Here are your headlines for the morning of Tuesday, January 27th, 2026:

It has been about a year since a fire burned the battery plant at Moss Landing in Monterey county. While the fire prompted many residents to move away from homes surrounding the plant, the government’s stance on the aftermath of the fire is that it left no significant environmental impact. Locals are still challenging that narrative.
In the wake of federal immigration agents killing another person in Minneapolis, Minnesota, over the weekend, California lawmakers are moving to place further limits on how these agents can operate and maneuver in the state.

Personal Accounts Clash With Government Stance on Fire’s Aftermath

On the afternoon of Jan. 16, 2025, the Vistra battery plant in Moss Landing erupted in flames. This was the third time in less than four years that Vistra’s fire suppression system had failed.

But, in contrast to the earlier incidents—in 2021 and 2022—this time, a massive fire broke out, pumping thick, black smoke into the air.

“As soon as I opened the door, I got hit with burnt plastic,” said Sherry Okamoto, a resident of Royal Oaks, when KAZU spoke with her in February.

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The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office issued evacuation orders for about 1,200 Moss Landing residents on the evening of Jan. 16. Those orders were lifted a few days later, once the fire subsided.

At a press briefing two days into the fire, Olivia Trombadore of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said air quality monitoring did not show dangerous levels of particulate matter or hydrogen fluoride.

“We have not seen any levels of these two contaminants that would pose a risk to the public,” she said.

The EPA’s air monitoring, as well as the air sampling performed by Vistra’s consultant CTEH, which tested for specific metals, only occurred in the immediate vicinity of the battery plant. That’s because the locations were chosen based on a model of the fire’s soot plume that only stretched up to a few thousand feet from the plant.

In a Monterey County health survey that was open from Feb. 19 to Mar. 16, 1,275 responders reported experiencing at least one symptom after the fire. The reported symptoms include headaches, itchy eyes, shortness of breath, and even the lingering taste of metal. Most of the respondents lived well beyond the soot plume modeling area.

“We abandoned our house 12 days after the fire,” said local resident Brian Roeder, who spoke to KAZU in December.

Roeder and his family decided to leave Prunedale, about 8 miles east of the battery plant, after Roeder’s wife started feeling sick. Soon after, Roeder and several other community members started a group called Never Again Moss Landing (NAML).

“We want to know what happened to people, to the environment, to the animals,” Roeder said.

These questions have been top of mind for many Monterey County residents over the past year. But for the most part, we still don’t know the answers.

California Lawmakers Move to Limit Federal Immigration Activity After Minnesota Killings

Outrage is circulating throughout Sacramento, as lawmakers in the state Assembly and Senate are condemning the actions of agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection–after a federal immigration agent killed 37-year-old Veteran Affairs ICU Nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, over the weekend.

California Assembly Speaker, Robert Rivas, headed a rally at the Capitol on Monday, calling on Democratic lawmakers across the country to start standing against the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.

Rivas also called masked ICE and CBP agents a rogue force that is ignoring basic human rights.

On the legislative front, Democratic Assemblymember, Jesse Gabriel, is drafting a bill that would ban ICE and CBP from using state property to stage immigration operations.

A CBP agent shot and killed Pretti on Saturday, making him the second American citizen that has died and the hands of federal immigration agents in Minneapolis this month. An ICE agent killed Renee Good on January 6th. An off-duty ICE agent also shot and killed Keith Porter in Northridge, California, on New Year’s Eve.

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Residents Challenge Official Response A Year After Moss Landing Battery Plant Fire