By Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom, for ProPublica
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 automotive dealership foyer and promote his electrical autos on to the general public.
He painted a bleak image of what might occur in the event that they didn’t give him his means.
“We might, I’m afraid, we’d fail,” Musk informed the assembled representatives. “So for us, it’s a matter of life or loss of life.”
Clad in a darkish go well with as an alternative of his now ubiquitous black T-shirt and baseball hat, the youthful Musk was unable to steer lawmakers in Austin. That 12 months, the invoice he needed to go died.
Greater than a decade later, nevertheless, Musk’s fortunes contained in the Texas Capitol have modified — dramatically.
Musk is not solely one of many richest individuals on this planet, who, till just lately, was a key member of President Donald Trump’s second administration, however he’s additionally change into some of the highly effective enterprise and political figures within the state.
Throughout this 12 months’s legislative session, Musk’s lobbyists and representatives publicly advocated for nearly a dozen payments that might profit his corporations. The Texas Newsroom recognized these priorities by looking legislative data for committee testimony and different proof of his public stances.
Musk needed legislators to go new legal guidelines that might make it quicker and simpler for householders to set up backup energy turbines, just like the form Tesla makes, on their properties. He needed them to create new crimes so individuals who fly drones or intervene with operations at his rocket firm SpaceX may be arrested. And he needed 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 bought all of them.
In a Capitol the place the overwhelming majority of payments fail to go, all however three of Musk’s public priorities will change into regulation. The 2 payments his lobbyists brazenly opposed are useless, together with a measure that might have regulated autonomous autos.
Musk made features even on payments he didn’t publicly endorse. Texas lawmakers adopted the tech large’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 handle lawmakers in individual this session to make the case for any of his priorities.
Critics mentioned these new legal guidelines will hand Musk’s corporations more money, extra energy and extra safety from scrutiny as his enterprise footprint continues to broaden throughout Texas.
“The true hurt is the affect of a non-public firm on the selections made by authorities,” Cyrus Reed, the conservation director for the Sierra Membership’s Lone Star Chapter, informed The Texas Newsroom. The Sierra Membership is a part of a gaggle suing the state over SpaceX’s actions in South 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.
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Opposite to his slash-and-burn ways in Washington, D.C., the place he bulldozed his means onto the scene after Trump’s reelection, Musk has performed the lengthy recreation 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 large X and Tesla, at the moment are 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 residence to the state, reportedly securing properties in the Austin space and South Texas.
Within the Texas Capitol, Musk’s energy is delicate however simple.
Calendars and emails obtained by The Texas Newsroom via public data requests present his firm’s representatives met repeatedly with lawmakers backing his precedence payments and invited Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to tour SpaceX. Patrick, who leads the state Senate, additionally penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration supporting the rocket firm’s request to extend its launches in South Texas.
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.
“Even within the heyday of the [George W.] Bush period, you couldn’t discover anyone who had such dramatic wealth as Musk, who additionally had the identical stage of entry and enterprise pursuits right here in Texas,” Jones informed The Texas Newsroom. “At present, Elon Musk is arguably essentially the most highly effective and influential non-public citizen within the nation.”
“It’s All to Assist Elon”
When lawmakers convened their 2025 legislative session in January, one in every of Musk’s prime priorities was rapidly clear. He needed extra management over the space round SpaceX’s launch web site in South Texas.
Often known 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 finally take people to Mars and the guts 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 many 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 realm was cleared forward of launches, however the firm’s leaders didn’t have final management over the method.
That modified this 12 months. First, Musk determined to include the launch web site as its personal metropolis. That occurred on Might 3, when the few residents who reside within the space — most of whom The Texas Newsroom decided work for SpaceX — voted to create the brand new metropolis of Starbase.
Musk then needed state lawmakers handy the brand new metropolis the facility to shut Boca Chica Seaside and the adjoining public freeway in the course of the week, a change the county officers opposed.
State Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a newly elected Republican who represents the realm, authored the laws to shift management to Starbase. Dozens of SpaceX staff bought concerned within the effort, submitting pages of similar feedback to lawmakers in help.
Democrats succeeded in killing Hinojosa’s invoice, prompting native activists to have a good time. Their victory was short-lived. Late within the session, lawmakers determined as an alternative to shift a few of this energy to the Texas House Fee, which facilitates the state’s area 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 in which I view it’s SpaceX needed a certain quantity of energy,” mentioned Reed, with the Sierra Membership. “And on the finish of the day, they didn’t fairly get it, however they bought one thing fairly shut.”
The invoice handed alongside largely partisan traces. Republican state Rep. Greg Bonnen, who authored the invoice, didn’t reply to a request for remark concerning the position Starbase could play now that it’s going to change into regulation.
Lawmakers handed a number of extra payments to profit spaceports, the websites the place spacecraft launch, like SpaceX.
Whereas Texas is residence 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 writer 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 “vital infrastructure” amenities, which already embrace airports and navy 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. Comparable vital infrastructure legal guidelines have been utilized in different states to arrest individuals protesting oil and fuel pipeline tasks.
Bekah Hinojosa with the South Texas Environmental Justice Community, a neighborhood activist group, informed The Texas Newsroom the brand new vital infrastructure regulation will let Musk “militarize our Boca Chica Seaside for his harmful rocket testing endeavors.”
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.
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The Normal Land Workplace, the primary defendant in that go well with, declined to remark. In court docket 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 can defend corporations like SpaceX from public scrutiny and authorized challenges.
One will exempt sure navy 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 in opposition to it.
This regulation went into impact on Might 15.
One other new regulation will make it tougher for crew members and sure different staff to sue area flight corporations. This, like most new laws authorized this session, will change into 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 present 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 Funds 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 assist 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 considerations 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 entire cloak of secrecy with no matter Elon is doing,” Jah mentioned. “We won’t and mustn’t stop to launch satellites or discover area. However the best way by which we do it issues rather a lot.”
“They By no means Come Out of the Shadows”
This 12 months, Tesla’s lobbyists publicly advocated in opposition to 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 type Tesla sells.
The opposite invoice would have imposed extra rules on the kind of vehicles 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 writer Rep. Terry Canales, an Edinburg Democrat, believes his laws failed as a result of it was not pro-industry sufficient.
“Tesla is the worst actor that I’ve ever handled within the Capitol. They’re subversive. They by no means come out of the shadows,” Canales informed The Texas Newsroom. “Not solely did I not hear from them, I didn’t anticipate to listen to from them as a result of that’s the best way they function.”
Lawmakers as an alternative superior a special invoice, one with a lighter regulatory contact that was crafted with enter from the autonomous automobile {industry}.
It would require industrial operators, similar to robotaxi and driverless large rig corporations, to acquire authorization from the state. This approval may be revoked if the corporate’s autos endanger the general public, together with inflicting “critical bodily harm,” although it requires no public hearings within the case of a fatality, as Canales’ invoice would have carried out. Autonomous automobile corporations may even should develop plans for interacting with emergency responders.
Tesla took a impartial stance on the laws. However the invoice’s writer, state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, informed The Texas Newsroom that Tesla’s workforce participated in work teams and stakeholder conversations with {industry} teams, trial legal professionals and others.
Texas has been on the forefront of testing this know-how for years, rolling out its first rules 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 “an actual alternative right here to truly enhance security.”
Nichols’ laws initially died within the Texas Home. However with lower than per week earlier than lawmakers packed as much as go residence, a Home member added the whole lot of Nichols’ invoice as an modification to one other transportation invoice, which can change into regulation Sept. 1.
Tray Gober, a private harm lawyer who handles automobile crash circumstances in Austin, mentioned it’s good to get new rules for autonomous autos on the books. However he worries that Texas is dashing to present its blessing to a know-how that has not been absolutely examined.
“We’re not speaking about rockets crashing into the ocean. We’re speaking about vehicles crashing into different individuals,” he mentioned, evaluating Tesla to SpaceX. “There’s going to be individuals which might be damage throughout this means of enhancing these programs, and that’s unlucky. I believe it’s seen as collateral harm by these corporations.”
When requested about considerations that there could possibly be fatalities because the variety of driverless vehicles grows in Texas, Nichols mentioned, “There most likely will likely be. Finally there will likely be. I might not doubt that.” However he pointed to research displaying autonomous autos are safer than human drivers.
“In case you begin wanting on the breakdown of the fatalities on the roads and the crashes and the wrecks, what causes them? It’s not gear failure. It’s driver distraction,” he informed The Texas Newsroom.
Critics of those research argue their scope is just too slender to make conclusions concerning the security of self-driving know-how. Citing security considerations, some native lawmakers requested Tesla’s robotaxi rollout in Austin to be delayed. The corporate continued with the launch however with human screens within the passenger seats.
Many Democrats opposed Nichols’ proposal. However at the least three different payments affecting Tesla bought bipartisan help.
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At instances, the Sierra Membership was combating in opposition to Musk’s SpaceX payments whereas working along 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 handle 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, similar to the corporate’s Powerwall.
Reed mentioned Musk’s shift to the best has created attention-grabbing bedfellows, typically making it simpler for Republicans to again a few of the vitality insurance policies extra historically related to progressives.
He remarked, “It’s an attention-grabbing time in our nation, proper?”
Musk’s Oblique Affect
For all of the payments Musk pushed to see go, he additionally not directly influenced the creation of recent 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 identify an homage to Musk’s controversial federal cost-slashing effort in Washington, D.C.
Musk himself took no public position 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 considerations 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 problem after his $55 billion compensation bundle at Tesla was challenged in Delaware’s enterprise courts. Musk moved a lot of his companies elsewhere, together with Texas, and publicly urged different corporations to “get the hell out of Delaware.”
The laws written in response was dubbed the “DExit” invoice.
“Texas is a lot 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 would lose all its company enterprise.”
Final 12 months, a Delaware decide dominated Musk’s pay bundle violated his fiduciary duties to the corporate’s stockholders. He received most of it again in a shareholder vote, however the decide once more rejected his pay bundle in December.
In an interview, Hughes informed The Texas Newsroom he heard enter from totally different teams in crafting the Texas laws and couldn’t keep in mind whether or not Musk’s corporations have been concerned.
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 have been Hughes and a big group of enterprise representatives.
Standing behind Hughes was a consultant from Tesla.
