Elon Musk was pleading.
It was April 2013, and Musk stood at a podium in a small committee room within the basement of the Texas Capitol. The Tesla CEO requested the legislators gathered earlier than him to vary state regulation, permitting him to bypass the state’s highly effective automobile dealership foyer and promote his electrical autos on to the general public.
He painted a bleak image of what may occur in the event that they didn’t give him his method.
“We would, I’m afraid, we would fail,” Musk advised the assembled representatives. “So for us, it’s a matter of life or death.”
Clad in a darkish swimsuit as a substitute of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the youthful Musk was unable to influence lawmakers in Austin. That 12 months, the invoice he wished to cross died.
Greater than a decade later, nonetheless, Musk’s fortunes contained in the Texas Capitol have modified — dramatically.
Musk is no longer solely one of many richest individuals on the planet, who, till just lately, was a key member of President Donald Trump’s second administration, however he’s additionally grow to be one of the crucial highly effective enterprise and political figures within the state.
Donald Trump listens to Elon Musk at a Nov. 2024 SpaceX rocket launch from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas.
Musk wished legislators to cross new legal guidelines that might make it sooner and simpler for householders to set up backup energy turbines, just like the form Tesla makes, on their properties. He wished them to create new crimes so individuals who fly drones or intervene with operations at his rocket firm SpaceX might be arrested. And he wished to vary who managed the freeway and public seashore close to SpaceX’s South Texas web site so he can launch his rockets in keeping with his timeline.
Musk obtained all of them.
In a Capitol the place the overwhelming majority of payments fail to cross, all however three of Musk’s public priorities will grow to be regulation. The 2 payments his lobbyists overtly opposed are useless, together with a measure that might have regulated autonomous autos.
Musk made good points even on payments he didn’t publicly endorse. Texas lawmakers adopted the tech big’s lead by rewriting the state’s company legal guidelines and creating a brand new workplace modeled after the Division of Authorities Effectivity, the controversial effort he led within the Trump administration to chop federal spending.
By all accounts, Musk’s affect was nice sufficient that he didn’t should formally tackle lawmakers in individual this session to make the case for any of his priorities.
Critics mentioned these new legal guidelines will hand Musk’s firms extra cash, extra energy and extra safety from scrutiny as his enterprise footprint continues to increase throughout Texas.
Musk and his representatives didn’t reply to requests for an interview. He just lately ended his run with DOGE, and his relationship with Trump has more and more frayed.
Associated | ‘The girls’ renew their feud as Trump considers deporting Musk
Opposite to his slash-and-burn techniques in Washington, D.C., the place he bulldozed his method onto the scene after Trump’s reelection, Musk has performed the lengthy sport to amass energy in Texas. He nonetheless hasn’t succeeded in altering Texas regulation to permit for Tesla direct gross sales, however that hasn’t stopped him from steadily investing his private {and professional} capital within the state over greater than a decade. Most of his companies, together with the tunneling agency The Boring Firm, social media big X and Tesla, are actually headquartered right here. Whereas it’s nonetheless based mostly in California, SpaceX operates manufacturing, testing and launch websites throughout Texas.
Musk has additionally moved his private house to the state, reportedly securing properties in the Austin space and South Texas.
Within the Texas Capitol, Musk’s energy is refined however plain.
Texas politics, with its lengthy historical past of outsize characters, has by no means seen the likes of Musk, mentioned Rice College political scientist Mark Jones.
“It’s All to Help Elon”
When lawmakers convened their 2025 legislative session in January, certainly one of Musk’s prime priorities was rapidly clear. He wished extra management over the space round SpaceX’s launch web site in South Texas.
Referred to as Starbase, the huge rocket testing and launch facility has come to dominate the small rural space between Brownsville, on the border, and the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the launch web site for Starship, the rocket meant to ultimately take people to Mars and the center of Musk’s mission to make people a multiplanetary species. The FAA just lately gave SpaceX permission to enhance Starship launches fivefold.
Though SpaceX owns a lot of the land round Starbase, county officers retained the authority over entry to the adjoining public seashore, known as Boca Chica. The county labored carefully with SpaceX to make sure the world was cleared forward of launches, however the firm’s leaders didn’t have final management over the method.
Musk then wished state lawmakers at hand the brand new metropolis the facility to shut Boca Chica Seashore and the adjoining public freeway through the week, a change the county officers opposed.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a newly elected Republican who represents the world, authored the laws to shift management to Starbase. Dozens of SpaceX workers obtained concerned within the effort, submitting pages of equivalent feedback to lawmakers in help.
Democrats succeeded in killing Hinojosa’s invoice, prompting native activists to rejoice. Their victory was short-lived. Late within the session, lawmakers determined as a substitute to shift a few of this energy to the Texas House Fee, which facilitates the state’s house exploration agenda.
The brand new regulation states that the fee’s board can shut highways and gulf seashores with the approval of a neighborhood municipality, which, on this case, is Starbase. SpaceX retains a connection to the fee itself: Kathy Lueders, who confirmed that she left her job as Starbase common supervisor final month, nonetheless sits on the House Fee board. She directed extra inquiries to the fee.
The House Fee declined to reply questions on SpaceX’s potential future involvement with these discussions.
“The way I view it is SpaceX wanted a certain amount of power,” mentioned Reed, with the Sierra Membership. “And at the end of the day, they didn’t quite get it, but they got something pretty close.”
The invoice handed alongside largely partisan strains. Republican state Rep. Greg Bonnen, who authored the invoice, didn’t reply to a request for remark concerning the function Starbase might play now that it’s going to grow to be regulation.
Elon Musk and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Sept. 2014 on the SpaceX groundbreaking ceremony in Boca Chica.
Lawmakers handed a number of extra payments to profit spaceports, the websites the place spacecraft launch, like SpaceX.
Whereas Texas is house to a number of spaceports, together with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, SpaceX dwarfs the remainder in dimension and scope of affect throughout the state and nation, boasting massive federal authorities contracts and a rising satellite tv for pc {industry}.
Hinojosa was an creator or sponsor on most of those payments; he didn’t reply to a number of requests for an interview or remark for this story.
Aside from the seashore closure laws, many handed with the help of Democrats.
At SpaceX’s urging, Texas lawmakers handed a measure to ban drones over spaceports. Additionally they added spaceports to the state’s “critical infrastructure” amenities, which already embody airports and army bases. The regulation will make it a felony to deliberately harm or interrupt the operation of any web site the place a spacecraft is examined or launched. Related crucial infrastructure legal guidelines have been utilized in different states to arrest individuals protesting oil and gasoline pipeline initiatives.
The Sierra Membership and different teams from South Texas, together with a neighborhood Indigenous tribe, are suing the state, arguing that closing Boca Chica violates an modification to the Texas Structure that protects entry to public seashores.
Associated | Inside Elon Musk’s creepy quest to construct utopian ‘firm cities’
The Normal Land Workplace, the principle defendant in that swimsuit, declined to remark. In courtroom filings, Texas Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton argues the state can nonetheless regulate seashore entry for public security causes and that it can’t be sued on this case as a result of it has immunity. The case is pending on the Texas Supreme Court docket.
Legislators additionally handed two extra new legal guidelines that may protect firms like SpaceX from public scrutiny and authorized challenges.
One will exempt sure army and aerospace points from public conferences legal guidelines, permitting elected officers in some circumstances to debate these subjects behind closed doorways. The proposal was so regarding to residents who reside near SpaceX’s facility close to Waco, the place locals say the corporate’s rocket testing has spooked livestock and broken houses, that they submitted a dozen feedback towards it.
This regulation went into impact on Might 15.
One other new regulation will make it tougher for crew members and sure different workers to sue house flight firms. This, like most new laws authorised this session, will grow to be regulation on Sept. 1.
SpaceX’s solely vital public defeat throughout this 12 months’s legislative session was the failure of a invoice it supported to offer spaceports a tax lower. The measure would have value practically $14.5 million over 5 years, in keeping with an official estimate from the Legislative Price range Board.
Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics on the College of Texas at Austin, believes Texas is pandering to Musk.
“It’s all to help Elon,” mentioned Jah, who added that his viewpoint is rooted in resisting insurance policies that allow what he known as “environmental plunder masked as ‘innovation.’” He has issues that the state is investing in spaceports, most notably Musk’s, whereas carving out exceptions that prohibit public perception and enter into what’s occurring at these amenities.
“There’s this whole cloak of secrecy with whatever Elon is doing,” Jah mentioned. “We will not and should not cease to launch satellites or explore space. But the way in which we do it matters a lot.”
“They Never Come Out of the Shadows”
This 12 months, Tesla’s lobbyists publicly advocated towards solely two payments. Each died.
One was a GOP-authored proposal meant to create a buffer zone between houses and large-scale vitality storage amenities like the sort Tesla sells.
The opposite invoice would have imposed extra laws on the kind of automobiles that Musk is rolling out as robotaxis in Texas, and would have required a public listening to if a collision involving an autonomous automobile resulted in a fatality.
Invoice creator Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat, believes his laws failed as a result of it was not pro-industry sufficient.
Lawmakers as a substitute superior a distinct invoice, one with a lighter regulatory contact that was crafted with enter from the autonomous automobile {industry}.
It’ll require business operators, reminiscent of robotaxi and driverless massive rig firms, to acquire authorization from the state. This approval might be revoked if the corporate’s autos endanger the general public, together with inflicting “serious bodily injury,” although it requires no public hearings within the case of a fatality, as Canales’ invoice would have performed. Autonomous automobile firms will even should develop plans for interacting with emergency responders.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk converse to reporters close to a crimson Mannequin S Tesla automobile on the South Garden of the White Home on March 11.
Texas has been on the forefront of testing this know-how for years, rolling out its first laws in 2017. However with extra autonomous autos hitting the streets, Nichols mentioned it was time to make clear the foundations and known as his invoice “a real opportunity here to actually improve safety.”
Nichols’ laws initially died within the Texas Home. However with lower than every week earlier than lawmakers packed as much as go house, a Home member added the whole lot of Nichols’ invoice as an modification to one other transportation invoice, which can grow to be regulation Sept. 1.
Tray Gober, a private harm lawyer who handles automobile crash circumstances in Austin, mentioned it’s good to get new laws for autonomous autos on the books. However he worries that Texas is dashing to offer its blessing to a know-how that has not been totally examined.
“We’re not talking about rockets crashing into the ocean. We’re talking about cars crashing into other people,” he mentioned, evaluating Tesla to SpaceX. “There’s going to be people that are hurt during this process of improving these systems, and that’s unfortunate. I think it’s viewed as collateral damage by these companies.”
When requested about issues that there might be fatalities because the variety of driverless automobiles grows in Texas, Nichols mentioned, “There probably will be. Eventually there will be. I would not doubt that.” However he pointed to research displaying autonomous autos are safer than human drivers.
Critics of those research argue their scope is simply too slender to make conclusions concerning the security of self-driving know-how. Citing security issues, some native lawmakers requested Tesla’s robotaxi rollout in Austin to be delayed. The corporate continued with the launch however with human displays within the passenger seats.
Many Democrats opposed Nichols’ proposal. However no less than three different payments affecting Tesla obtained bipartisan help.
Associated | Tesla gross sales plunge once more as anti-Musk boycott reveals endurance and rivals pounce
At instances, the Sierra Membership was preventing towards Musk’s SpaceX payments whereas working together with his Tesla lobbyists on clear vitality laws, mentioned Reed, the membership’s conservation director. For instance, Tesla and the Sierra Membership each supported laws to create new hearth requirements for battery vitality storage amenities and tackle the environmental and monetary challenges related to decommissioning them.
Tesla additionally backed a invoice that had bipartisan help to make it simpler for householders to put in backup energy turbines, reminiscent of the corporate’s Powerwall.
Reed mentioned Musk’s shift to the correct has created fascinating bedfellows, generally making it simpler for Republicans to again a few of the vitality insurance policies extra historically related to progressives.
He remarked, “It’s an interesting time in our country, right?”
Musk’s Oblique Affect
For all of the payments Musk pushed to see cross, he additionally not directly influenced the creation of latest legal guidelines on which he didn’t take a public stance.
Texas lawmakers created the state’s personal DOGE workplace housed below the governor, the title an homage to Musk’s controversial federal cost-slashing effort in Washington, D.C.
Musk himself took no public function in creating the brand new workplace. However at a signing ceremony for the invoice, Gov. Greg Abbott defined he was the inspiration.
Texas legislators additionally rewrote the state’s company legal guidelines after Musk raised issues about enterprise codes in different states. Authored by Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the rewrite shields enterprise leaders from lawsuits and establishes thresholds for the varieties of authorized challenges shareholders can file.
Musk and his lobbyists by no means got here out in help of the invoice, however he has lengthy complained that states wanted to shore up protections for CEOs and different enterprise leaders.
Musk started crusading on the difficulty after his $55 billion compensation package deal at Tesla was challenged in Delaware’s enterprise courts. Musk moved a lot of his companies elsewhere, together with Texas, and publicly urged different firms to “get the hell out of Delaware.”
The laws written in response was dubbed the “DExit” invoice.
“Texas is much better than Delaware,” Musk posted on X in early April, simply days after the invoice handed the state Senate. “If Delaware doesn’t reform, it will lose all its corporate business.”
Final 12 months, a Delaware choose dominated Musk’s pay package deal violated his fiduciary duties to the corporate’s stockholders. He gained most of it again in a shareholder vote, however the choose once more rejected his pay package deal in December.
Abbott signed the DExit invoice and a handful of different enterprise payments into regulation on Might 14. Standing behind him at a public ceremony marking the event had been Hughes and a big group of enterprise representatives.
Standing behind Hughes was a consultant from Tesla.
Marketing campaign Motion
