Skip to content

SpaceX

In Texas, SpaceX’s Rocket Facility Is Blocking Public Beach Access

Boca Chica, Texas —  I’m loafing outside my tent, waiting for the coffee to boil, contemplating a morning swim. My pitbull, Shiner, is thrashing in the sand with a look of crazed joy twisting his face. Brown pelicans are cruising low over the roiling gray-green Gulf waters. That’s when a Cameron County sheriff’s deputy drives up and tells us to leave. Boca Chica Beach is now closed so Elon Musk’s company SpaceX can conduct rocket tests at its nearby launchpad, which towers over the dunes just north of our camp. Such beach closures have become frequent since SpaceX started building its Starbase facility about six years ago.

America’s Richest Men Ask The Courts To Make Unions Illegal

Fourscore and seven years ago—1937, to be exact—our fathers on the Supreme Court (well, five of them, which was just enough) brought forth a new nation: New Deal America. In that year, the justices ruled that the most fundamental legislative works of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency—Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—were constitutional. So said the Court; so said, in the NLRA case, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the decision’s author, who had been the Republican candidate for president in 1916.

NLRB Accuses SpaceX Of Illegally Firing Workers For Criticizing Elon Musk

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed a complaint against SpaceX, accusing it of unlawfully firing eight employees involved in writing a letter that called Elon Musk's behavior on social media "a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment." According to the filing, the company committed an unfair labor practice when it fired the workers for "engaging in protected concerted activity at work." It also accused SpaceX of interrogating at least one employee about the letter, as well as about the identities of their colleagues and the nature of their "concerted protected activity."

Brownsville Cops Arrest Activist For Anti-SpaceX Graffiti

Bekah Hinojosa was still in her pajamas Wednesday morning when she heard a knock on the door. Probably just FedEx, she thought, though the knock did seem a bit loud. When she peeked through her peephole, she saw a swarm of men. “Who is it?” she inquired. They were Brownsville police officers, she soon realized, there to initiate what would become a traumatic 24 hours for Hinojosa that would end in her border city’s mayor posting her mugshot and employment status on social media—all for the alleged crime of a little protest graffiti. Hinojosa, a local environmental activist with the Sierra Club and Another Gulf Is Possible, says she cracked the door open and “they just pushed themselves into my apartment … grabbed me and handcuffed me.”
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.