U.S. President Donald Trump, next to Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, attends an event to announce that the Space Force Command will move from Colorado to Alabama, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 2, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
FILE PHOTO: Air Force Space Command early warning system at Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, April 25, 2012. REUTERS/Larry Downing/File Photo

By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will relocate the U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, noting the southern state's strong support for him while criticizing Colorado's voting practices.

The move, first reported by Reuters, benefits a state that overwhelmingly supported Trump's three Republican presidential bids, at the expense of one that opposed them.

"We love Alabama. I only won it by about 47 points. I don't think that influenced my decision, though," Trump told reporters and lawmakers gathered in the Oval Office.

The decision reverses a move made under former President Joe Biden's administration, which had selected Colorado Springs as the permanent home for the military's newest combatant command.

Defense officials have previously estimated that relocating the headquarters, which became fully operational in December 2023, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take three to four years to complete.

The Space Command, established in 2019 under the first Trump administration, is responsible for military operations beyond Earth's atmosphere and defending U.S. satellites from potential threats. About 1,700 personnel work at Space Command, according to congressional records.

Trump has often linked federal funding decisions and politics. The president previously blocked a move to put the FBI's headquarters in Maryland, calling it a "liberal state," and suggested linking disaster aid in California to the state's policy decisions.

"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," Trump said. Citizens can vote in person or by mail in Colorado.

All of Colorado's congressional leaders said in a joint statement, "Moving Space Command sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea." Four of Colorado's representatives are Republicans.

Huntsville, home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and a major hub for defense contractors, such as L3Harris and Lockheed Martin, has long lobbied for the Space Command headquarters.

POLITICAL WEAPON

Military basing decisions have long been wielded as political weapons in Washington, with lawmakers treating defense installations and equipment purchases as bargaining chips.

In 2021, a week before the end of Trump's first term, the Air Force announced Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, as the preferred location for Space Command's permanent headquarters, pending an environmental assessment. But while the Air Force completed the assessment in 2022, it did not make a final decision regarding Space Command’s headquarters.

The Government Accountability Office, Congress' nonpartisan research arm, released a report in 2022 saying it had identified "significant shortfalls" in the Air Force's selection process for the Space Command headquarters.

An April 2025 report by the Pentagon's inspector general "acknowledged risks to readiness inherent to moving the HQ from its provisional location" to Huntsville but said it was balanced by an estimated $426 million cost advantage Huntsville has due to lower personnel and construction costs.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington, additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Joey Roulette; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Paul Simao, Rod Nickel)