There was no specific threat made against the Islamic Center of San Diego but authorities found evidence that the suspects engaged in “generalized hate rhetoric,” Wahl said. He declined to immediately share more details. The mosque’s director, Imam Taha Hassane, said the center focused on interfaith relations, and that a group of non-Muslims had been touring the mosque earlier Monday to learn about Islam. The white mosque is surrounded by homes, apartments and strip malls with Middle Eastern restaurants and markets. It is home to the Al Rashid School, which offers courses in Arabic language, Islamic studies and the Quran for students ages 5 and up, according to its website. No students were harmed, Hassane said, and aerial TV footage showed the school children holding hands as they were led out of the parking lot surrounded by police vehicles.
PG&E spends millions against Tom Steyer. What’s behind the clash?
Tom Steyer is smashing self-funding records with an unprecedented $193 million poured into his own campaign as he tries to advance past California’s wide-open primary for governor.
The race’s second-largest donor is trying to prevent that from happening. PG&E, the Oakland-based utility giant, has shelled out more than $12 million to oppose the Democratic investor, a historic level of spending for the utility in a governor’s race.
The campaign to sink Steyer’s chances (and recently, boost former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra), whose ads target Steyer’s career as a hedge-fund manager, reasons that an investor with no government experience is ill-suited to manage the difficult tradeoffs that come with the state’s top job. But central to the conflict between the progressive billionaire and the power behemoth, experts say, is Steyer’s ambitious plan to cut electricity bills. That platform is built on a pledge to wield the governor’s power over appointments to install regulators who will reduce the utilities’ guaranteed profits. “That is a material threat to utility investors,” said Michael Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University.
Few areas offer as vexing a challenge for the governor as the oversight of investor-owned utilities in the midst of California’s energy transition away from fossil fuels. Outside observers are divided over the impact that Steyer could have in a policy area that has thwarted the ambitions (and even careers) of previous governors. But Steyer is relishing the clash, arguing that the utility’s big-dollar effort to stop him is proof of the power it holds — and the change he vows to bring. He has cast the state’s three investor-owned utilities — PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — as bogeymen standing in the way of a more affordable life in California. “I’ve said that we are going to regulate them differently and introduce local competition,” Steyer told KQED. “And they clearly think it’s worth $10 million as a bet to try and defeat me because they want to preserve their monopoly. I think that’s corrupt.”
Californians pay the second-highest electricity rates in the country after Hawaii, and those rates have grown much faster than the national average this decade. At the heart of the price spike are wildfire-related costs that the utilities have passed along in part to customers. In response, Steyer is proposing to appoint reform-minded regulators to oversee the utilities. He promises that those appointees will cut utility profits, more closely examine the cost-effectiveness of wildfire spending and promote small-scale power generation, such as rooftop solar and microgrids.
PG&E has emerged as the top anti-Steyer spender in the closing weeks ahead of the June 2 primary. The utility has contributed $12.6 million to a committee named Californians for Resilient and Affordable Energy, No on Steyer for Governor 2026. That committee has sent $12.5 million to an anti-Steyer independent expenditure committee, called California is Not for Sale.
Steyer’s campaign filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission earlier this month, arguing that PG&E is deliberately obscuring its role as the top funder of the ads by donating to the Resilient and Affordable Energy group instead of directly to California is Not for Sale. PG&E referred a request for an interview for this story to a spokesperson for the super PAC. California is Not for Sale spokesperson Amelia Matier said the group’s spending is not being driven by PG&E — or by opposition to any specific proposal from Steyer. “This is bigger than any one policy,” she said.
