October 30, 2025 10:19 AM UTC

Colorado Sues To Stop Trump's Space Command Shenanigans

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Colorado Newsline’s Chase Woodruff reports, Attorney General Phil Weiser’s latest lawsuit against the Trump administration takes aim at the politically-motivated uprooting of the U.S. Space Command from its longtime home in Colorado Springs as a reward for political loyalty from the red state of Alabama:

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is suing President Donald Trump’s administration over its “retaliatory” decision to relocate U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Colorado on Wednesday, Weiser wrote that the president “could not have been clearer about his motivations” for the move, citing Trump’s comments during the Oval Office announcement last month acknowledging that Colorado’s elections, which he falsely described as “crooked,” were a “big factor” in his decision.

That admission makes Trump’s decision to vacate Space Command’s temporary location in Colorado — the latest twist in a years-long battle over the permanent home of Space Force headquarters — an unconstitutional violation of state sovereignty, Weiser said in a press conference.

“The executive branch isn’t allowed to punish, retaliate, or seek to coerce states who lawfully exercise powers that are reserved to them,” Weiser said. “And that includes the power to oversee the time, place and manner of elections.”

What this boils down to is thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in investment, an economic prize that Trump has dangled before Colorado voters since his first term–and only after voters in this state once again rejected Trump and his loyal local frontman Sen. Cory Gardner, in the closing days of Trump’s first term, given to Alabama as a blatant political gift that the Biden administration quickly put on ice. In 2023, Biden permanently awarded Space Command to Colorado, a decision Trump is now undoing because, well, he feels like it.

From Trump v. Anderson to the incarceration of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, Colorado is a standout target for political retaliation by Trump right up there with Harvard, and has promised “harsh measures” against the state if Gov. Jared Polis refuses to pardon or commute Peters’ sentence. Trump’s citing Colorado’s mail ballot system as a reason for his decision to uproot Space Command is an admission that the decision has nothing to do with the military’s best interests.

Weiser’s argument speaks to essential questions about the separation of powers, and whether Trump can conduct himself in office in this openly transactional manner. That’s a question with implications well beyond this one controversy:

The President’s decision to punish Colorado based on Colorado’s lawful exercise of its sovereign authority to regulate elections, and his threats to impose further harmful executive action, violate the Tenth Amendment, the Elections Clause, State sovereignty, and separation-of-powers principles. Under the Constitution, the Executive may not directly command Colorado to end mail-in voting. Nor may the Executive achieve this same result by punishing Colorado into submission. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the Constitution prohibits the use of retaliation, punishment, or other coercive action in response to the exercise of constitutional right or power. Any other rule would render the Constitution’s grants of powers and rights to the States and the people meaningless. It would allow the Executive to unlawfully seize powers not granted by the Constitution to “‘produce a result which (it) could not command directly.’” [Pols emphasis]

What Colorado is asking the courts to decide is whether the President of the United States is bound by the Constitution’s limits on executive power, or not.

Every Colorado politician agrees on keeping Space Command in our state. Reps. Gabe Evans and Jeff Crank sent a letter. Phil Weiser went to court. In the end, Republicans are forced to stop short of asking the question that matters.

Whether we have a President, or a king.