Tech mogul Elon Musk introduced Tuesday afternoon that he could be shifting the headquarters of each his social media firm X and SpaceX to Texas in response to a brand new California regulation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Musk made the announcement in a pair of posts to the social media platform previously often known as Twitter at round 12:13 p.m. and 12:30 p.m., saying that SpaceX could be shifting its headquarters from Hawthorne to Starbase, Texas, whereas X would relocate its headquarters from San Francisco to the tech hub of Austin.
“Have had sufficient of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts simply to get out and in of the constructing,” Musk added in a separate publish, apparently referring to points within the neighborhood surrounding the X headquarters within the metropolis’s mid-Market Road space.
Musk mentioned the “last straw” in his resolution was a brand new California regulation that bans college districts from passing insurance policies requiring faculties to inform mother and father if their youngster asks to alter their gender identification.
“I did make it clear to Governor Newsom a couple of yr in the past that legal guidelines of this nature would pressure households and firms to go away California to guard their kids,” Musk wrote in one other publish on X.
The posts by Musk didn’t go unnoticed. Newsom’s replied was a single sentence — “You bent the knee.” — together with a picture of a tweet then President Trump posted a couple of Musk go to to the White Home the place Trump famous he may have instructed Musk to drop to his knees and beg “and he would have finished it.”
State Senator Scott Wiener additionally had a response.
“California actually made you with taxpayer subsidies & as a result of it is the perfect place round,” he mentioned in a retweet of considered one of Musk’s posts. “Will this be a pretend mood tantrum transfer identical to Tesla’s pretend “transfer” to Texas?”
LGBTQ rights advocates have been additionally fast to criticize Musk’s newest transfer.
“Simply because he is wealthy doesn’t suggest he even understands the problems he’s making feedback about,” mentioned Gabrielle Antolovich, Director of the Billy DeFrank Middle in San Jose.
Antolovich mentioned she lived by the expertise of her college notifying her mother and father that she was interested in girls.
“They did not perceive what was occurring, what horrible factor had I finished? All of those fights occurred in my household and it was none of their enterprise coming to my mother and father with that,” she mentioned.
Musk has already moved the company headquarters of his electrical automotive firm Tesla to Austin from Palo Alto in 2021, although the corporate nonetheless has a big manufacturing unit in Fremont that has expanded since that transfer.
Musk has additionally beforehand mentioned that he moved his non-public residence from California to Texas.
The announcement about X comes lower than two years after Musk took cost of the previous Twitter social media platform in a $44 billion deal and fired its prime executives. Musk additionally fired, laid off, or in any other case misplaced the vast majority of its workforce together with engineers, content material moderators, and executives accountable for making guidelines and imposing them.
In June 2023, Musk rebranded the platform as X and added a vibrant, flashing X brand to the highest of the San Francisco constructing which homes its places of work. It was eliminated inside days after space residents complained and the town decided there was no allow obtained for the constructing signage.