDay #PublicDomain #CopyrightFree

You don’t hear too much about San Diego, what’s going on down there

Just heard that El Borrego on El Cajon and 43rd is going out of business. Last day is Sunday, Dec. 28. 😢

they're trying to shoot santa down with fireworks

Anyone else have a lot of trashy people around them setting off fireworks on Christmas Eve or is that just a Lemon Grove thing?

This upcoming storm will bring very heavy, though not unprecedented, rainfall to SoCal coastal plain (2-4+ inches), with 10+ inches in mountains. But bigger issue will be high rainfall *rates*: torrential 1-3 hour downpours are possible, along w/t-storms. #CAwx

Anyone know if Flock has deployed its Condor cameras anywhere in San Diego?

Love this!