I’m writing you from Phoenix, Arizona, but much of what comes below was written in Port Isabel, Texas, and Tokyo, Japan. A decade ago I would’ve never assumed a link between the two latter cities would develop. But when I was walking through the wetlands surrounding the edges of Brownsville and Port Isabel a few weeks ago, I wasn’t thinking of Rio Grande LNG metastasizing by the day. Nor was I thinking of Brownsville’s wedded political and business leaders.

I wasn’t even thinking about the lobbyists paid to convince these decisionmakers that they were getting the deal of the century with LNG plants and their networks of pipelines and piers. I was thinking of skyscrapers in Maranouchi, Tokyo, and the people inside them, who spent every day ensuring a parade of mega tankers filled with liquified natural gas (LNG) would depart South Texas in the next few years.

Then I thought of what else was to come, what is working in the background only the Brownsville economic development corporations know, the projects they hope to attach their names to forever in a history already constructed in their image. Then I thought about what was already here. NextDecade, the Houston-based parent company of Rio Grande LNG, is required to start operating next year. In line with every other LNG facility in the gulf coast, they’re already trying to expand their project, despite not having produced anything yet. Texas LNG, owned by Houston-based Glenfarne and right next to the Rio Grande LNG project, is hoping to get the financing for its facility this year. SpaceX is trying to annex over 7,000 acres into Starbase, Texas. 

Speaking of which, on March 4, the Texas Supreme Court held a public hearing in Edinburg on Save RGV et. al v. Texas General Land Office et. al, a lawsuit alleging that the state, at SpaceX's behest, is violating the Texas Open Beaches Act. This is the longest ongoing lawsuit against SpaceX in the Rio Grande Valley, first filed in 2022. The reason behind the lawsuit began when Brownsville legislator Rene Oliveira drafted a state bill in 2013 that allowed rocket testing to usurp the state Constitution’s guarantee of “free and unrestricted right” for Texans to enjoy the beach.

Oliveira wrote his bill to attract SpaceX, which was already lobbying the state and Cameron County, to cut a significant legal barrier to the company’s launch pad development. The bill passed with an additional gift to SpaceX: a clause stripping people of the right to litigate any potential damages to their homes, health or property from the launches. It is one of the most brazen acts of corporate capture at the coast to happen in my lifetime.

Oliviera died a few years ago, as did Carlos Cascos, the Cameron County Judge who signed off on the company’s tax abatement with the county. Before he died, I was supposed to visit Cascos in his downtown Brownsville office. 

He had criticized SpaceX not paying out invoices in an article for Reuters. I wanted to speak with him again to understand the evolution of this thinking. No Valley elected official, current or former, ever criticizes SpaceX publicly. But I never made it to that meeting: Texas Public Radio laid me off; then I tore a tendon in my knee for the third time in as many years of jiu-jitsu. While recovering from the latter, I opened my emails that late June 2024 day and read that he had died the night before. That’s when I remembered I had an unanswered text from him telling me to let him know when I was free. Oliveira died the same year.

The regional flavor is shifting fast, melting into a sort of "super collider" of apocalyptic fever dreams (LNG's climate collapse meets the Terminator's soul-less robot warriors). Worse: This is all happening, as Syris reminds in Alternative Futures this week, when what the world needs most is steady stream of billion-dollar investments geared toward healing—instead of evacuating, a la SpaceX—the planet.

I often wonder what Cascos or Oliveira would think of SpaceX’s expansion now, the company’s impunity now undeniable. It’s clear that SpaceX intends to expand its site however far into Boca Chica Beach they want, along with how often they launch. I haven’t been to that beach for almost a year, even though I’ve visited a couple of times since moving to Arizona for graduate school. Truthfully I don’t want to see it, even if it’s my responsibility to do so. Thankfully others continue to bear witness, such as those attending a concert out there that South Texas Environmental Justice Network hosted this month.

At the public hearing on beach access, more locals attended than they could have if the hearing was in Austin. The state dismissed this lawsuit once before, but it was successfully appealed a few years ago, which is why it’s being heard at the state supreme court. The court will likely issue a decision in June. I’ll be speaking soon with Save RGV’s attorney, Marisa Perales, for a podcast with Deceleration about the case and how the legal system defers to economic development. 

— Gaige Davila

Port of Brownsville’s Billion-Dollar ‘Pyramids’ Forcing Locals into a Bad Terminator Prequel

The Austin-based war machinery company Saronic is eyeing the Port of Brownsville for its “Port Alpha” project to develop an autonomous “fleet of the future” (see the Navy contract here). It’s another billions-of-dollars project in an area that just can’t seem to stop getting them.

Brownsville officials, of course, love the attention, while many residents near the growing SpaceX shadow are feeling the “Terminator Skynet vibes.” 

Local elected officials wouldn’t name the company when asked by the Rio Grand Guardian because of the NDAs they have with Saronic, but some are using the phrase “game changer” to describe Port Alpha. It seems the growth coalitions of the Rio Grande Valley are living in their own reality, one where benefits are assumed to follow each  billion-dollar enterprise…But the rest of us aren’t sure how exactly.

They always mention the jobs that’ll come, as if every person who is without one in the Valley has idle–but skilled–hands, ready to construct the next pyramid for the Port’s vision of “progress." No explanation is given as to what these corporations are providing the Valley outside of “jobs,” “economic development,” “growth,” and a litany of other terms that are both the question and answer for developing these things.

Cameron County will have a public hearing on whether to grant Saronic a tax abatement next week. I don’t deny that these companies help people living here make money that wasn't possible before. I have friends that are employed by some of them. But when you look at Census data, nothing has fundamentally changed about the area’s socioeconomics in the last decade.