Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has taken the ongoing debate over where the U.S. Space Command should situate its new headquarters into a new stratosphere, after orbiting around social media Wednesday and claiming its top general said Huntsville, Alabama, is the location of preference.
On Wednesday, Tuberville tweeted: "Today, the Alabama delegation met with @US_SpaceCom Commander Gen [James] Dickinson. Just like the GAO [Government Accountability Office] and DoD IG [Department of Defense Inspector General] report Gen Dickinson confirmed Huntsville is the preferred location of Space Command headquarters. Enough is enough, it's time to bring @US_SpaceCom home to Huntsville."
However, to paraphrase the popular saying: Alabama, we may have a problem. The Hill reported Space Command has offered no official comment confirming either Dickinson's declaration or Tuberville's statement.
Since former President Donald Trump's final days in office, the decision on where to put Space Command's new, permanent headquarters has been viewed by many as a continued failure to launch. Though Trump established Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the unified combatant command's temporary residence, he also said Huntsville would ultimately be its permanent location.
The former president's declaration, however, contradicted the stated preference of the U.S. Air Force, whose academy is based near Space Command's temporary location. Colorado Springs is also home to three U.S. Space Force bases and more than two dozen military space missions.
The Hill reported that some have suggested Trump's controversial decision was in response to Colorado voters not backing him during the 2020 presidential election.
President Joe Biden fueled further controversy in May, when he reportedly decided to reconsider moving Space Command's headquarters out of Colorado Springs. Defense and congressional officials have speculated that the Biden administration's reverse course about relocating to Huntsville is politically charged, most notably due to Alabama's abortion laws, which are among the more stringent in the United States.
The Hill reported Thursday that the White House said keeping the headquarters in Colorado Springs would provide a strategic advantage, since doing so would not disrupt Space Command's mission. Both the administration and the Pentagon have denied that any reconsiderations have any connection to abortion access issues in Alabama.
Huntsville scored higher than Colorado Springs in a 2022 GAO assessment of potential locations. Additionally, the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command is in Huntsville, aka "Rocket City."
Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams urged in a letter to the Biden administration Wednesday that its decision to keep Space Command in Colorado Springs should be evaluated exclusively on its merits and strategic value, "rather than being entangled with the issue of abortion access."
Meanwhile, Tuberville is blocking any military officer promotions or nominations that the Biden administration has proposed. He is doing so due to a Pentagon policy that grants members of the military up to three weeks of leave to travel to have abortions, saying it violates federal law.