Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) criticized President Biden’s decision Monday to keep the Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning former President Trump’s decision. The decision to transfer him to Alabama.
“Once Joe Biden took office, he paused the movement on that decision and brought politics into what was fair, objective competition — not because the facts had changed, but because the incumbent president’s political party had changed,” Tuberville said. in his statement.
Tuberville is locked in a standoff with the Pentagon over its abortion policy, with hundreds of Biden’s military nominations suspended in protest.
Some officials said Alabama’s restrictive abortion laws played a role in Space Command’s decision, though the White House said it was motivated by concerns that any major move would undermine military readiness.
It was “shameful” that the Biden administration had to wait until a congressional recess to make this decision, Tuberville wrote, noting that it came after the House and Senate passed versions of next year’s defense budget. The two chambers still need to draft a final version of the defense budget.
Colorado Springs, he claimed, did not even breach the first three headquarters sites in a review by the Air Force, trailing behind sites in Alabama, Nebraska and Texas.
“This decision to bypass the three most qualified sites resembles a blatant policy of nepotism, and sets a dangerous precedent that military bases will now be used as rewards for political backers and not for our own security,” he wrote.
Trump’s initial decision to move the headquarters to Alabama sparked allegations of political motivation on the part of the Democrats. Alabama voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the 2020 election and has two Republican senators, while Colorado voted for Biden and has two Democratic senators.
The battle to bring the headquarters to Alabama is “not over,” Tuberville said Monday, adding that House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers hopes the matter will continue to be investigated.
“This is not over yet. I will continue to fight this for as long as it takes to bring Space Command where it would be best served — Huntsville, Alabama,” he said.
Rogers said in a statement that he would Continue the commission’s investigation In moving the headquarters, also saying that “the fighting is far from over.”
“The shameful delay on the part of the Biden administration in finalizing a permanent base decision for US Space Command warrants a congressional investigation,” Rogers said.
I will continue this investigation to see if they intentionally misled the Armed Services Committee about the deliberate taxpayer-funded manipulation of the selection process. I will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for its flagrant political interference in our national security.”
Other Alabama Republicans, including Sen. Katie Brett and Gov. Kay Ivey, also took aim at Biden’s decision on Monday.
“President Biden has irresponsibly decided to take the military decision out of the Air Force’s hands in the name of partisan politics,” Brett said he said in a statement. “Huntsville ranked first in both the Air Force’s evaluation and selection phase, leaving no doubt that the Air Force’s decision to select Redstone as the preferred base location was entirely correct on the merits.”
“The White House’s choice not to locate Space Command in Alabama — the right choice — is simply the wrong national security decision,” Ivey said. Posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The fact that a CNN reporter first brought the news to Alabama should say it all.”
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