The California Coastal Commission voted 6-4 last week to oppose Musk’s plans to launch as many as 50 SpaceX rockets a year from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County. Musk’s response was to take the agency to court, which he did Tuesday, claiming in a lawsuit that it “egregiously and unlawfully” overreached its authority, and was “engaged in naked political discrimination against” SpaceX.
“Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO.”
The suit also complains “the Commission is trying to unlawfully regulate space launch programs – which are critical to national security and other national policy objectives – at Vandenberg.”
Officially, the launches were rejected “over concerns that all SpaceX launches would be considered military activity, shielding the company from having to acquire its own permits, even if military payloads aren’t being carried,” reports Politico.
The real reason, though, is Musk’s evolving politics and his refusal to play California’s woke-DEI game. His defiance and independence triggered six members of the Coastal Commission to vote against California’s best interests.
For instance, Commissioner Mike Wilson grumbled that SpaceX “is owned by the richest person in the world” who has “direct control of what could be the most expansive communications system in the planet” and “just last week” “was talking about political retribution.”
Alternate Commissioner Gretchen Newsom was also enraged, grousing that “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”
Newsom, a union government affairs representative, was also critical of SpaceX labor policies.
“Attacking FEMA,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a curious accusation. While Musk has the right – for now, anyway – to criticize FEMA’s performance, he also might have a point. He has had a man on the ground, a SpaceX engineer, who’s said FEMA was “actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services” during the response to Hurricane Helene.
“It’s very real and scary how much they (FEMA) have taken control to stop people helping,” the engineer tweeted.
All the right people in Washington have denied that FEMA botched its hurricane responses. But whatever the facts, they are unrelated to rocket launches in California.
And let’s not pretend that the hurricane relief controversy is Musk’s only sin. He’s also supporting the wrong candidate for president. Musk has aligned himself with Donald Trump, whose standing with the California ruling class is roughly equal to that of not-at-all-dearly-departed Charles Manson.
“We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” said Commissioner Chair Caryl Hart, who must want us to believe that if Musk had instead endorsed Trump’s opponent the reaction would have been the same.
Before joining Trump, Musk announced he was moving his SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas, where Musk relocated his Tesla headquarters in 2021 after nearly two decades in Silicon Valley.
Musk’s disenchantment with California can be traced back at least to 2020, when Gov. Gavin Newsom and other government officials shut down the state during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a conference call made with financial analysts after he was unable to keep the Alameda County Tesla factory open, he called the lockdown orders “an outrage.”
“I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes against all of their constitutional rights,” he said. “This is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom.”
Apparently he could no longer take California after a bill that bars schools from disclosing “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person without the pupil’s consent” became law in July. Under this policy, a child can claim a different gender at school and the parents would never know.
“This is the final straw,” Must wrote on X. “Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.”
Musk also said he had previously made “it clear to” Newsom “that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”
It becomes more obvious every day that the majority of California officials would rather rigidly stick to their progressive political agenda than to keep companies, jobs and residents in the state.
Meanwhile, SpaceX – should Musk rename it SpaceTex? – has become an essential component of national defense and intelligence.
“Elon Musk is working miracles with rockets,” says the New York Post editorial board. The company made history yet again on Sunday when it caught a rocket booster returning to Earth with mechanical arms on a tower. “I would never bet against Elon,” says entrepreneur and former Musk partner Peter Thiel.
Shouldn’t California want to be a part of this? It seems, however, that the ruling class has other priorities.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
(Photo credit: Steve Jervetson)
