Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Staff via Getty
President Donald Trump has finally spoken in public, and while many wanted to know where he's been for the past week, his September 2 press conference largely avoided the elephant in the room that is his personal health.
Instead, President Trump's return to the White House was focused on the future of the USA's space endeavours when it comes to the military. Established during the first Trump administration, Space Force is one of the USA's six armed forces and serves as one of only two independent space forces in the world (alongside China's People's Liberation Army Aerospace Force).
In the much-anticipated briefing, the President confirmed the U.S. Space Command headquarters will now be grounded in the Deep South of Alabama. This ends years of arguing about where it should be located. Many clocked how this appears to be a way to punish Colorado after Kamala Harris won 54.13% of the vote in 2024. On the flip side of that, the deep-red Alabama saw Trump secure 64.57% of the vote.
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Speaking while flanked by Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, members of Alabama's congressional delegation, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the POTUS said he was surrounded by 'great Republicans'.
Confirming his vengeance against Colorado, Trump explained: "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 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."
However, keen to downplay further political drama, Hegseth chimed in to say this wasn't a motivation. Instead, the Defense Secretary reiterated the decision was made on the back of a Pentagon inspector general report that suggested Space Command be relocated to Huntsville, Alabama, and set up shop at the Redstone Arsenal facility.
In an official announcement from the Department of Defense, we're told that Huntsville will now be known as 'Rocket City'.
Alongside promises of 30,000 new jobs for Alabama, it's expected Rocket City will create billions of dollars in investment. Importantly, Spacecom is said to play a 'key role' in helping build the President's Golden Dome for America missile defense system plans.
Cheering the decision, Hegseth added: "What you're doing today, Mr. President, is restoring it to precisely where it should be based on what the Space Force, the Air Force, your leadership believes, will give us strategic advantage in the future."
Trump is returning to a major first-term policy, and when leaving office in January 2021, the Air Force reiterated its preferred location for the Space Command HQ would be Huntsville. Already nicknamed 'Rocket City' due to its history of building NASA rockets and being where the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command was located, it proved to be a popular choice.
Still, the Biden administration decided to keep Space Force at its supposedly temporary base in Colorado Springs. As well as being another military aerospace hub, thanks to hosting the Air Force Academy and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Biden administration argued that a move across the USA would disrupt daily schedules.
