X MARKS THE SPOT: Elon Musk is at it again. The billionaire tech entrepreneur has issued a fresh threat to relocate some of his companies’ operations to Texas in response to a state policy he disagrees with. This time, he’s vowing to move the headquarters of social media platform X and rocket maker SpaceX out of California in protest of new protections for transgender and gay students in schools. It’s similar to a threat he made in 2021 when he ran out of patience with California’s Covid protocols and decided to move Tesla HQ to Texas. Just two years later, Musk brought part of Tesla’s operations back to California, opening up its global engineering hub in Palo Alto. The law at issue today, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday, prevents schools from requiring staff to notify parents whose children show signs of being transgender and from sharing information about students’ sexual orientation. It was drafted in response to a so-called parents’ rights movement that has seen at least seven school boards in the state adopt rules that forced teachers to tell parents if their child starts using a name or pronoun that doesn’t match their sex assigned at birth. “This is the final straw,” said Musk, who has a transgender daughter from whom he is reportedly estranged. Musk wrote on X that he would move the headquarters for SpaceX from Hawthorne in Southern California to Starbase in Texas. X, which is headquartered in downtown San Francisco, will move to Austin, Musk said. This decision, he said, was "because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies." However, prior media reports had indicated he was contemplating relocation for X even before Newsom signed the law. The bombastic billionaire — and his increasingly conservative language — has long presented a quandary for Newsom, who is trying to burnish his national image as a Democrat who stands up to red-state rhetoric while also protecting California’s status as an economic powerhouse. Musk’s companies — Tesla, SpaceX and X — are bright jewels in the crown of California’s tech world and are helping to create the kind of clean-energy future Newsom regularly touts. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Newsom in the past has lavished praise on the billionaire, despite Musk’s criticism of the state, with the governor saying in 2021 that he has “reverence and deep respect for that individual.” It’s not just Musk raising hackles. Conservative attorneys are now asking Roger Benitez — a conservative federal court judge whom Newsom has targeted for blocking California gun laws — to halt the trans student law. Benitez, sidelined from deciding criminal cases, previously blocked an Escondido school district policy preventing teachers from alerting parents if their child shows signs of being transgender. Attorneys for the Thomas More Society and individual firms are now asking the court to go further and rule that the Fourteenth Amendment gives school districts the right to require staff to out students to their parents. — with help from Blake Jones IT’S TUESDAY AFTERNOON. This is California Playbook PM, a POLITICO newsletter that serves as an afternoon temperature check on California politics and a look at what our policy reporters are watching. Got tips or suggestions? Shoot an email to lkorte@politico.com, callen@politico.com, tkatzenberger@politico.com or wventeicher@politico.com.
| 
