Chief executive Officer (CEO) of SpaceX and owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk has confirmed that he will move the headquarters of both companies from California to Texas.
Musk had vowed to make the moves in response to Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) signing a new law that bars school districts in that state from requiring parents to be notified of a child’s gender identification change. Newson signed the student transgender law on Monday, July 15, 2024.
A report by TradeBriefs quoted Musk as saying: “This is the final straw. Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas,” Musk posted on X, adding that X HQ will also move from San Francisco to Austin.
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” he said.
In 2022, People magazine reported Elon Musk’s then 18-year-old daughter was granted permission to legally change her name and gender to Vivian Jenna Wilson. She shed the Musk family name and took the maiden name of her mother, Justine Wilson, instead.
When asked about his estranged transgender daughter in October 2022, Musk told the Financial Times “Can’t win them all,” and claimed to have good relationships with all his other children.
Musk, who recently endorsed former President Donald Trump and reportedly plans to contribute $45 million per month to a pro-Trump super PAC called the America PAC, also told the Financial Times that his daughter’s decision was caused by “neo-Marxists” at educational institutions.
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Trump is expected to roll back transgender rights if elected president again this year.
Citing a February 2023 Trump campaign video, The 19th News reported that his proposals would “terminate Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to trans youth, attempt to charge teachers with sex discrimination for affirming students’ gender identities and order federal agencies to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other major medical organizations including the American Medical Association (AMA), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the World Health Organization (WHO) all “support giving transgender adolescents access to the health care they need.”
On Tuesday, Newsom shot back at Musk in a post on X saying: “You bent the knee,” and including a screenshot of a 2022 post on Truth Social in which Trump had berated Musk.
In the 2022 post, Trump had written: “When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects, whether it’s electric cars that don’t drive long enough, driverless cars that crash, or rocket ships to nowhere, without which subsidies he’d be worthless, and telling me how he was a big Trump fan and Republican, I could have said: “Drop to your knees and beg, and he would have done it.”
In 2021 Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla, moved his automaker’s corporate headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin.
SpaceX did not immediately respond to requests for further information including about whether the company would potentially shut down its Hawthorne operations.
When Tesla moved its headquarters to Texas, it maintained its Palo Alto office as an “engineering headquarters,” while Tesla even expanded at that location and held a press event there with Newsom in February 2023.
