(Credit: Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Elon Musk is moving two more of his companies out of California, and this time, it's due in part to a new bill intended to help protect the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ students.
"This is the final straw," Musk wrote Tuesday in response to the passage of AB-1955. The bill, which Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law this week, states that public schools are not required to tell parents if their child comes out or expresses a different gender identity at school.
"Policies that forcibly 'out' pupils without their consent remove opportunities for LGBTQ+ young people and their families to build trust and have these conversations when they are ready," the bill's text explains. "Pupils have a constitutional right to privacy when it comes to sensitive information about them, and courts have affirmed that young people have a right to keep personal information private."
But Musk, who endorses Donald Trump and has repeatedly expressed his conservative politics on Twitter (now called X), believes this is reason enough to move SpaceX and X to Texas.
"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 said, adding: "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."
Musk also said that X will move its headquarters from San Francisco to Austin, claiming that "gangs of violent drug addicts" are making it difficult to access the building. The New York Times reports that X employees were unaware of this decision until Musk's tweet and are unsure how it may impact their jobs.
In a post published about four hours later, Newsom's personal account tweeted a screenshot of an old Truth Social post from Trump, in which the former president dunks on Musk. In it, Trump alludes to SpaceX's "rocketships to nowhere" and criticizes the massive government subsidies Musk has received for SpaceX and Tesla. At the end of the post, Trump notes that Musk "would have" begged on his knees if Trump had asked.
"You bent the knee," Newsom said Tuesday above the screenshot. "You never get off your knees," Musk snapped back.
This isn't the first time Musk has engaged in a public diss contest. In November, Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman trolled each other over their rival chatbots. Musk called ChatGPT a "snore," to which Altman suggested Musk's Grok AI offered little more than "cringey boomer humor."
This year, Musk also began the process of moving Tesla's incorporation from Delaware to Texas after a Delaware judge voided his "deeply flawed" $56 billion pay package. (Shareholders recently re-approved it.) Musk previously moved Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas in 2021, but Newsom's press office claims Tesla actually expanded its overall presence in California since the move.
Unsurprisingly, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, is thrilled to have Musk move his companies to the Lone Star State. "X marks the spot," Abbott wrote in response to Musk's decision. "TeXas is the HQ for business."