President Joe Biden decided to keep the US Space Command headquarters in Colorado, reversing plans by former President Donald Trump’s administration to move it to Alabama.
The location of Space Command’s permanent headquarters has sparked a political row in Washington, pitting Alabama lawmakers against their Colorado counterparts and threatening to draw the Pentagon closer to the abortion discussion once again.
“Today, after a careful and deliberate review process, and after consulting with Secretary (of Defense) (Lloyd) Austin and weighing input from top military leaders, President Biden notified the Department of Defense that he has selected Colorado Springs as the permanent location of United States Space Command Headquarters,” Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick S. Ryder said in a statement Monday.
Austin, as well as the Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, and the head of the Space Command, James Dickinson, supported the president’s decision, Ryder said.
Dickinson had opposed moving the headquarters to Alabama because it might jeopardize military readiness.
The venue decision had been pending for months and coincided with another political spat between the White House and an Alabama lawmaker.
As the administration weighed how to proceed, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville has withheld hundreds of military promotions for his opposition to the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which covers the costs of servicewomen seeking to terminate pregnancies across state lines.
NBC News reported in May that the Biden administration was reconsidering plans to move Space Command headquarters to Alabama, in part because the state has imposed a near-total ban on abortion. White House officials have denied that Alabama’s restrictive abortion law was a factor in their review.
Alabama lawmakers expressed outrage over the decision and vowed to overturn it.
“This fight is far from over,” Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.
The decision showed that “far-left politics, not national security, was the driving force behind this decision,” according to Rogers.
Colorado Democratic Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, who had argued against the move to Alabama, welcomed the news that the command would remain in Colorado Springs.
“Over the past two and a half years, we have repeatedly argued that the Trump administration’s decision to relocate United States Space Command was a mistake. Today’s decision restores the integrity of the Pentagon’s grassroots process and sends a strong message that national security and the readiness of our Armed Forces drive our military decisions,” Bennett said in a statement.
The Air Force originally recommended that the headquarters remain in Colorado, but then reversed its stance in January 2021 after a White House meeting during the final weeks of the Trump administration, who later said he was responsible for “sole ” of the state’s selection over others that were under consideration. But the review did not support that claim.
The Biden administration ordered the Air Force last December to conduct a review of the process that led to the Trump administration’s decision to move Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama.
The review followed two previous ones that took place after Biden took office and found that there was no improper political influence in the process that awarded the seat to Alabama.
Space Command is a unified Pentagon group with elements of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and is distinct from the separate military branch known as the Space Force.
