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Elon Musk moves SpaceX and X to Texas because California is too supporting of trans youth

Elon Musk
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"This is the final straw," Musk wrote on X, reacting to California's recent law banning the forced outing of LGBTQ+ youth in schools.

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Elon Musk will move the headquarters of X and SpaceX from California to Texas in reaction to the most recent LGBTQ-supportive law passed in the former state.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday signed a bill into law barring school districts from requiring teachers or other staffers to disclose a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to their parents or guardians without the student’s consent. Such forced outing puts young people at risk if their families are not accepting.

“This is the final straw,” Musk wrote Tuesday on X, which he owns. “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.” Starbase is a production facility located in Boca Chica, Texas. He also will move the headquarters of X, formerly Twitter, from San Francisco to Austin, he posted. He said he had warned Newsom about the possibility of moves.

Musk is known for hostility to the LGBTQ+ community, particularly to transgender people. He has a trans daughter, Vivian Jenna Wilson, who has cut ties with him. In a Financial Times interview in 2022, he blamed her estrangement from him on “full-on communism ... and a general sentiment that if you’re rich, you’re evil,” which he claimed is being taught in colleges and universities.

Wilson changed her name because “I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she wrote in a court petition for the change.

Musk has gone back and forth about banning deadnaming and misgendering on X, and the platform has restricted accounts that use the term “cisgender,” a term for those whose gender aligns with their sex at birth. This year, he did urge J.K. Rowling to tone down her transphobic language.

This isn’t the first time Musk has moved one of his companies’ headquarters from California to Texas. He moved Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto to Austin in 2021 in protest of COVID-19 restrictions in California.

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Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.
Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.