Leading figure of the US right Enough of California: Elon Musk moves X and SpaceX headquarters to Texas

Elon Musk has increasingly become a leading figure on the American right. Now he is moving two more companies from liberal California to Texas.

Keystone-SDA

17.07.2024, 06:23

17.07.2024, 06:50

SDA

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is also moving the headquarters of his space company SpaceX and the online platform X from California to Texas. As justification, he referred to a Californian school law to protect transgender people.

Musk described the law at X as the final straw that led to the move.

The law prohibits schools in California from forcing teachers to inform parents about possible changes in students' sexual orientation or gender identity. The children's consent is now required for this. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law on Monday.

Personal history

Musk is politically aligned with the American right and has railed against the medical care of young people who do not identify with their biological gender, among other things. According to his biography published last year, this also has a personal history. One of his older children changed gender and does not want to have any contact with Musk, as his biographer Walter Isaacson wrote.

SpaceX previously had its headquarters in Hawthorne in the greater Los Angeles area - even though most of the facilities were already based in Texas. This new location, known as Starbase, will also be the company's future headquarters.

"Gangs of violent drug addicts"

As Twitter's successor service, X kept its headquarters in San Francisco - and is now to move to Austin. Musk combined the announcement with a side blow against the city, which is seen as being in decline, particularly in conservative political circles. He had had enough of ducking away from "gangs of violent drug addicts" just to get into the building, Musk wrote on X. The tech billionaire is always accompanied by several bodyguards.

Musk is also head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla - and has already moved the company from Palo Alto in California's Silicon Valley to Austin. Among other things, he was dissatisfied with the lockdowns at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which also temporarily paralyzed production at Tesla's main plant in Fremont, California. Musk called the restrictions, which were intended to protect people from infection, "fascist".