California's far-left governor, Gavin Newsom, has unexpectedly backed Elon Musk and SpaceX. The private spaceflight company, which handles the majority of US space launches and leads the space race in this solar system, filed a lawsuit against a California state commission early last week, accusing it of political bias. The suit alleges that Democrats are hindering SpaceX launches off the Pacific coast.
"I'm with Elon," Gov. Newsom said in an interview Thursday after campaigning for VP Kamala Harris in the swing state of North Carolina, which Politico quoted. He continued, "I didn't like that."
On Tuesday, SpaceX filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against the California Coastal Commission for alleged political discrimination.
The lawsuit stems from the California Coastal Commission's (CCC) decision to halt SpaceX's plans to increase the number of rocket launches from the Space Force base in Santa Barbara County.
SpaceX lawyers claimed that CCC made the decision based on political differences with Musk, a top supporter of Trump and anti-woke crusader on X, bashing Democrats for their nation-killing policies, such as open southern borders, lawless metro areas, out-of-control debt binge in Washington, and the list goes on and on.
The lawsuit asserts CCC's 12 members "engaged in naked political discrimination" in last week's decision over the Department of Defense (DOD) proposal to increase the number of SpaceX launches at Vandenberg from 36 to 50.
"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 lawsuit reads.
Gov. Newsom added, "Look, I'm not helping the legal case ... and you can't bring up that explicit level of politics."
Newsom sided with SpaceX in the lawsuit and pointed out that an independent agency should have been involved, politics aside, in the decision-making process for rocket launches at the base.
Newsom understands that, unlike many Democrats, SpaceX has become a critical part of national security rocket programs. In fact, Musk's rocket company is quite literally America's space program in terms of space launches and total mass catapulted into low Earth Orbit. SpaceX will even rescue Boeing's stranded crew at the International Space Station early next year.
Using data from BryceTech, SpaceX launched 525 spacecraft into orbit in the first quarter, far outpacing China and Russia.
Musk is America's rocket program: SpaceX launched about 429,125 kg of spacecraft upmass in the first quarter, significantly outpacing China's rocket program (China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation), which launched a measly 29,426 kg.
Much of this is due to SpaceX's Starlink deployment in LEO, as thousands of these satellites provide high-speed internet coverage to millions of customers worldwide.
And this.
Jonathan Turley penned in a note last week:
The left will now kill jobs, cancel national security programs and gut the Constitution in its unrelenting campaign to get Musk. His very existence undermines the power of the anti-free speech movement. In a culture of groupthink, Musk is viewed as a type of free-thought contagion that must be eliminated.
If Democrats are indeed trying to sabotage America's space program by weaponizing the government to restrict Musk and slow down rocket launches, it raises serious national security concerns. A deeper conversation must be had about whether this radical far-left party is being influenced by foreign adversaries with competing space programs—like China.