Over the past few years, Elon Musk has expanded his footprint in Texas, moving his companies from California and building offices, warehouses and manufacturing plants across a growing number of Texas counties.
Now Mr. Musk is trying to do something that few, if any, titans of industry have done in a century: create his own company town.
Mr. Musk has long talked about his desire to make a new town — which he hopes to call Starbase — in coastal South Texas, where his rocket launch company, SpaceX, is based.
For years, the plan did not appear to be moving forward in any official way, in part because creating a new municipality in Texas requires a certain number of residents and support from a majority of voters.
But in that time, SpaceX employees have packed into newly refurbished midcentury homes and temporary housing — some of it in the form of silver Airstream trailers — in the shadow of the company’s rockets.
Then this month, company employees who live around its offices and launch site took the first major step toward incorporating a town, gathering signatures and filing an official petition to hold an election.
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By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor, from combined news sources
Los Angeles is grappling with a wildfire crisis of unprecedented scale, with multiple blazes consuming vast stretches of land, destroying homes, and leaving communities reeling. Driven by powerful Santa Ana winds, record drought conditions, and a plunging jet stream, these winter wildfires have upended expectations and sparked fears of what the future holds for climate-vulnerable regions.
The Scope of the Devastation
The fires—most notably the Pacific Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires—have collectively burned more than 30,000 acres and forced over 70,000 residents to evacuate. The Pacific Palisades Fire alone, now the most destructive in Los Angeles history, has torched 1,000 homes across 18 square miles. Meanwhile, the Eaton Fire near Pasadena has claimed two lives, injured several others, and destroyed 100 structures. Tragically, the wildfire death toll has climbed to five, with conditions worsening by the hour.
State-backed insurance plans, such as California’s FAIR Plan, offer limited reprieve but are themselves under strain. Experts warn that as disasters grow more frequent and intense, these systems could collapse under financial pressure, leaving homeowners without a safety net.
Why These Fires Escalated So Quickly
A perfect storm of conditions has fueled this week’s devastation. Hurricane-strength Santa Ana winds, gusting up to 100 mph, have spread embers with deadly efficiency. Unseasonable winter droughts, preceded by vegetation-boosting rains, left vast amounts of dry, flammable fuel in their wake. Power lines snapped by high winds added to the chaos, leaving 1.5 million customers without electricity and sparking additional blazes.
These weather patterns—amplified by climate change—underscore the increasing unpredictability of wildfire seasons. “It’s not just a fire season anymore. It’s a fire year,” one expert remarked.
An Insurance Crisis Amid the Flames
For many residents, the devastation is compounded by the lack of insurance. Pacific Palisades, which bore the brunt of insurance non-renewals last year, is emblematic of a growing crisis in climate-exposed regions. Major insurers like State Farm have increasingly withdrawn coverage, citing rising risks from wildfires and other climate-driven disasters.
In 2023, California recorded the nation’s fourth-highest rate of insurance non-renewals, with other disaster-prone states like Florida and Louisiana facing similar challenges. This “signal of market distress,” as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse described it, highlights the broader instability in housing and insurance markets as climate risks mount.
Senator Whitehouse, a vocal advocate for addressing the climate-insurance nexus, called the situation a “shock to the system” and a harbinger of a deeper crisis. His December report warned that insurance market instability could ripple into the housing market, eroding property values and triggering economic fallout akin to the 2008 financial crisis.
The solution, Whitehouse argues, lies in aggressively combating climate change. While federal programs like FEMA and state-backed insurance plans offer short-term relief, they do little to address the root causes of these disasters. Proposed legislation from Senator Ron Wyden aims to streamline federal support for disaster-resistant infrastructure, but the road to implementation is fraught with challenges.
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Federal transportation regulators are investigating about 2.6 million Tesla vehicles over a vehicle-summoning feature that failed to recognize posts or parked vehicles, leading to accidents.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had received one complaint alleging a crash when the “Actually Smart Summon” feature was enabled, and is reviewing media reports of three other incidents.
NHTSA “is aware of multiple crash allegations, involving both Smart Summon and Actually Smart Summon, where the user had too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement,” the agency said Tuesday in a notice announcing the investigation.
Tesla’s Actually Smart Summon allows vehicle owners to remotely move their vehicle using a smartphone app. It replaced the more limited Smart Summon, which was the subject of 12 separate customer complaints, NHTSA said.
NHTSA said Tesla had not reported any of the crashes despite rules requiring manufacturers to report crashes involving automated driving systems.
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President-elect Donald J. Trump is trying to expunge his conviction before he is inaugurated. He would be the first felon elected to the Oval Office.
After being indicted four times in four jurisdictions, Donald Trump leaned heavily on a strategy of delay, making a variety of appeals and other filings to run out the clock until Election Day.Credit…Dave Sanders for The New York Times
A New York appellate court on Tuesday declined to halt President-elect Donald J. Trump’s criminal sentencing, dealing a significant setback to his hopes of shutting down the case before returning to the White House.
Mr. Trump, who is scheduled to face sentencing on Friday, 10 days before being sworn in for a second presidential term, had asked the appeals court to intervene and freeze the proceeding. His lawyers argued that Mr. Trump was entitled to full immunity from prosecution, and even sentencing, now that he was the president-elect.
The emergency application fell to a single appellate court judge, Ellen Gesmer, who held a brief hearing on Tuesday before denying Mr. Trump’s request within a half-hour.
At the hearing, Justice Gesmer appeared highly skeptical of Mr. Trump’s arguments, grilling Mr. Trump’s lawyer about whether he had “any support for a notion that presidential immunity extends to president-elects?”
The lawyer, Todd Blanche, conceded that he did not, saying: “There has never been a case like this before.”
And when Mr. Blanche argued that Justice Gesmer’s decision hinged on the immunity of a sitting president, she cut him off with a correction, noting that Mr. Trump was currently the president-elect.
Yet Justice Gesmer might not have the final word. Mr. Trump can now race to federal court in hopes of staving off the sentencing, and if that fails, could ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
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Details: Bryn Coed is an expansive preserve of fields and forest which makes it a great place for winter birding. Many species of raptors including Northern Harriers, American Kestrels, Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks, and a nesting pair of Bald Eagles can be observed here in the colder months.
The slim prospect of oil rigs off the Jersey Shore is now gone.
President Joe Biden on Monday banned oil and gas drilling in federal waters along the entire Atlantic Coast, most of the Pacific Coast and parts of the Gulf of Mexico.
“My decision reflects what coastal communities, businesses, and beachgoers have known for a long time: that drilling off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs. It is not worth the risks,” Biden said in a statement Monday morning. “As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”
The ban was done through executive orders under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act. Unlike other kinds of executive orders, actions taken under this law have proven to be resilient to changes by future administrations. Former President Barack Obama issued more targeted offshore drilling bans under the same law at the end of his time in office. Donald Trump tried to roll back the Obama order during his first term but was blocked by federal courts.
The legal precedent is critical as Trump is set to return to office this month. Trump has pledged to expand American oil and gas production during his second term, all while the nation is already producing record amounts of both under Biden. If Trump wants to overturn the new ban, he will need Congress to pass legislation doing so.
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BRYN COED PRESERVE, 19426