Alabama lawmakers banking on second Trump presidency for Space Force hopes

Alabama lawmakers banking on second Trump presidency for Space Force hopes

Alabama lawmakers have a two-pronged approach in their attempt to reverse the Biden administration decision to keep U.S. Space Command in Colorado instead of the plan to move the headquarters to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.

One involves Donald Trump, should the former president win in 2024.

Under the defense policy bill passed by Congress earlier this month, the inspector general for the Pentagon has to conduct an audit into the decision.

The provision was secured in the bill by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee.

“We’ve got two paths, both of which are good,” Rogers told Politico in a story published Thursday. “One, the IG — inspector general — can come back and say what we know they’re gonna say, which justifies us going forward with building in Huntsville.”

Should that scenario not play out exactly how the Alabama congressman envisions, Rogers and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation will turn to Trump, whose administration selected Huntsville to be the permanent headquarters of Space Command before Biden’s about-face.

“And if that [does] not happen, Trump’s gonna be there. He’s going to enforce what the secretary of the Air Force said under his administration and the secretary of the Air Force said under Biden’s administration,” Rogers told the outlet. “That is, Huntsville won the competition … and that’s where it should be and that’s where he’s going to build it.”

The headquarters has been in Colorado since the command was started while a review process was under way. That review concluded Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal was the best place for the command and the two states have gone back and forth since then as to whether the headquarters should move.

When the decision to keep the command in Colorado was made public, an NBC report indicated Alabama’s strong anti-abortion laws factored into the decision. The Biden administration maintained that politics did not play a role.