Musk to Move Headquarters for SpaceX and X to Texas

It’s not clear what building rockets in Hawthorne or a social media platform in San Francisco have to do with student privacy for transgender teens.

The 545,000-square-foot SpaceX headquarters builds and tests rocket engine components, spacecraft and satellites at 1 Rocket Road in Hawthorne. The 800,000-square-foot hub for X, formerly Twitter, is based at 1355 Market Street and 1 Tenth Street in San Francisco, now up for sublease.

But Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and owner of Twitter, has decided to move the headquarters of both California firms to Texas because California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that bars school districts from requiring parents to be notified of a child’s gender identification change, CNBC reported.

“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.

He later added that the X hub 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,” Musk said.

The move out of California comes days after the CEO of Tesla endorsed Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race.

The conservative billionaire has been pulling his companies out of the Golden State for years.

The CEO of Tesla moved his EV automaker’s corporate headquarters in Palo Alto to Austin in 2021 after deciding to live in the Lone Star State.

A year later, Musk’s then 18-year-old daughter was granted permission to legally change her gender from male to female, and her name from Xavier Musk to Vivian Jenna Wilson.

The daughter, who came out as trans at 16, dumped the Musk family name and took the maiden name of her mother, Justine Wilson.

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 his other kids.

In September, the South African-born businessman accused Jenna Wilson, 19, of being a “communist” who thinks “anyone rich is evil,” according to the Daily Mail.

Musk famously tweeted in 2020: “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare.” He also said, “Pronouns suck.”

— Dana Bartholomew