SUSPECTS ARRESTED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER AT PARKWAY PLAZA
East County News Service June 28,2025 (El Cajon) – El Cajon Police have arrested three men and a juvenile for attempting to kill a teen boy, 17, insider Spencer’s at Parkway Plaza on June 24. “One suspect pointed a handgun at the victim’s head and appeared to pull the trigger,” says Lieutenant Will Guerin. Fortunately, the weapon jammed and did not fire. All four suspects fled the scene. El Cajon Police detectives reviewed surveillance footage, which confirmed the assault and attempted murder. According to Lt. Guerin, the video clearly identified the suspects as Abraham Rodriguez, 19, Isidro Vazquez, 24, and Jermaine Taylor, 23, along with a 16-year-old male juvenile who was the shooter. At approximately 4:15 p.m., detectives found the suspects near Broadway and Ballantyne. Three of them ran into a nearby apartment complex; the fourth was found at a nearby business. The juvenile suspect was seen entering and later leaving an apartment, where he was detained by officers. The other adult suspects were located and taken into custody without incident. A search of the juvenile’s apartment led to the recovery of two handguns. One of the firearms matched the description of the weapon used in the assault and was found jammed with a chambered round and showed evidence indicating a failed discharge. The juvenile, who is currently on probation for prior firearm offenses, was booked into the San Diego County Juvenile Detention Facility on multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, conspiracy, and firearm offenses. Rodriguez, Vazquez, and Taylor were booked into the San Diego Central Jail for attempted murder and conspiracy. Rodriguez and Vazquez are both currently on probation for previous firearm-related offenses. The motive for the attack remains unknown at this time. The investigation is ongoing, and anyone with additional information is urged to contact the El Cajon Police Department at (619) 579-3311. Alternatively, tips can be shared anonymously through Crime Stoppers at (888)-580-8477 or online at sdcrimestoppers.org.
SUPREME COURT LIMITS INJUNCTIONS THAT BLOCKED TRUMP’S PLAN FOR BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
“We are fighting to make sure President Trump cannot trample on the citizenship rights of a single child.” –Cody Wofsy, deputy director, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, which filed a class lawsuit in response to Supreme Court’s action By G. A. McNeeley June 28, 2025 (Washington D.C.) — The United States Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of nationwide injunctions by lower courts, in a case that involves President Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate birthright citizenship, according to ABC 10. It’s been widely accepted that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment confers automatic citizenship to most people who are born in the United States, NBC reports. Despite this, the court ruled in a 6-3 vote to prohibit nationwide injunctions by lower courts. Thus the lower court must narrow its ruling to only those areas over which it has jurisdiction,not nationwide. The ruling allows Trump to enforce his executive order in other states not covered by lower court decisions, putting the future of babies born to undocumented parents in limbo. The court did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s executive order, but will likely do so in the future when an appeal of lower court rulings finding the order unconstitutional reach the Supreme Court on appeal. However the ACLU has filed a nationwide class acton lawsuit after the ruling, aiming to win an injunction to protect all babies born in the U.S. until the Supreme Court can rule on the constistutionality of the birthright citizenship order. The case has implications that go beyond the birthright citizenship case, restricting nationwide injunctions in other matters as well. What Is The Trump Administration Doing To Birthright Citizenship? Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that would no longer automatically grant citizenship at birth to children of immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, according to ABC 10. The order applies to all such babies born after the date the order was issued, not retroactively, so it could not be applied to Trump’s own children, some of whom were born to Trump’s immigrant wives who were not yet citizens. California and 21 other states quickly sued the administration over the executive order, and federal judges in Washington State, Maryland, and Massachusetts temporarily blocked the executive order after it was issued, according to Desert Sun. Several district court judges issued injunctions that tried to stop the order from being implemented, but The Trump Administration argued that federal district court judges shouldn’t be able to issue such wide injunctions, according to ABC 10. With this ruling, a district court judge’s decision would only be in effect for that specific district. Trump told reporters at The White House that the ruling is “an amazing decision,” and that the court “delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law, in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch,” according to NBC. “Thanks to this decision, we can now properly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries and numerous other priorities of the American people,” Trump said, according to ABC 10. “Those three judges that have blocked the executive order of Donald Trump on birthright citizenship have to move now quickly, now that the case has been returned to them, over the next 30 days,” Michael Popok, national trial lawyer and co-founder of the Legal AF podcast, said in a YouTube video. Popok added that those judges have to “narrow their injunction from a nationwide injunction to a narrow injunction only involving that state,” and that the lawyers have to “move quickly to get to the appellate court” to get a ruling there, and then “take an emergency application to a Supreme Court.” What Are The Court Justices Saying About The Supreme Court’s Decision? “When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, according to NBC. Barrett added that lower courts “shall move expeditiously” to figure out how broad the injunctions are, and that it’s possible that states involved in the litigation could still obtain broad injunctions. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, according to ABC 10. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship,” Sotomayor added. In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the court’s decision was “an existential threat to the rule of law,” according to NBC. The court has said the executive order would technically go into effect in 30 days after the ruling, according to NBC. What Does The 14th Amendment Say About Birthright Citizenship? The 14 Amendment says 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 amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution in 1868, after the Civil War, and it granted citizenship and freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people. The Trump Administration contends that the 14th Amendment doesn’t extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, according to Reuters. Trump’s Agenda47 policy platform states that he wants to clarify the amendment so that it’s understood that “U.S. Citizenship extends only to those both born in AND ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States,” according to Desert Sun. Trump has also
ECM WINS TWO JOURNALISM AWARDS
East County News Service June 27, 2025 (San Diego’s East County) – East County Magazine editor Miriam Raftery won two awards from Society for Professional Journalists in the San Diego SPJ Journalism competition. The honors bring ECM’s total awards to 149 since our founding in 2008. In the series category for daily reporting and writing, Raftery took third place for her series on the Water Conservation Garden’s growing pains. The series chronicled the Garden’s financial struggles, brief closure, and reopening after operations were taken over by the Garden’s joint powers authority. View the series: part 1, part 2, and part 3. Raftery also won third places in the opinion/editorial category for her editorial published last July 4 , titled As we celebrate Independence Day, our democracy is at risk. Several of the threats to our democratic system of government that she warned of have since come to pass via authoritarian actions rolled out by the Trump administration following the blueprint outlined in Project 2025.View the complete list of winners in the San Diego SPJ Journalism competition. Support award-winning journalism! Donate or become a sustaining monthly donor of East County Magazine at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate.
LAKESIDE FIRE PANCAKE BREAKFAST JUNE 28
East County News Services June 27, 2025 (Lakeside) — The Lakeside Firefighters are hosting a $5 pancake breakfast on Saturday, June 28 at Lakeside Fire Station 2. The breakfast of pancakes as well as sausage, eggs, orange juice and coffee, will be served from 8 a.m. until noon at the station at 12216 Lakeside Ave. At the event, there will be games and opportunity drawings as well as fire engines on display. Station tours will be given and there will be an opportunity to learn CPR.
GUHSD BOARD FACES MULTIPLE LITIGATION THREATS
Curriculum changes, lack of transparency, and allegations of white supremacy against Mt. Miguel teacher among hot button issues raised Eckert Screenshots: Left to Right — GEA President James Messina and Jason Balistreri, a teacher-librarian, take aim at the governing board for a lack of transparency and trust. By Alexander J Schorr June 26, 2025 (El Cajon) —The Grossmont Union High School District Governing Board convened for a special meeting at the East County Regional Education Center on Thursday. Following the controversial firing of 49 credentialed employees, the governing board voted 4 to 1 in favor of the ratification and approval of new job descriptions for a Cybersecurity Engineer, Position Control Analyst, Voltage Technician and Licensed Mental Health Case Workers. The governing board did not provide a QR code or website link to these key positions on their board agenda page. The main source of contention from the community this time was the outrage and general lack of respect that community members voiced as a result of information that was revealed in The San Diego Union-Tribune. That article, which centered on a lack of transparency, Brown Act Violations and alleged collusion, involved the conducting of board business and policy making through private texts and emails without public record or a board majority for most of these decisions. GEA President James Messina addressed the board directly, stating that they were targeting individuals undesirable to them: “GEA has been speaking out about our plan for months now… not a single community member stakeholder group was consulted on what they thought about this whole entire plan. Now this all makes sense. Apparently the board has been meeting behind closed doors and came up with this plan yourselves. “This plan does not improve reading scores in the district — doesn’t improve graduation rates for our district — your plan for Grossmont is to target undesirable employees that you deem as ‘disloyal’ to you and have a different political position. That is ridiculous.” Matthew Norris stated that the board was “playing God with people’s careers.” He referenced the information in the Union-Tribune directly, and emphasized an uneasiness about the board’s apparent commitment to working with union members. “I know we have a new superintendent coming in, and I still don’t quite understand why it is that there is such a hurry to cut so many things, and now there is a hurry to create new positions — and you still haven’t consulted with the new superintendent,” Norris said. He put emphasis on a specific point: “The past really predicts the future, and when I see things going on during the last couple of years, man, the past isn’t looking too hot right now. I don’t have a lot of trust in the past— so I really don’t have a lot of faith in the future with you four.” Jason Balistreri, a Mount Miguel High School Teacher Librarian, voiced rage against Gary Woods, Scott Eckert (see recall flyer, left), Jim Kelly and Robert Shield directly, and accused them of bias. Balistreri warned them of future litigation. “Given this board’s now public pattern of discriminatory [and] retaliatory behavior, I anticipate quite a bit of litigation coming your way,”he said. “Good thing that the district has so many lawyers on call with such legal savvy that they led your disgraced chief of staff [to] write his own personal settlement agreement. “As described in the district’s own investigation, your appointed Chief of Staff was accused of racist conduct, calling students the n-word, and threatening to send them back to Africa. Yet this board waives standard hiring practices, [denied] other applicants, and handed him a top leadership position — because that seems to be your type of meritocracy when it comes to appointments.” In addition to the suggestion by community members to rescind the cuts in order to avoid future litigation, a woman named Jackie, who didn’t give her last name, voiced her opposition to “the hiring or appointment of any new positions in agenda items ‘c.’ At a time when the Grossmont Union High School District is eliminating librarians, counselors, psychologists, and even classroom teachers, this is not just a budget issue — it’s a moral one. “We’ve seen the damage these cuts can cause: fewer mental health supports, no libraries, larger class sizes— these decisions directly harm students, and now, instead of restoring these vital roles, you’re considering adding new positions? That’s not leadership, that’s misplaced priorities.” Tania Jackson, a librarian, warned the board of a specific litigation facing them in the future, over the possible and controversial usage of a new Ethnic Studies Curriculum. Jackson stated that the subject “proposed by Dr. Woods from the Independent Institute is aimed at 11th and 12th grade students. It’s written for them — I found that on page 20 of the PDF that has the curriculum on a page called ‘Section 1-A: Support US Submission’ document— it’s on their website, [and] I found it in just a few minutes of searching. “Social standards are unique by grade level in California. 9th grade standards are not the same 11th or 12th grade standards, and if it were to implement standards-based curriculum, we should go with one that was already created using the aappropriate age or grade level standards.” Screenshot (right): Timothy Atkins being represented by an unnamed advocate in public session for a closed session item The chairman ignored the procedural rules for speaker cards in allowing an advocate for Timothy Atkins to speak for more than the allotted time of three minutes and without a speaker card. Atkins had a representative who brought before the board a description of retaliation against him by those who allegedly cost him his job at Mount Miguel High School. According to Atkins’ representative, he was allegedly accused of racism and being a white supremacist. The representative alleged that Atkins’ life has