2025 was a year full of headlines. President Donald Trump began his second term in office, bringing with him a tidal wave of change. A mass deportation campaign, deep cuts to federal funding and military strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea are just some of the things that came out of Trump's second term so far.
But there were local stories too, like the San Diego city budget deficit, housing reform and a jet crash in Tierrasanta.
Read on for more of the biggest stories of 2025. If you want to test your 2025 news knowledge, take the quiz first.
🏛️ Trump – local impacts, local response
Actions taken by President Trump were felt deeply here in San Diego County. Within the first couple of days of his second term, the president, along with billionaire Elon Musk, temporarily froze federal funding to a number of programs as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, reviewed programs for promoting “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies,” and other topics caught up in the conservative “culture war.”
📝 Reporter's notebook
“It has been an absolute whirlwind. And I think we knew from the gate, from the first few days of the Trump administration part two, that we were never going to keep up with it but what we could do is pull at the most important threads. And we did that.” — Amita Sharma, KPBS Public Matters Reporter
The funding freeze would have blown a hole in San Diego County’s budget. The county is responsible for administering federal programs like housing assistance, public health initiatives and disaster relief.
Even after funding was restored, researchers at UC San Diego said their work was at risk if it contained language deemed problematic by the White House, including the word “women.“
Trump also implemented mass layoffs at several agencies, putting thousands of federal employees out of work. Here in San Diego, that hurt the region’s military economy. For the first time in years an annual report showed the defense industry's impact on the region's economy declined since 2024, with more than 16,000 fewer jobs.
In response to these and other actions taken by the Trump administration, tens of thousands of San Diegans participated in peaceful protests in 2025. The largest was the first No Kings Day protest on June 14. According to organizers' estimates, more than 60,000 people took to the streets in downtown San Diego to protest the Trump administration and similar protests were held throughout the county, from Oceanside all the way to Ramona.
🌎 Immigration
Another cornerstone of the Trump administration’s domestic agenda was a mass deportation campaign. In San Diego, the first instance of this policy in action was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at an industrial paint business near El Cajon in March. It escalated when ICE agents began arresting immigrants at their court dates in early May, and reached a boiling point later that month after ICE raided Buona Forchetta in South Park, causing a chaotic scene outside the popular Italian restaurant.
Throughout the year, we’ve been covering Trump’s mass deportation effort. Our reporting has followed the story of a German immigrant who was detained indefinitely at the border. Investigative Border Reporter Gustavo Solis spoke to experts about their concerns surrounding white nationalist imagery in ICE recruitment materials. Plus, we launched the Border Brief, a video series that breaks down the complexities of immigration in the Trump era and dives into the data of this mass deportation campaign. We found that ICE’s historic increase in detention is largely fueled by immigrants without criminal records.
We’ve also covered how local governments are responding to the federal government's actions, most notably in El Cajon. In January, Republican Mayor Bill Wells introduced a controversial resolution declaring the city’s intent to help the federal government enforce its deportation mandate. The resolution failed to secure enough votes twice, but ultimately passed with a 3-2 vote in February. Later, a KPBS investigation found surveillance data collected by the El Cajon Police Department was used in immigration-related searches more than 550 times this year. California’s sanctuary laws prevent local law enforcement from assisting federal authorities with immigration enforcement. As a result of this reporting, the California Attorney General’s office sued El Cajon.
📝 Reporter's notebook
“Anyone on social media, whether you follow these accounts or you don’t, the odds are you’ve been bombarded with the images of the ICE raids. It’s impossible to ignore these images, these videos … I think the public has a really good understanding of what these arrests look like. I don’t think they know what happens afterwards. That’s what a lot my reporting has been trying to capture now. What happens after the viral video, what happens after the arrest.” — Gustavo Solis, KPBS Investigative Border Reporter
📊 San Diego city budget
The city of San Diego makes a budget every year, and usually it’s a pretty cut and dry process. In the simplest terms, the mayor proposes a budget, makes a revision based on feedback, then works with the City Council to get their stamp of approval. But in 2025, this process involved more back and forth than usual. That’s because the city leaders had to figure out how to close a more than $300 million deficit.
📝 Reporter's notebook
“The city was forced to turn over all of the stones, find every penny of revenue that they could. It wasn’t a huge surprise to me. And the fact that it all came to a head this year was somewhat predictable because we’ve seen such high inflation and it just reached a breaking point where the city leadership couldn’t keep on papering over these budget deficits with one-time resources. They really had to confront it head on, and they still are, in fact.” — Andrew Bowen, KPBS Metro Reporter
At first, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria proposed cutting library and recreation center hours, consolidating police divisions in northern San Diego, and restructuring the city’s contract with the San Diego Humane Society for animal services. The mayor’s plan also relied on increasing fees, like parking meter rates, to close the funding gap. After pushback from the community and council members, Gloria’s revised budget restored some of those cuts, but the reduced library and recreation center hours remained. As a result, the City Council went over the mayor’s head and restored library and recreation center hours, saying charging for parking in Balboa Park would generate enough revenue to offset the costs. This set the stage for a showdown between the mayor and the City Council. Long story short, the mayor vetoed some of the City Council’s changes and then the City Council overrode those vetoes.
KPBS developed the Budget Challenge to help people understand the budget process and get an idea of what it takes to make the tough choices to balance a budget. Here’s what San Diegans chose.
🏘️ Housing
It’s been a big year for housing policy. Most notably, the city of San Diego changed policies around building accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The updates included added fees, parking requirements and restrictions in wildfire hazard areas. It also capped the number of ADUs that can be built by lot size.
The City Council also repealed a controversial footnote in city code that reduced minimum lot sizes for a certain zone of land, allowing denser housing – but only in neighborhoods in Southeastern San Diego. These neighborhoods were formerly redlined and remain majority Black and Latino and low-income. KPBS first reported on the footnote in 2024.
Plus, KPBS analyzed six years of county housing permit data and found that almost 100,000 new homes have been permitted across San Diego County since 2018. But the homes are not being spread evenly across the county. The analysis informed In Whose Backyard, a KPBS, Voice of San Diego and inewsource collaboration.
🛩️ Tierrasanta jet crash
On a foggy night in May, a private plane approaching San Diego’s Montgomery Field crashed into a Tierrasanta neighborhood near Murphy Canyon. All six people aboard the Cessna 550 jet were killed in the crash, including groundbreaking alternative music executive Dave Shapiro. The jet crashed into a military housing community, damaging homes and vehicles and displacing dozens of military families. The Military Family Resource Center for SAY San Diego, the American Red Cross, Armed Services YMCA and Support The Enlisted Project supported families in the recovery effort.
A KPBS investigation found weather instruments at Montgomery Field Airport were not functioning properly at the time of the plane crash. The weather instruments play a key role in aviation safety, the National Weather Service said. And in a preliminary report, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said runway lights that might have helped the pilot navigate the fog hadn't worked since 2022. The NTSB’s final report should be released next year.
📝 Reporter's notebook
“It felt like a movie, it felt like, it was just like nothing I’d ever seen. It was a lot to take in when we all first got there. Even though this made national news, this felt like such a San Diego story because it affected our military community” — Katie Anastas, KPBS Education Reporter
📰 This also happened
- An 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Russia set off a tsunami warning along San Diego County coasts.
- Congress rolled back $9 billion in public media funding and foreign aid. As a result, KPBS lost $4.3 million in federal funding.
- Far-right commentator and political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a Utah university event. San Diego students reacted to Kirk's death.
- Former Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre beat Chula Vista Mayor John McCann in a special election to replace former County Supervisor Nora Vargas who left the job in the middle of her term.
- California voters approved Proposition 50 which redraws the state’s congressional maps to favor Democrats. San Diego Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's district was redrawn.
- A KPBS investigation found San Diego’s highest paid city employees were police officers racking up overtime and earning over $400,000.
- A San Diego Navy doctor was fired after right-wing activists found pronouns on her social media.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on the Marine Corps to pause a contract with Oceanside-based Frontwave Credit Union. Last year a KPBS investigation found Frontwave has – for decades – benefited from an exclusive arrangement with the Marine Corps.
🎧 And the most downloaded podcast episode was …
The most downloaded episode of 2025, was “Special Report: An Unexpected Home” from “Port of Entry,” KPBS’ podcast about the border region. This episode spotlights Laura Pabon, a staff member at one of Tijuana's busiest shelters, Casa del Migrante. Laura shares her journey to Tijuana, discussing the pivotal moments that inspired her to help migrants and how she assists new arrivals in finding a new home.
Listen here: Special Report: An Unexpected Home
💭 Final thoughts from The Catch-Up producer
In a year when the news of the day often felt heavy and overwhelming, KPBS’ arts and culture podcast “The Finest” was an oasis. My favorite episode was the one about Lucky Wong and his legendary one-man diner in North Park. I moved to the neighborhood in 2025 and I really enjoyed learning about this North Park legend. I smile every time I walk down Lucky Wong Way.
