Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of gaining city status for his SpaceX spaceport in the southern US state of Texas could become a reality on Saturday, with voters set to green light Starbase as a new municipality.There’s little doubt over the outcome of the ballot that will likely name a senior SpaceX representative as mayor of the new settlement.Most of the 283 eligible voters are SpaceX employees working at the site on Boca Chica Bay bordering Mexico, or have connections to the company whose billionaire chief has long eyed a human mission to Mars.Most ballots have already been cast ahead of the 7:00 pm (0100 GMT) deadline on Saturday.Musk himself is registered to vote, Cameron County Election Coordinator Remi Garza told AFP, but the South African-born embattled 53-year-old had yet to cast his ballot when the early voting period closed on April 29.Nearly 500 people live around the base in Cameron County, on land mostly owned by SpaceX or its employees, official documents show. The change would allow Starbase to control building and permitting and avoid other regulatory hurdles, while collecting taxes and writing local law. The vote comes at a difficult time for Musk, who is expected to reduce his role as the unofficial head of US President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency” to instead focus more on his troubled car company, Tesla.The vote on Saturday includes a mayoral election, but Bobby Peden, vice president of testing and launch at SpaceX, according to LinkedIn, is the only candidate on the ballot for this position.The Texas base launched in 2019 and is a key testing site for the company’s rocket launches.Not everyone is upbeat about the prospect of a SpaceX town.Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, voiced concerns over the environmental impact, warning of “more environmental destruction.””They would attempt more illegal dumping, they would build up their dangerous rocket operations and cause more seismic activity, cause our homes to shake, and that they would destroy more of the wildlife habitat in the region,” she told AFP.- Environmental concerns -It was Musk himself who proposed the name Starbase in a social media post during a visit to the site four years ago.Then, last December, general manager of SpaceX Kathryn Lueders appealed to local authorities to grant the site city status.Lueders argued in her letter that SpaceX already maintained infrastructure there like roads, education services and medical care.Lueders promised the creation of the new city would not undermine SpaceX efforts to mitigate the base’s environmental impact.SpaceX did not respond to an AFP request for comment.The hub overlooks the Gulf of Mexico — renamed the Gulf of America by Trump — and there is controversy over access to Boca Chica Beach.A Texas House State Affairs committee rejected a bill this week by Republican lawmakers that would have given coastal cities with spaceports control over beach access.Hinojosa, the activist, said SpaceX has limited access to Boca Chica Beach for many years and told AFP she worried the vote could cut access entirely to a beach “our families have been going to for generations.”The Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, descendants of an Indigenous tribe in the area, has also complained.In 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas authorities found that SpaceX was responsible for repeated spills and releasing pollutants into Texas waterways.In response to reports that its rockets had caused damage to wild bird nests, Musk quipped on social media: “To make up for this heinous crime, I will refrain from having omelette for a week.”

President Donald Trump spent his first 100 days issuing a blitz of executive orders to deliver rapidly on campaign pledges, drastically downsize the government and reshape America’s role on the global stage.But the job gets trickier now for the self-styled dealmaker-in-chief, who must corral fractious Republicans on Capitol Hill to anchor his domestic policies in legislation that can cement a lasting legacy.”Trump’s first 100 days were remarkable for their pace and impact. Now comes the hard part,” Stephen Dover, chief market strategist and head of the Franklin Templeton Institute, said in a memo to investors.”The next 100 days will shift the focus to the challenges of passing legislation while simultaneously addressing deficit reduction. Congress must act, which requires building legislative coalitions.”In a dizzying first three months, Trump wielded executive power like no other modern president, signing more than 140 orders on immigration, culture war issues and slashing the federal bureaucracy.But the unilateral authority of the Oval Office has its limits and much of the reform Trump wants to enact — particularly anything involving spending public money — requires laws to be passed by Congress.Trump’s political capital will be put to the test as he aims to shepherd his sprawling agenda on tax, border security and energy production through the House and Senate. Complicating Trump’s task is his receding popularity, with the polls flashing warning signs amid economic uncertainty and misgivings over his handling of immigration and international trade.- Brinkmanship -Executive orders signed without the involvement of Congress can be undone by any president.They are also vulnerable to legal and constitutional challenges, as Trump has discovered in dozens of rulings that blocked his policies early in his presidency.A more lasting impact, say analysts, will require the kind of political brinkmanship and consensus-building that haven’t been necessary so far.The author of “The Art of the Deal” doesn’t have a great record of getting contentious legislation through his divided party.In his 2017-21 term, he passed the Abraham Accords, fostering peace between Israel and several of its neighbors, and celebrated a trade deal with Canada that has since been obliterated by his tariffs.But he failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare — a key priority — and, despite much fanfare over summits in Singapore and Hanoi, was unable to ink any kind of deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.When it comes to uniting around a common cause, his lawmakers in Congress haven’t fared much better, getting just five bills into law in Trump’s first 100 days, the lowest number in generations.Republicans set a deadline of July 4 to pass the president’s agenda — led by an extension of his 2017 tax cuts and fulfilling a campaign pledge to eliminate levies on tips, overtime and Social Security payments.  – ‘A lot trickier’ -The slim Republican majorities in both chambers will require almost perfect unity.But conservatives won’t back the tax cuts — which have an estimated price tag of around $5 trillion over 10 years — without deep reductions in spending.Moderates with tough reelection fights in next year’s midterms say they won’t support the likely evisceration of the Medicaid health insurance program for low-income families that this would entail. Political consultant and former Senate aide Andrew Koneschusky, a key player in negotiations over the 2017 tax cuts, expects Trump’s next 100 days to be “a lot trickier.””When it comes to tax bills, the ultimate adult in the room is math. You can’t break the laws of mathematics, no matter how much politicians might want to,” he told AFP.”It’s going to be extremely tricky for the numbers to add up in a way that satisfies everyone in the Republican caucus.”Meanwhile Trump is up against the clock.The battle for the House majority in 2026 will likely come down to a few swing districts and the president could easily see his ability to shepherd legislation through Congress curtailed. Trump is relying on an arcane Senate procedure called “reconciliation” that means, given certain conditions are satisfied, he won’t need Democratic support to pass his priorities — which is just as well. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called Trump’s agenda “unconscionable” and “un-American,” vowing to do everything Democrats can to “bury it in the ground, never to rise again.”