Newsom on SpaceX rejection: ‘I’m with Elon’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s side against his own state’s regulators.
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing Elon Musk in the billionaire’s dispute with a California agency that rejected a plan to increase SpaceX’s rocket launches off the Pacific coast.
“I’m with Elon,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in an interview late Thursday, after campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in the battleground state of North Carolina. “I didn’t like that.”
Musk sued the California Coastal Commission on Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles, alleging it “engaged in naked political discrimination” when commissioners cited his support for former President Donald Trump in rejecting a Department of Defense proposal to expand the number of SpaceX launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base.
“Look, I’m not helping the legal case,” Newsom acknowledged. He added, “You can’t bring up that explicit level of politics.”