President Trump announced on Tuesday that he would move the U.S. Space Command to Alabama from Colorado, a decision that he said was motivated in part by his grudge against Colorado, a Democratic state he lost in all three of his runs for president.
The announcement was the latest in a yearslong game of political back-and-forth for the command, which coordinates space-related operations for all branches of the armed forces. The operation reports directly to the secretary of defense.
During the announcement, Mr. Trump said the move would create tens of thousands of jobs and help America “defend and dominate the high frontier.” He went on to boast that he had won Alabama by “47 points” and joked that he did not think that influenced his decision.
But Mr. Trump did say that his gripe with Colorado was a “big factor.” He repeatedly criticized mail-in voting in the state, which he said was supported by a “radical left governor” and allowed Democrats to “cheat.”
“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,” said Mr. Trump, who is on a crusade to ban mail-in voting nationwide. “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 also.”
Democrats and Republicans in Colorado fought a yearslong bipartisan battle to keep the Space Command, arguing that moving it would waste billions of dollars while distracting Space Command from its mission.
“You’re rewarding people who’ve voted for you, but it makes no sense from a national security perspective,” said Doug Lamborn, a former Republican congressman for the Colorado Springs area.
The state’s Republican members of Congress, including Rep. Lauren Boebert, a stalwart Trump supporter, joined Colorado’s Democrats in vowing to fight the move.
Colorado’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said he was prepared to go to court to challenge the relocation, calling Mr. Trump’s rationale “wholly inappropriate and legally suspect.”
Mr. Trump has a soft spot for Alabama, which he credits with buoying him as a serious political candidate. During an address at the University of Alabama earlier this year, Mr. Trump noted that the state voted overwhelmingly for him and felt like “home” when he was starting out as a candidate in 2015.
Mr. Trump established Space Command in 2019, years after a similar operation had been disbanded as part of the Pentagon’s focus on fighting terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. At the time, its headquarters were temporarily placed in Colorado.
In the final days of his first administration, Mr. Trump sought to permanently move the Space Command headquarters to Alabama, but President Joseph R. Biden Jr. reversed course in 2023 and kept it in Colorado. The Pentagon at the time called it a matter of military readiness.
But it did not go unnoticed among many political and local observers that the decision came as Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, was blocking hundreds of military promotions over a Pentagon policy that would reimburse service members who traveled for fertility care or to obtain an abortion.
That decision has long rankled many in Huntsville, whose history of space development and engineering remains its crown jewel. It is there that a team of German scientists, led by Wernher von Braun, the former leading Nazi missile scientist, developed the rockets that powered the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s.
Many Alabama officials pointed to reports that had Redstone Arsenal, the military base there, ranked higher than Colorado Springs, and to a Defense Department inspector general analysis that found the site to be a fair candidate. And they pointed to years of funding and work to improve infrastructure and support for new families in the area.
“The state of Alabama is about to show the country the best among us,” Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, said on Tuesday. She added that “this naturally fits within” Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville’s existing infrastructure.
Mr. Tuberville said, “The best place for Space Command is Huntsville, Ala., because what we have and what it means to this country is going to be so important.”
Mr. Trump’s decision to move Space Command out of Colorado may have doled out a political punishment to a blue state that briefly declared Mr. Trump ineligible to be on the 2024 ballot for engaging in an insurrection during the Jan. 6 riots.
But the brunt of the lost jobs and lost prestige will be felt in Colorado Springs, a conservative swath of Colorado that is home to five military installations and some 40,000 military personnel. The city’s mayor, Yemi Mobolade, said Mr. Trump’s decision was “deeply disappointing, not only for our city, but for our nation’s security and taxpayers.”
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Jack Healy is a Phoenix-based national correspondent for The Times who focuses on the politics and climate of the Southwest. He has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s journalism school.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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