San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria says he will not attend this year’s Pride Festival, and a coalition of local Jewish groups won’t participate in local Pride events at all, over objections to headlining performer Kehlani’s remarks on Israel.

The mayor notified San Diego Pride — which hosts both the annual festival and the Pride parade — of his decision to not attend the July 19 event in a letter sent this week to the organization’s leadership. The Grammy-nominated singer, who is nonbinary, has been accused of amplifying antisemitism in their criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Gloria’s letter, sent Wednesday, was followed soon after by a statement Friday morning by a group of eight San Diego Jewish organizations and synagogues announcing that they would no longer participate in the Pride celebration in San Diego this July, citing “safety concerns” surrounding Kehlani’s performance.

The festival’s volunteer director of medical operations and assistant director of medical operations, Jennifer Anger and Eliyahu Cohen-Mizrahi, who are both Jewish, said they were stepping down from their roles as well.

The mayor said in his letter to San Diego Pride that his office had received “an overwhelming number of calls and e-mails” about Kehlani, who he wrote had “used regrettable and controversial rhetoric on social media about the Jewish community.”

Kehlani has publicly expressed support for Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza but has also been accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric on social media and in their music.

Their music video “Next 2 U” opens with the message “long live the intifada” — an Arabic word meaning “uprising” or “rebellion” that generally refers to armed uprising against Israeli occupation. To many Jews and others, it’s a call for violence against Jews.

Several Kehlani performances have already been canceled in recent weeks, including one in New York City’s Central Park and another at Cornell University. On Thursday, Kehlani reportedly dropped out of a Pride music festival in San Francisco.

The singer could not immediately be reached for comment but said in a video posted to Instagram in April that they are “not antisemitic nor anti-Jew” but are “anti-genocide.”

San Diego Jewish organizations don’t see it that way.

“No one gets to tell Jews what is and is not antisemitic,” said Laura Stratton, a member of Temple Emanu-El of San Diego, one of the organizations that has withdrawn from Pride.

On May 22, the Finest Community Coalition, a group created to combat antisemitism and composed of more than two dozen local Jewish organizations, first issued a call to San Diego Pride to remove Kehlani as the festival’s headliner.

In a subsequent statement Friday, eight of the organizations said the request to San Diego Pride went “unanswered, and as a result, there will be no organized Jewish presence at San Diego Pride this year.”

The groups are “heartbroken” to not attend Pride, said Heidi Gantwerk, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.

But she said many members of the Jewish community don’t feel safe attending an event they say risks elevating rhetoric that violently targets them.

She pointed to recent violence, including last weekend in Boulder, Colo., when a man firebombed a march in support of Israeli hostages, injuring more than a dozen people, as well as a broader rise in antisemitic incidents, including in San Diego County.

“We want to be part of Pride. We want to be allies,” Gantwerk said. “We are allies for the gay community, but what we can’t be is complicit in speech that endangers our population.”

San Diego Pride confirmed Friday that Kehlani was still set to headline the festival and said in an email that it does not adopt or endorse the political positions of any individual performer.

“We made this decision after having engaged with community and religious leaders on both sides,” Pride spokesperson Joslyn Hatfield said in an email. “Ultimately, we came to the conclusion that removing Kehlani from the program would go against our fundamental belief in individual free speech, a cornerstone of our democratic system, especially in a time when the (Trump) administration is aggressively trying to silence our community.”

Mayor Gloria sent a letter to the coalition of Jewish groups Wednesday advising that he would not attend the festival and calling Pride’s selection of headliner “disappointing.”

But he also indicated that San Diego Pride had revised its contract with Kehlani to prevent the artist from “engaging in political speech.”

His office did not respond to questions about whether he had any concerns about restricting LGBTQ+ artists’ political speech, and about what role he believed political advocacy should play in the city’s Pride events.

Hatfield did not say whether San Diego Pride had changed Kehlani’s contract as Gloria described. But she did say it “has asked all performers, vendors, and guests to abide by a code of conduct, which includes a zero tolerance policy for conduct, language, or attire that is offensive, whether explicit, suggestive, or discriminatory.”

She also nodded to Pride’s origins in protest against police harassment of LGBTQ+ people.

“Stonewall is an important touchstone for our community — a reminder that we are capable of resistance in the face of oppression,” Hatfield wrote. “The work of Pride is resistance, advocacy and joy itself.”

Mayor Gloria will still attend and walk in the Pride parade, his office confirmed on Friday.

Rabbi Devorah Marcus, who leads Temple Emanu-El of San Diego, said the mayor’s support of the groups’ concerns is “beautiful” but hopes he will ultimately decide not to participate in the event at all, not even the parade.

She added that she’s “sorrowful” that the mayor is in the “difficult situation.”

“The Pride board has drawn a line in the sand and told people to pick teams and to pick sides, when Pride is supposed to be about bringing people together,” she said.

In his letter to San Diego Pride, the mayor expressed “deep concerns for the safety of all attendees” at this year’s parade and festival and said he anticipates the organization’s decision to keep Kehlani as headliner will prompt protests.

He encouraged Pride to keep working with San Diego police to ensure “robust safety” and a “reassuring presence.”

Originally Published: June 6, 2025 at 8:43 PM PDT

Federal and local authorities in San Diego arrested three men in the U.S. illegally – two from Mexico and one from El Salvador – after they allegedly transported nearly 8,000 pounds of methamphetamine worth more than $5 million earlier this week.

The incident took place on Monday around 7 p.m. during a joint narcotics investigation in the South Bay region, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday evening.

SDCSO detectives and U.S. Border Patrol agents observed three vehicles they believed were being loaded with bundles of drugs. A federal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of California said the vehicles were being loaded in a parking lot on Otay Mesa Road.

CBP OFFICERS SEIZE OVER $14M OF ALLEGED METHAMPHETAMINE AT SOUTHERN BORDER 

Two of those vehicles were driven toward a motel in San Ysidro, while the third vehicle went to a motel in Chula Vista, the sheriff’s office said. All three drivers were ultimately arrested.

They were identified by the Justice Department as 27-year-old Erick Omar Arriola, of El Salvador, and Mexican nationals Eugenio Lizama, 35, and Baltazar Rodriguez Reyes, 49.

Arriola is a felon convicted of driving under the influence, battery of a spouse and false imprisonment, the DOJ said.

‘ZOMBIE DRUG’ SMUGGLED ACROSS SOUTHERN BORDER A GROWING THREAT TO AMERICANS, DOCTOR WARNS 

Federal and local authorities involved in the seizure said there were 61 total bundles of methamphetamine in the three vehicles.  (San Diego County Sheriff’s Office)

When authorities searched their vehicles, they found a total of 61 bundles of methamphetamine, weighing more than 7,700 pounds and valued at around $5.5 million.

“It was one of the biggest seizures of methamphetamine in 2025 in the Southern District of California, and the most significant so far by the new Homeland Security Task Force San Diego, which was recently established by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security at the request of President Trump,” the DOJ said.

Methamphetamine was the drug detected inside the bundles, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. (San Diego County Sheriff’s Office)

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All three men were booked into the San Diego Central Jail and face charges related to conspiracy, transportation and possession of controlled substances for sales.

While the word “fossils” may have once once conjured images of elderly, nearsighted scientists toiling in silence in dank, dark basements, San Diego’s Natural History Museum is breathing new life into its collection with the addition of a $5.1 million Paleo Center that, yes, is downstairs and opens to the public on Friday.

The story of Amazement in the Basement, as “the Nat” has coined the exhibit, began 150 years ago when the museum was founded and continues today with curated highlights in the new Tom Deméré Paleontology Center, which finds fresh ways to connect San Diego with its antediluvian past.

“It’s the first time in our museum’s history that we’ve been able to combine both an exhibit and a real, active lab and collection space, so visitors will be able to not only explore an exhibit that displays the breadth and diversity of our collection, but they’ll be able to see paleontologists working in action and actually interact with them,” Abi Karkenny, director of exhibits at the Nat, told NBC 7 this week.

So, do you want to talk to a scientist while she makes a “cradle’ for the 120,000-year-old bison dug up in 2020 when workers paved the parking lot at Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley? That’s why the windows will usually be open in the research lab.

“It’s really the first time we’ve been able to bring visitors so close to the science that happens here, typically behind the scenes,” Karkenny said, adding, “I think the scientists are excited. You know, [they’re] always wanting to share their work with the public, they’re so passionate about what they do.”

And the specimens they’re working on, of course, will be constantly changing as they complete the tasks of preservation.

“[The] highlights of our Paleo Collection are often the things that were found right here in San Diego,” Karkenny said. “People are always fascinated to learn that so many of our fossils were found right here, right where we live and work and play. So, for example, we have … shells on display here that were found right under the museum while it was being constructed. And so that’s always mind-blowing for people: to find out that we live in such a fossil-rich area of the United States.”

Want to know what kind of fossils were dug up in Chula Vista? Carlsbad? Balboa Park? Well, in Mission Hills, for example, shark’s teeth and the bones of marine animals that were found are about 3.5 million years old. Just check out an exhibit case with drawers holding dozens of treasures from deep in the millennia. “See what’s in our drawers,” is how they put it.

A wall-size map of Southern California with mounted jewel cases containing fossils educates the young and the old by linking the ancient animals to where they were dug up in downtown San Diego (a half-million year old mammoth tooth and toe), Spring Valley (43 million-year-old crab), Mira Mesa (a squid-like animal; about 144 million years old) and Oceanside, where a mastodon leg bone from the Pleistocene Epoch 120,000 years ago was found.

The Paleo Center was conceived of just seven short years ago, though, back when the collection was housed both on site as well as at external storage facilities. Construction in Balboa Park, however, began in earnest in 2022. And if the site seems a bit industrial in design, that’s intentional.

“It’s meant to be a peek behind the curtain of our work,” Karkenny said, “and so much of the exhibit is inspired by what our collections spaces look like, both, you know, our warehouses that we used to have with super tall, 16-foot-high shelves full of specimens to the compactors that you see behind the scenes where you can roll the cabinets aside and see thousands of fossils, some as big as a boulder, but some as tiny as a grain of sand.”

Two of those towering orang shelves made the leap to the Nat, where they now hold everything from a stuffed mountain lion to the fossil of a whale skull. Remarkably, the 1.5 million specimens are across the hall, behind glass, visible to visitors and just steps away from the paleontologists working in the lab.

Although the exhibit is called the Paleo Center, it’s about more than just dinosaurs. Paleontology is, technically, the study of ancient life, especially from fossils.

“And so this was really created as a space to bring all the fossils together underground again, if you will, in one space and one home, but we also want visitors to know about all of the work being done to care for, study, protect fossils,” Karkenny said. “It’s not just for paleontology. The San Diego Natural History Museum does that work for all kinds of things: frogs, beetles, birds — an amazing diversity of specimens.”

Admission to the museum is $24 for adults — pro tip: buy online for $21.99 online — OR, grownups only have to fork over 12 bucks on Friday nights this summer, when they can take advantage of the Nat at Night to see the museum AND enjoy an adult beverage on the outdoor rooftop terrace. Kids 3-17? They’re $14 at the door daytime (or $12.99 on the website).