It’s not a competition between 20th-century Cold War rivals, but it’s a space race nonetheless. For years, the partisan tug-of-war over the military’s interstellar arm has been an epic test of presidential wills. Now, with Donald Trump back in office, Space Command is reentering the orbit of the ideological. After a few years in Colorado Springs, the cutting-edge agency is moving to where plenty of experts thought the headquarters should have always been: Alabama.

People might have vague recollections of the scuffle over Space Command from a few years ago, when Joe Biden announced that he was scrapping Trump’s plans to put the branch in Huntsville to punish the state for its strong pro-life laws. At the time, administration officials were blunt about the decision. “The belief is they are delaying any move because of the abortion issue,” one U.S. official said of Biden’s motivations in 2023. Another told NBC, “This is all about abortion politics.”

The Democrats’ hyper-partisan reasons for pulling the plug on the original location were a shock to experts, who’d long concluded that Alabama — home to a number of the country’s leading scientists, aeronautic engineers, and rocket companies — was the most strategic home for the operation. In fact, the Department of Defense inspector general even conducted a review of the selection process to make sure that Trump’s choice was “factually sound and impartial,” given the Left’s outrage that the 45th president was somehow rewarding his red base. 

At the time, Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin actually defended the decision to move to Huntsville, The Washington Stand’s Dan Hart reported. “In addition, a Government Accountability Office assessment found that Huntsville ranked first ahead of Colorado Springs, and another review by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall also favored Huntsville as the top pick.” But Austin quickly changed his mind in a shift that both sides of the aisle criticized for “inserting politics” into what should have been a matter of national security. Some even blamed Biden for trying to punish Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville (R) for his months-long hold on military promotions, which he leveraged to try to stop the Pentagon’s taxpayer-funded abortion policy. 

But turnabout is fair play, Biden’s successor (and predecessor) has decided. In a statement this week, Trump pointed to the concerns over the blue state’s election system as another reason to pivot. “The problem I have with Colorado — one of the big problems — they do mail-in voting. They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections, and we can’t have that,” he pointed out, hinting at the many opportunities for fraud in the process. “When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections, because that’s what that means. So that played a big factor also.”

While the Left is criticizing Trump’s partisan decision-making (a rich accusation considering the Democrats’ insistence on letting the abortion lobby preempt logic two years ago), to be fair, “Rocket City” was his choice long before Biden hijacked the process. And it’s easy to see why, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) explained on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “Finally … we have another presidential decision that recognizes that … Alabama is the superior location for Space Command,” he told guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice. “… [This] was one of the things that [Trump] announced he was going to do back in January of 2021, right before he left office. But it was consistent with and in accord with a competition that had taken place. And the United States Air Force had determined that Redstone Arsenal, here in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama, was the superior place to locate Space Command because of all the things that we already do.”

Look, Brooks said, “We’re called the Rocket City, and what that [includes] is Huntsville, Alabama, Redstone Arsenal, [and] Marshall Space Flight Center. We’re pretty much the birthplace of America’s space program. … Plus,” he added, “we are the ones that have the physicists, the scientists, the engineers that, to a very large degree, either oversee the next technological breakthrough in weaponry or actually invent that next breakthrough that gives our warfighters a better capability of prevailing against our adversaries. So,” he explained, “you put all these things in place that we already have established at Redstone Arsenal, and it only makes sense that you would [headquarter] Space Command [here].”

And let’s be honest, Brooks stressed. “Over the long haul, our community is a much cheaper, [much] less expensive to the taxpayer [to house] Space Command. We’ve got workers who are available at lower cost. We’ve got housing that is available at lower cost. We have lower taxes … than we have, say, in a place like Colorado. And so, the cost argument is a false one. … We have more engineers per capita in this metropolitan area than any place in the United States. We have physicists and scientists just all around.”

In his mind, it was to the “detriment of the United States of America and our defense capabilities that the congressional delegation from Colorado, in conjunction with Joe Biden, reversed a merit-based decision. But,” he acknowledged, “give credit where credit is due. They did it for political reasons, and they were successful at achieving their goal, at least for some temporary point in time. But we cannot continue to fritter away time. Communist China is not waiting. They’re building superior weaponry, even as you and I speak.” People may not realize it, he added, “but probably close to 80 to 90% of the weaponry that the United States of America uses … is reliant upon space platforms.”

Hice agreed, noting that China and Russia are increasingly looking to deep orbit for military competition. “This is a strategic move,” he reiterated.

Looking back, Brooks shook his head, “Joe Biden and the Colorado delegation set us back three or four years by the political games that [they] played. But we’ve got to get our act together, and we’ve got to do what is necessary to adequately protect and promote our assets in space — or else we risk losing those kinds of assets.”

When it comes to national security, the last thing either party should be doing is politicizing decisions based on which corners of their base are the loudest. Maybe under Trump, objectivity — not ideological passion — will finally rule the day.