"This was the final straw" billionaire Elon Musk wrote on X (formerly Twitter) — the social media site he bought for $44 billion. What drew the ire of the super-rich businessman was California's new law on transgender and gay people in schools and threatened to move the offices of his companies. A few days earlier, he announced that he would support the Trump campaign with $45 million a month.
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Elon Musk has said he will move the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket maker SpaceX from California after Governor Gavin Newsom gave the green light to new measures to protect transgender and gay students in schools.
The law was drafted in response to the so-called parents' rights movement that led to at least seven school boards in the state approving rules within the last year forcing teachers to tell parents if their child began using a name or pronoun that didn't match his or her birth gender.
The law, signed by Newsom on Monday (15 July), prevents schools from requiring staff to inform parents whose children show signs of being transgender or to share information about their sexual orientation.
This is the final straw.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 16, 2024
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. https://t.co/cpWUDgBWFe
"This was the final straw" the South African billionaire wrote in his X post, adding that his decision had to do with the law "and many others that preceded it and attack both families and companies." As a result, Musk wrote to X that he would move SpaceX's headquarters from Hawthorne in Southern California to Starbase, Texas. The X, which is headquartered in downtown San Francisco, will move to Austin, Musk said.
This is not the first time he has threatened to leave California due to political differences. During the pandemic, Musk also sued California and threatened to move Tesla's headquarters to Texas due to the state's Covid-19 restrictions, which were among the strictest in the country. In early 2023, Musk brought back some of Tesla's operations in California, opening its engineering headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Musk blamed the new transgender legal framework for his decision, previous media reports suggest he considered relocating X long before Newsom signed the law.
Musk has publicly expressed his political views in recent years, often at odds with the Democratic leadership in California. Earlier this week, he announced he would support former President Donald Trump's reelection bid.
Billionaire Elon Musk plans to donate about $45 million a month to an organization supporting Donald Trump's campaign to return to the White House, which is already funded by other tech entrepreneurs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
America PAC, which was founded at the end of May, according to documents it duly submitted to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), is one of the so-called "super PACs" ("political action committees"), legal entities that are not formally affiliated with party organizations or campaigns.
They cannot directly fund a candidate, but the law allows them to engage in support actions such as advertising campaigns, event planning, etc.
