GOP Assembly Leader Warns More Will Follow Elon Musk Out Of California

California Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher warned in a Wednesday interview that more will follow the nation’s wealthiest entrepreneur out of the state over a cascade of radical legislation alienating businesses and parents.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk announced he would relocate the headquarters for X and SpaceX from the west coast to Texas after Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law prohibiting schools from mandating parental notification of students who embrace a novel sexual identity. The bill, Musk said, whose own son identifies as transgender, was the “final straw” for the billionaire to move two major corporations out of the state.

“Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its [headquarters] from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas,” Musk wrote. “And X [headquarters] will move to Austin.”

Musk added he’s “had enough of dodging gangs of violent drug addicts just to get in and out of the building” where X is currently headquartered in San Francisco.

California became the first state on Monday to ban school rules from compelling teachers and administrators to disclose a student’s sexual orientation or newly claimed gender identity to parents. The new law signed by Newsom was met by an immediate lawsuit from a southern California school district already embroiled in state litigation over transgender parental notification protocols.

“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 wrote in a post.

“A lot of families and companies will move out of California because of this law,” Musk warned with another post on X.

Rep. Gallagher told The California Globe that many already have.

“We’ve already seen a lot of businesses leaving California for states like Texas,” Gallagher said, emphasizing overregulation and radical new laws have pushed residents beyond its borders. “There’s going to be more to come and it already has done damage to us. We lost a congressional seat because we’ve had so many people moving out of California.”

“All of this is a big red flag,” Gallagher added, “and it shows that what we’ve been doing is the wrong policy.”

Last summer, one of Gallagher’s colleagues in the state assembly encouraged families to “flee” over Democrats’ efforts to strip the rights of parents concerned about the proliferation of trans ideology in K-12 classrooms.

“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophy, I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting. I’ve changed my mind on that,” said Republican State Sen. Scott Wilk. “If you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee.”

Wilk said he would be leaving himself after the end of his term in the legislature. When asked if the senator went too far in recommending residential families leave, Gallagher said the driving force behind such a strong reaction to the new laws is California’s transition into an “authoritarian state.” The debate over parental rights in schools, Gallagher said, is just “the tip of the iceberg of a bigger problem in California which is big government.” While California parents face the erasure of their “fundamental liberties,” the lawmaker explained, too many “can’t even make it here financially.”

“Big CEOs of big companies like Elon Musk are going, ‘look, enough is enough. It’s not good for our company. It’s not good for our employees. We’re going to Texas,’” Gallagher said.

When asked whether statehouse Democrats seemed at all concerned about creating a hostile business climate, Gallagher said he believes “there are Democrats who would say privately they’re concerned but they’ve been unwilling to say it publicly.”

Governor Newsom responded to Musk’s announcement to flee the state with a post on X highlighting the tech executive’s relationship with former President Donald Trump, whom Musk endorsed immediately following a failed assassination attempt on Saturday.

“You bent the knee,” Newsom wrote on Musk’s platform with an image of Musk and Trump together in one of the former president’s posts on TruthSocial.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Musk plans to commit $45 million a month to a major political action committee supporting Trump through the election.