American billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX faces Texas governor-elect's call to pause land talks

Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa has asked state officials to pause land talks with Elon Musk's SpaceX over Boca Chica State Park, the coastal park that surrounds much of the rocket maker's Starbase launch site in South Texas.

Hinojosa, a Democrat who defeated Gov. Greg Abbott in Tuesday's election, asked the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department this week to hold off on any action involving the Boca Chica land. She takes office in January.

The park covers more than 1,055 acres of beach and coastal habitat in Cameron County, on the Gulf Coast near the Mexican border. In October, reports emerged that the parks commission planned to discuss selling about 1,300 acres of public land in the county, including the park, during a closed-door session of its Nov. 5 meeting. SpaceX was reported to be the likely buyer.

A disputed sale

The department has said the commission "is not considering the sale of the Boca Chica property at its November meeting." A discussion of the "disposition" of Cameron County land appeared on a draft agenda but was dropped from the final one, and the agency has asked the Texas attorney general to let it keep the draft private. Any sale would need a final vote by the commission in an open session.

Abbott said on Oct. 19 that a sale was "not coming up for a vote anytime soon" and that he knew little about the details. Hinojosa used the issue in the final weeks of the campaign. "Texas is not for sale," she said, accusing Abbott of "handing over our land to the world's only trillionaire."

She also sued Abbott in October to obtain his private communications with Musk, and a judge on Oct. 27 ordered the governor to stop blocking her from seeing them. Her campaign said Musk had given Abbott $5.5 million this election cycle, making him the governor's largest donor.

SpaceX has spent years expanding around Boca Chica, where it chose to build its Starship test and launch site in 2014. In 2024 the parks commission approved a swap that would have given SpaceX 43 acres of the park in exchange for 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, but the company later pulled out. In September, a federal judge declined to block a separate swap in which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will give SpaceX 715 acres of refuge land for 683 acres of private land. Starbase, which became a city in 2025, has annexed more than 7,100 acres, much of it covering the park, though annexation does not change who owns the land.

Pressure on Musk's companies

The change of power in Austin adds to a difficult week for Musk. Hinojosa has also pledged a statewide moratorium on new data center construction, a threat to plans by Tesla and SpaceX for a $100 billion chip plant in the state. Musk gave more than $445 million to Republican causes this cycle, about $225 million of it in Texas races.

Musk, 55, is chief executive officer of Tesla and SpaceX and the world's richest person. Most of his fortune comes from his stakes in the two companies.