SAN DIEGO (AP) — Steve Hubbard was back teaching yoga in a San Diego beachfront park on Thursday, the day after a federal appeals court ruled against the California city's ban on his classes in shoreline parks and beaches.
“We’re all happy to be back,” Hubbard, who is known as “NamaSteve,” said as at least a dozen mat-toting enthusiasts wrapped up class beneath towering palm trees with a view of waves crashing onto Pacific Beach.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came after Hubbard and another instructor sued over a 2024 law that barred yoga classes in shoreline parks and beaches in San Diego for at least four or more people — a move local officials said was aimed at a range of activities to ensure that public spaces are truly available to all members of the public.
The panel found the ordinance violated the instructors' rights and that teaching yoga is “protected speech.”
San Diego is known for its picturesque beaches and bountiful sunshine and visitors flock to the city to surf, swim and spot sea lions— especially during the peak summer season.
City attorneys wrote in court filings the rule isn't specific to yoga but to commercial activity, and Hubbard's classes can draw as many as 100 people who give donations for each class ranging from $5 to $40.
“The City’s legitimate governmental interests in this case include the preservation, safety, and orderly use of its parks and beaches by all visitors and residents who visit them,” San Diego's attorneys wrote in court papers, adding that the city and county drew 32 million visitors in 2023.
A hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon to discuss the details of the appellate ruling, which calls for the ordinance to be put on hold for the instructors while their case is pending.
The San Diego city attorney’s office declined to immediately comment on the case and said in a statement it is evaluating the ruling.
Hubbard said he was cited at least ten times since the ordinance took effect for classes that he said are free since payment isn't required and anyone can attend. He said he has not yet gone to court on the citations.
Rather, outdoor yoga is a service to those who are disabled or can't afford yoga classes elsewhere, said Bryan Pease, an attorney for the two instructors.
“It is a popular thing here. We’re a beach community, and it’s a way for people to access yoga that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to,” Pease said.
Due to the ordinance, Pease said his clients began streaming classes from his backyard, which is across the street from the beachfront location. His students continued to gather to follow him online, and Pease said Hubbard was cited by a park official for running classes in the park even though he wasn't there.
At the Pacific Beach park, yoga student John Noack said he previously tried studio classes but didn't like them and relishes the exercise he gets from practicing outside with an ocean breeze.
Noack, who has attended Hubbard's classes for four years, said he thinks the group was targeted because wealthy homeowners in the area didn't want so many people in their oceanfront views.
“I personally see this as a triumph of community over a handful of elites,” Noack said.
Taxin reported from Santa Ana, Calif.
People participate in a beachfront yoga class in San Diego, California, Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Elliot Spagat)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran. Iran has installed a banner in Tehran warning the United States and Israel that their soldiers could be killed if they take military action there.
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
Demonstrations have reached over 170 locations in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Sunday. The death toll had reached at least 15 killed, it added, with more than 580 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
Now Venezuelan ally Maduro is in U.S. custody. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has condemned the “illegal U.S. attack against Venezuela." U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened the attack to the U.S. strikes in Iran last year, saying that “Maduro had his chance, just like Iran had their chance.” He added that adversaries of the U.S. should “remain on notice” that “America can project our will anywhere, anytime.”
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
