WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would reverse a decision by his predecessor Joe Biden by moving U.S. Space Command’s headquarters to Alabama from Colorado.

Trump first ordered the headquarters be moved from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., late in his first term. But Biden, in 2023, directed the facility remain in the Centennial State, as the Democratic and Republican presidents played politics with blue-leaning Colorado and deep-red Alabama. Lawmakers and officials from both states long have fought over the headquarters, which has a large personnel footprint that would provide a long-term economic boost to Huntsville or Colorado Springs.

During an afternoon announcement event in the Oval Office, Trump called his decision a “big deal.”

“This will result in more than 30,000 Alabama jobs, and probably much more than that, and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment,” he said after mentioning that he won the Yellowhammer State in all of his three presidential bids. “And that’s billions, because it can’t be millions, it’s billions and billions of dollars. Most importantly, this decision will help America defend and dominate the high frontier, as they call it.”

Trump addressed Biden’s reversal, saying: “We initially selected Huntsville for the SPACECOM headquarters, yet those plans were wrongfully obstructed by the Biden administration.”

Alabama GOP Sen. Katie Britt contended in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed that Biden’s decision “boiled down to politics.”

“While this process has shown Washington at its worst, I am confident Huntsville, Ala., will show our country at its best,” wrote Britt, who appeared alongside other members of Alabama’s congressional delegation at Tuesday’s White House event. “Space Command is headed to its rightful home, and America’s national security will benefit.”

But Trump made clear that politics played a “big” role in his opposition to the Colorado location.

“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,” he said. “And we can’t have that when the 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.”

Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Armed Services Committee member, standing beside Trump in the Oval Office, declared of the move: “It’s not going to cost more.”

“We need help in our military. We need to catch up. …. We’re not behind on space, but we know where we’re at and we need to expound on that,” the candidate for Alabama governor added, calling Huntsville “exactly the right place for Space Force and Space Command.”

Republican Rep. Jeff Crank, whose district includes Colorado Springs, said Tuesday he was disappointed with the decision to move the Space Command headquarters to Alabama.

The freshman lawmaker said on social media that he was “concerned about how it will affect the hard-working men and women who support our military’s operational capability” but expressed optimism that “important assets and jobs related to the Space Command mission will remain in El Paso County.”

A Pentagon Inspector General report dated April 11 stated that Air Force and U.S. Space Command officials interviewed as part of an internal examination of the Biden administration’s decision agreed that moving the command headquarters to Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal, or RSA, would take three to four years. But the two sides did not agree on a final location.

The Air Force “described the cost to the taxpayer as the ‘primary driver’ of its preference for RSA as the permanent location for USSPACECOM’s permanent HQ while USSPACECOM leadership prioritized minimizing the risk to readiness,” according to the IG report.

The Air Force “acknowledged that relocation from USSPACECOM’s provisional HQ location presented a risk to readiness if civilian personnel did not relocate with the Command. However, the [Air Force] asserted that USSPACECOM could mitigate that risk.”

While the two sides clashed over the final site, the Biden White House and Pentagon in July 2023 announced that the president had sided with U.S. Space Command officials’ desire to keep the headquarters in Colorado Springs.

The IG’s report also said that attempts to interview senior Biden Pentagon officials were denied by the White House. That finding led Alabama Republican lawmakers to contend that key officials who should have had a role in the former president’s decision were purposely shut out.

“After years of promises about ‘due diligence’ and ‘careful consideration,’ political employees at the White House cut out the Air Force and senior defense leaders to select Colorado over Alabama as the site for SPACECOM headquarters,” House Armed Services Chair Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., said in an April 15 statement.

In a Tuesday statement, Rogers said: “Space Command is finally coming home to Alabama. This announcement by President Trump is yet another in a long line of strong decisions that benefit America’s national security.”

Despite completion of an environmental assessment of the proposed Huntsville site on Sept. 30, 2022, the IG noted that the then-Air Force secretary “never announced a final decision regarding USSPACECOM’s permanent headquarters location.”

In an appendix of the report, the IG’s office included a comment from the Air Force: “SECAF did not decide because President Biden as Commander in Chief and the Chief Executive exercised his authority to make the decision.”

In initially identifying Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal as the Air Force’s preferred Space Command headquarters location, officials noted that Redstone was already home to some space-based capabilities. That point was noted in a May 29 Government Accountability Office report that pointed to Huntsville as the better pick.

“The Command is fully operational, but U.S. Space Command officials told GAO that they faced ongoing personnel, facilities, and communications challenges. Officials also cited benefits in being colocated with operational space missions and centers,” the GAO found. ”As a result of identified challenges, officials stated the Command’s posture is not sustainable long term and new military construction would be needed to support the headquarters’ operations in Colorado Springs, Colorado.”

Meanwhile, Trump insisted to reporters Tuesday that he would expand his ongoing federal policing effort in Washington to Chicago.

‘We’re going in,” he said of federal police and troops in the Windy City. “I didn’t say when, but we’re going in.”

Trump also expanded the scope of his D.C. effort, saying efforts would be made within a “20-mile radius” of the White House. Last month, he said the initiative would focus on a three-mile radius of the White House and Capitol.

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