The final frontier may be 62 miles above Earth's surface, but after years of political bickering, the U.S. Space Command headquarters will be firmly grounded in the Deep South.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is authorizing the Space Force HQ to move from Colorado to Alabama, ending years of partisan fighting over the fate of the hub for the military’s space-related operations and effectively punishing the Centennial State for electing Democrats while rewarding deep-red Alabama for supporting him and his party.
Speaking in the Oval Office flanked by Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and members of the Yellowhammer State’s congressional delegation, Trump noted that he was surrounded by “great Republicans” and boasted of having won Alabama’s electoral votes by “about 47 percent” in last year’s election.
Trump also admitted he was punishing Colorado for the state’s political decisions by openly declaring that its use of postal balloting weighed heavily into his decision.
“The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections. And we can't have that when a state is for mail-in voting. That means they want dishonest elections, because that's what that means. So that played a big factor,” he baselessly claimed.
Hegseth, the former Fox News personality turned defense boss, contradicted Trump’s claim of political motivations just moments later when he said the decision was informed by a Pentagon inspector general report that assessed the proper location for Space Command as Huntsville, Alabama, at the historic Redstone Arsenal facility.
“What you're doing today, Mr. President, is restoring it to precisely where it should be based on what the Space Force, the Air Force, your leadership believes, will give us strategic advantage in the future,” he said.
Communities surrounding both potential locations for Space Command view hosting the base as both a mark of prestige and a boon to their local economies, which would benefit from increased defense funding related to space issues, such as satellite defense, missile tracking, and worldwide communications.
In a statement, the entirety of the Colorado congressional delegation — including both Republican and Democratic members — vowed to challenge the move, which they said would “directly harm our state and the nation.”
“We are united in fighting to reverse this decision. Bottom line — moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time,” they said.
“The Trump administration should not play political games with our nation’s military readiness and military families,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told KKTV.
The announcement marks a return to public appearances for Trump, after multiple days outside the spotlight prompted speculation about the president’s health.
Tuesday’s plan is also a return to a first-term priority.
In January 2021, as Trump was preparing to leave the White House, the Air Force announced its preferred location for Space Command headquarters would be Huntsville, nicknamed “Rocket City” for its history of building rockets for NASA and housing the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command. The decision, however, was not a final one.
In 2023, when it came time for a permanent decision, the Biden administration reversed course, electing to keep the command at its temporary headquarters in Colorado Springs, arguing that moving across the country would disrupt readiness. Colorado is another major military aerospace hub, home to the Air Force Academy as well as the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The 2023 decision, announced as Alabama’s Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville was blocking hundreds of military promotions in protest over abortion-related policies at the Department of Defense, prompted allegations from Republicans that the Biden administration was showing political favoritism and opting for a more politically friendly state than deep-red Alabama.
An April 2025 review by the Defense Department inspector general could not determine why the Biden administration chose Colorado over Alabama, adding that it lacked access to senior defense officials during the Democrat’s tenure.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, the Republican ordered the creation of what became the United States Space Force, a sixth branch of the U.S. military.
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