The Abbott-Musk Records Fight Goes Back to Court Monday Morning in Travis County
A judge ordered the governor's office to open its unredacted Musk communications to his challenger. The governor appealed and called it a stunt. At 9 a.m. Monday — the day before Texans decide whether he gets a fourth term — a court hears whether that order stands.
The fight over what Gov. Greg Abbott's office said to Elon Musk goes back into a Travis County courtroom at 9 a.m. Monday. Judge Catherine Mauzy has already issued a temporary restraining order requiring the governor's office to let his Democratic challenger, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin, inspect unredacted communications between the office and Musk and his companies — including documents that were redacted or withheld when they were released publicly. Monday's hearing takes up the next questions: whether a longer-lasting temporary injunction should follow, and Abbott's challenge to the court's authority to order any of it. The governor's office has appealed and called the lawsuit a baseless stunt.
The records exist because journalists asked first. The Texas Newsroom sought the communications and received about 1,374 pages from the governor's office, most of them heavily redacted or blacked out. Hinojosa requested access to the same records on Sept. 29 and sued on Oct. 19, the first day of early voting; she had made her case publicly on CBS's Face the Nation the Sunday before the ruling. Her lawsuit points to documented connections her campaign wants voters to weigh: more than $54 million in state grants to SpaceX, about $1.7 billion in school tax breaks for Musk's Terafab project, and at least $500,000 in contributions from Musk to Abbott's campaign — figures printed here as her suit presents them, not as any court's finding. The restraining order itself is narrow: it requires no new records search and no new documents, Hinojosa must post a $1,000 bond, and it expires Nov. 9 unless the court extends it.
The judge's findings are preliminary, and nothing about Monday's hearing resolves the lawsuit — what it decides is timing, and timing is the whole ballgame in the last week of a campaign. If the injunction holds, the challenger reads the unredacted record of the incumbent's dealings with the world's richest man before Election Day; if the appeal prevails, she reads it, if at all, after Texans have voted on Abbott's fourth term. Either way, the hearing is the last scheduled event in this race that neither campaign controls.
