Watch: Dramatic Twist in Sable Oil Saga; Early Line on SB Mayor's Race; Details on Anti-ICE Protest Saturday

On this week's episode, our Newsmakers TV all-star panel breaks down the latest scary developments in the fight against offshore oil and assesses the state of play for the 2026 local campaign season.

The Trump Administration has seized control of jurisdiction over the disputed pipeline at the center of Santa Barbara's relentless battle to stop another offshore oil spill from befouling local waters and beaches.

The sudden move is a bright red flashing light that spikes the chances that offshore oil transportation through Santa Barbara County will soon restart — if it hasn’t already - for the first time since the decrepit pipeline ruptured a decade ago and defiled Refugio State Beach and surrounding waters.

On a new episode of Newsmakers TV, the SB Independent’s Nick Welsh, who has followed every twist and turn of this long-running story, returns to cut through the new layers of legal and bureaucratic complexity that in recent weeks deepened the already maddeningly convoluted saga, and to explain the urgency and enormously consequential stakes of the matter.

Josh Molina, newly-minted editor of the News Press, also checks in with some early analysis of the SB mayor’s race, in the wake of scooping that City Council member Eric Friedman scrambled the contest with his entry this week, setting up a potential four-way political fracas with incumbent Randy Rowse, council colleague Kristen Sneddon and former Unified School Board president Wendy Sims-Moten.

The three amigos also kick around the upcoming City Hall showdown over rent control, and the far-reaching implications of the crusade by liberals to impose a rent freeze on properties throughout the city.

All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.

Check out Episode 539 via YouTube below or by clicking through this link. Our podcast is available on Apple, Spotify, or on Soundcloud here. TVSB, Channel 17, airs the show every weeknight at 5 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on weekends.

EMERGENCY ANTI-ICE RALLY IN SB SATURDAY 1-10-26

This just in from our indefatigable opposition friends at Indivisible SB:

INDIVISIBLE SANTA BARBARA EMERGENCY RALLY

During this past week, Indivisible Santa Barbara has been preparing for an emergency rally this coming Saturday, January 10th, in response to the military action by the U.S. in Venezuela, which culminated in the unlawful kidnapping of the Venezuelan president and his wife.

But with the horrifying murder today of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by ICE agents, we are expanding our response so that our rally is more inclusive of recent events: NO WAR! NO ICE! NO MURDERS!

Please join all of us in Indivisible Santa Barbara:

Saturday, January 10th, 10 am to noon
Upper State Street between Hope Ave and Hitchcock Ave
(one block south of La Cumbre Plaza)

to demonstrate the following principles:

• We affirm the right of individuals to peacefully protest and to lawfully observe and record the activities of federal and local law enforcement.

• We express our outrage that terrorizing actions by militarized federal agents have created danger and chaos in our communities, leading to the disappearances of community members without due process, and inevitably leading to today’s murder of a nonviolent observer by reckless agents.

• We protest the use of the U.S. military to make incursions into foreign countries and to forcibly transport individuals to the U.S. without Congressional oversight.

See you on the street for this nonviolent rally on Saturday -- bring your creative signs!

SPECIAL BONUS CONTENT

No truth to the rumor this is the genial host reviewing Nick’s reporting notes on Sable:

Lead image: Offshore oil platforms in Santa Barbara (Paul Wellman for the SB Independent).