By Mike Stone
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration is planning to announce as early as Tuesday that it will relocate U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the deliberations.
The Pentagon’s public affairs website said President Donald Trump was expected to make a “U.S. Space Command HQ Announcement” at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT).
The decision would reverse 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 in 2023.
A relocation could spark controversy, with critics arguing the switch appears designed to favor Alabama, a reliably Republican state, over Colorado, which has increasingly voted Democratic in recent elections. Space Command currently operates from Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs on an interim basis.
About 1,700 personnel work at Space Command, according to congressional records.
The move would reward a state that overwhelmingly supported Trump’s three Republican presidential bids, at the expense of one that opposed them.
Trump has often linked federal funding decisions and politics. The U.S. 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.
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.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Paul Simao)
Comments