Thanks to Rep. Darrell Issa, violent crime is plummeting nationwide and California is receiving more than $233 million in rural health care funding.

At least that’s the view of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. The NRCC in recent weeks has put out a series of statements seemingly crediting the San Diego-area Republican with almost single-handedly forging such progress.

The reality is a bit different.

There’s no question Issa has supported anti-crime policies for the more than two decades he’s been in Congress, particularly during the two Trump administrations, and backed the recent plan for a $50 billion outlay for rural health services nationwide.

So did hundreds of other members of Congress, who similarly had no outsized role in these outcomes.

The rural health care release from the NRCC came just days before Issa, a Trump loyalist, voted against extending the Affordable Care Act tax credits, which passed the House despite opposition from GOP leadership and the president.

Odds are that during the campaign Issa’s vote will far overshadow his support for boosting rural health care — if his Democratic opponent has anything to say about it.

Perhaps more than anything, the NRCC actions signal the GOP is four-square behind Issa’s re-election in the 48th Congressional District, which had been a deeply red enclave that now leans Democratic thanks to the redistricting mania that swept through several states.

That’s not a surprise, given Issa’s San Diego-based district is considered a top battleground for partisan control of the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority.

Issa wasn’t committed to the new district at the outset. There was speculation he might jump to a nearby Republican district and, in a move that made national headlines, Issa openly considered running for a district in Texas. After a meeting with Trump, he decided to stay put.

Meanwhile, the NRCC has also sent out missives attempting to skewer the leading Democrats in the race — former Issa congressional opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar and San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert.

Big GOP money has yet to be spent, but that wouldn’t happen until months from now, with Issa expected to advance easily out of the June primary to the November election.

The NRCC moves would seem to put to rest any notion that Issa will drop out of the race before the election, something Campa-Najjar has continued to predict would happen as recently as a couple of weeks ago during a CNN interview.

The NRCC suggests Issa took a leading role in combating crime, but had some help. The big reductions last year coincided with Trump’s return to the White House.

“Thanks to Congressman Darrell Issa, violent crime is plummeting nationwide as Republican leadership restores law and order,” the committee said. “The country is on track for the largest single-year drop in murders ever recorded, with killings down nearly 20 percent from last year.”

The statement notes other violent crimes are dropping as well, “marking a clear break from years of Democrats’ soft-on-crime failures.”

The statistics are backed up with a link to an analysis by the Axios news organization, which nevertheless has a different perspective.

“The decline in killings is part of a broader decrease in violent crime following the COVID-era spike. Mass killings in the U.S. also fell in 2025, reaching their lowest level since 2006,” according to Axios.

“…President Trump has prioritized cracking down on violent crime in his second term, though there is no clear evidence linking his policies to the decline. Crime rates have been declining since 2021, according to data,” Axios added.

Except for the COVID era, crime in San Diego also has been on a downward trend for many years, making it one of the safest big cities in America. Under the NRCC logic, big credit would go to von Wilpert, who has been on the council for a handful of years and serves as chair of its public safety committee.

Interestingly, New York, Chicago, Memphis and Los Angeles County — all Democratic — experienced big double-digit reductions in murders compared with 2024, according to Axios. By comparison, predominantly Republican Johnston County, N.C., and Gilbert, Ariz., reported huge increases in the murder rate.

Not surprisingly, the NRCC release doesn’t mention that Trump’s Department of Justice slashed an estimated $500 million in federal funding for programs to help local and state justice initiatives, including policing, crime prevention, victim services and juvenile justice.

The increased health care funding will certainly be welcome in rural areas, many of which have distant and struggling medical services. That’s good regardless of politics, though much of rural America is Republican territory. Nevertheless, it might not benefit Issa as much as it would have in his current district.

The new 48th District expands north and west, losing much of its backcountry population in East County and adding Escondido, San Marcos and Vista. It also now includes heavily-Democratic Palm Springs in Riverside County.

“Congressman Darrell Issa continues to show that he is laser-focused on what matters to California families. Delivering quality, accessible healthcare is a critical win for California, and voters won’t forget it,” NRCC spokesman Christian Martinez says in the release.

Many may not forget his vote against the extension of ACA tax credits either.

“Once again, Rep. Darrell Issa has betrayed his constituents to protect Donald Trump and his party leadership, even as health care costs spiral out of control,” von Wilpert said in a statement.

Along with Medicaid cuts supported by Issa, von Wilpert cited congressional statistics projecting more than 32,000 of Issa’s constituents will lose health insurance. She said Issa has voted 17 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Campa-Najjar said in a statement that Issa failed “to protect the ACA tax credits that working families rely on to afford their health care.”

Issa and other Republicans have said the ACA needs reforms to drive down costs if it is to remain viable and suggested the program is riddled with fraud. Among other things, Issa has pursued legislation to lower prescription drug costs.

Republican House leaders unsuccessfully sought to avoid the latest ACA vote, knowing it would displease Trump and potentially hurt vulnerable Republicans like Issa. Seventeen other Republicans joined Democrats in voting to extend the tax credits. The bill is pending in the Senate.

Back in 2018, Issa represented a once-red district in North County that had eventually turned purple and a defeat seemed in the cards. He chose not to run after his loyalty to Trump and a pivotal vote he cast against the increasingly popular ACA supercharged Democrats in the district.

It seems at least some of that history is repeating itself.

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – After spending five months in space, four astronauts on the latest NASA mission splashed down safely in the water off San Diego.

But the Earth’s a big place with a whole lot of water, so how was it picked to land here?

“They look at the re-entry and the splashdown along a narrow, it’s a very time-dependent sort of corridor of the ground track,” Aaron Rosengren of UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering said.

Rosengren is an expert in the aerospace field. ABC 10News spoke with him about the successful splashdown off the coast of San Diego.

“The space ecosystem in Southern California is burgeoning right now. So, you know, that does play some role, probably with ground stations, coordinations, and the like,” Rosengren said. “But really, it was just a favorable season condition. The logistics worked out, and it was the best timing window that happened to line up. And this is the corridor that we re-entered in to.”

ABC 10News also reached out to NASA following the splashdown and asked why the water off the San Diego coast was designated the reentry point.
 
“After their long-duration mission completed, Crew-11 was the second NASA commercial crew mission to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. NASA and SpaceX worked together to certify and ensure readiness for Dragon recovery operations on the West Coast. Since 2019, Dragon recoveries primarily occurred off the Florida coast. SpaceX transitioned recovery operations to the West Coast to allow the spacecraft to complete deorbit before safely jettisoning the trunk over the Pacific Ocean,” Joseph Zakrzewski, Public Affairs Specialist with NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, said.

“Crew splashdown locations are near Los Angeles, Oceanside, and San Diego. The recovery vessel is stationed in Long Beach, California, to support these operations. To establish this capability and improve public safety, NASA and SpaceX spent months setting up new sites, obtaining regulatory approvals, performing engine assessments, implementing software changes, conducting tabletop exercises, and updating flight rules.”

Rosengren also broke down the relationship between NASA and SpaceX when it comes to the coordination of the reentry.

“NASA is the one that coordinates this, SpaceX is the one that executes it,” Rosengren said. “So, they execute the vehicle, the re-entry, the recovery operations, and I think NASA has flight rules and oversight for that comes into play.”

President Donald Trump said recently on social media he would ask Congress to stop large investors and private equity firms from buying single-family homes.

His plan did not have many details but echoed a common refrain across the U.S. that investors should not own homes and that they drive up prices.

Critics have argued the issue is overstated, with an estimated 4% of single-family rentals owned by institutional investors. Studies over the years have routinely shown San Diego County as having one of the lowest rates of institutional investors.

Still, the move is likely to be popular with voters and even stopping some big firms, like Blackstone, from buying properties could make a small difference in the real estate market.

Question: Should Congress bar big investors from buying single-family homes?

Economists

Ray Major, economist

YES: Institutional investors should be banned from owning single-family homes. The American dream is built on homeownership, and every person in the United States should be able to work hard and afford a home. Institutional investors reduce the supply and increase home prices turning potential homeowners into lifelong renters. This, in the long run, will eliminate the average American’s ability to build generational wealth and pass it on to their children.

Caroline Freund, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy

NO: Investors have mixed effects on housing affordability. Families who cannot afford to buy benefit from renting in neighborhoods with strong schools. Investors can also stabilize markets during downturns, as they did after the financial crisis when prices collapsed. To improve affordability, limiting ownership by large investors in markets where they have pricing power would make more sense than an all-out ban. And if the goal is to increase housing supply and improve affordability, there are far better tools than investment restrictions.

Kelly Cunningham, San Diego Institute for Economic Research

NO: The vast majority of single-family rental homes are owned by small to mid-size landlords, less than 5% by large investors. Blaming big firms seems a populous desire to make the administration look like caring about home prices and doing something about affordability, but ignoring real drivers of housing costs and actual problems caused by overregulation, development restrictions and compounding fees. Blaming investors could end up with policies having adverse consequences on home markets altogether.

Alan Gin, University of San Diego

YES: Even though institutional investors are a small part of the market, their influence is growing. They are important at the margin, which can have big implications for some communities. By increasing the demand for housing, they cause prices to go up, which leads to housing price inflation as one of the biggest contributors to the elevated overall inflation rate. They can also squeeze out individual buyers, who may have difficulty competing with all-cash offers in a high-interest-rate environment.

James Hamilton, UC San Diego

NO: If an investor buys a home and rents it out, that is one less home occupied by an owner and one more home occupied by a renter. This does not change the overall cost of housing. Moreover, the Constitution does not give Congress or the president the power to impose such a rule. This is a local problem, not a national issue. The real solution is to reduce local fees and restrictions on home building.

Norm Miller, University of San Diego

NO: This limit on institutional ownership is symbolic of populous-driven interference in the housing market, and just like rent controls, it is harmful in the long run, inhibiting capital allocation and new supply in the housing market. Home prices and rent levels are overwhelmingly driven by supply-demand fundamentals: i.e. job growth, migration, zoning constraints, NIMBYs and construction levels. Institutions may manage rents more systematically, using dynamic pricing tools and standardized operating procedures — but they do not set the market. They respond to it.

David Ely, San Diego State University

NO: The shortage of affordable single-family homes is primarily due to insufficient new construction. Existing homeowners choosing not to upgrade because they do not want to give up their low-rate mortgage is a contributing factor. Given the relatively small share of single-family homes owned by institutional investors, restricting their purchase of homes will not materially expand the stock of housing available to households or slow price appreciation.

Executives

Phil Blair, Manpower

NO: The issue is not who owns rental properties, but how few there are available. The private sector has found a real estate investment niche and deserves to be able to exploit it. The law of supply and demand says build more housing and the rental prices will collapse. The administration could be opening up thousands of acres of underutilized land across the country for much-needed housing.

Chris Van Gorder, Scripps Health

YES: The percentages might be low in terms of numbers of homes purchased by large investors, private equity or other corporate investors. But their purchases do escalate the price of homes by reducing the inventory available for those wishing to purchase homes for their own personal use by private assets. I think this could modestly control the price of homes by increasing availability for private purchasers.

Jamie Moraga, Franklin Revere

NO: President Trump proposed banning large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes. The key word “more” suggests a limit, not a sell-off. Instead of an outright ban, Congress could find bipartisan support for assessing a cap on institutional single-family homeownership. A cap could ease competition for first-time buyers, help protect tenants from “mega-landlords” and reduce market concentration. It could also help balance housing affordability, rental supply, and homebuilding impacts.

Gary London, London Moeder Advisors

YES: But this is a bit of economic dodgeball because there are relatively few homes held in institutional portfolios in San Diego. I propose legislation that focuses on 1) zoning and land use policies to encourage new housing construction, 2) incentivize senior citizen downsizing by eliminating capital gains tax and 3) allow a one-time pass-through of existing property taxes for new transactions. Then a more robust resale market would emerge, coupled with demand for new housing.

Bob Rauch, R.A. Rauch & Associates

NO: Institutional investors represent a small share of the housing market, so banning them would do little to lower prices. They also supply rental housing for people who can’t or don’t want to buy. Proposals to restrict who can purchase property mirror the kinds of policies pushed in New York City by Mayor Mamdani. We need to reduce regulations, taxes, and fees that constrain supply. Limiting who can buy homes shrinks the market and discourages construction.

Austin Neudecker, Weave Growth

YES: While institutional ownership currently only represents 4% of the market, funds with increasing algorithmic targeting, cash bids and conversion to rentals can drive prices and create negative externalities, especially impacting first-time buyers. First, run market-specific trials with short sunsets and analyze the impact on prices, supply and rental affordability before broader implementation or allow them to lapse.

Have an idea for an Econometer question? Email me at phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com. Follow me on Threads: @phillip020