It's also quick click-able - California is a brand - somewhat like Apple and Tesla itself.

The media likes to build up hype brands and then do exposes to deflate them. It's different parts of the media doing different hyping/deflating.

There was similarly a little mini-trend of rich people making a big show of renouncing their US citizenship in the Obama years, with probably a 10:1 ratio of articles to people who actually did it.