Colorado launches lawyers at Trump admin over space base relocation

The State of Colorado has thrown a sueball at the Trump administration over the president's decision to relocate the headquarters of the US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama.

Trump announced the relocation in September. Colorado had been selected by the previous Biden administration, which US Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama decried as "political cronyism." Tuberville later told Trump that the headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama, would be named the "Donald J. Trump Space Command Center."

According to Trump, a "big factor" in the decision was Colorado's support for mail-in voting. "So they have automatically crooked elections," he said, "and we can't have that..." Despite Trump's rhetoric, there is no credible evidence associating mail-in voting with an increased incidence of voting fraud.

At the time, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said of the move, "I'm prepared to challenge it in court," and so here we are.

Weiser said, "The president's decision to punish Colorado by relocating Space Command because of the lawful exercise of our authority to regulate elections – and his threats of further harmful action – violate the Tenth Amendment."

The lawsuit [PDF] directed at Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, argues that Colorado is entitled to regulate elections itself rather than at the direction of the President, hence the complaint about mail-in voting should not have a bearing on the decision.

Furthermore, "the Executive Branch also violated statutory requirements mandating detailed processes and public disclosures through the submission of reports to Congress before taking action to relocate a major military headquarters."

In other words, due process was not followed in the relocation decision.

The complaint states that "President Trump has unlawfully retaliated against Colorado to punish the State for its exercise of sovereign authority to regulate elections."

According to Trump, the move will result in more than 30,000 jobs for Alabama and investments totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. At the time of the decision to keep the headquarters of Space Command in Colorado Springs, the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce stated that 1,400 Colorado jobs depended on the HQ's location, and the annual economic impact was $1 billion.

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The Denver Chamber of Commerce more recently stated that "the Colorado aerospace and defense ecosystem brought in $38 billion in federal contracts."

The Huntsville Madison County Chamber noted that the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, had been selected in 2021 as the Preferred Alternative location for the US Space Command headquarters, a decision "supported by two subsequent independent reviews which confirmed that Redstone will offer the best strategic value."

"We look forward to the workforce of the U.S. Space Command joining the 75,000+ defense and aerospace workers that call the Redstone Region home." ®