California Environmental Bureaucrats Limit SpaceX, Air Force Rocket Launches over Politics

There’s no better illustration of California’s decline to banana-republic status than this: The all-powerful California Coastal Commission has voted to deny Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force permission to increase the number of their rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara.

The rejection was clearly based on petty politics disguised by a fig leaf of regulatory concern. “We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” Chairwoman Caryl Hart lamented. Her colleague Mike Wilson ranted about Musk’s wealth and his social-media platform, X. Former union official Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor) railed against Musk for “spewing and tweeting political falsehoods.”

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John Fund

John Fund is National Review’s national-affairs reporter.

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There’s no better illustration of California’s decline to banana-republic status than this: The all-powerful California Coastal Commission has voted to deny Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force permission to increase the number of their rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara.

The rejection was clearly based on petty politics disguised by a fig leaf of regulatory concern. “We’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race,” Chairwoman Caryl Hart lamented. Her colleague Mike Wilson ranted about Musk’s wealth and his social-media platform, X. Former union official Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor) railed against Musk for “spewing and tweeting political falsehoods.”