Every member of Colorado’s congressional delegation on Tuesday condemned President Donald Trump’s announcement that Space Command will move from its headquarters in Colorado Springs to Alabama in a joint statement charging that such a move would weaken national security and “will directly harm our state and the nation.”

“We are united in fighting to reverse this decision,” the lawmakers said, adding: “Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for U.S. Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”

The lawmakers warned that moving the command, which employs 1,700 active-duty service members across multiple branches and 1,000 civilian employees, could create “a disruption in the workforce that will take our national defense systems decades to recreate.”

“Moving Space Command sets our space defense apparatus back years, wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, and hands the advantage to the converging threats of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” the lawmakers said. “The Department of Defense Inspector General’s office has reported multiple times that moving the Command will impede our military’s operational capability for years.”

The rare bipartisan statement was signed by U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper and U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jeff Hurd, Lauren Boebert, Jeff Crank, Jason Crow, Brittany Pettersen and Gabe Evans.

Since Trump took office in January, members of the Colorado delegation have said they were working to keep Space Command in the state, even as multiple Alabama officials claimed that the announcement that it would be moving is imminent.

The tug-of-war over the military combatant unit’s permanent location stretches back to waning days of the first Trump administration, when Trump declared that Space Command would move from its temporary headquarters at Peterson Space Force Base to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The Biden administration, however, reversed the decision in July 2023, and by the end of the year the installation reached full operational capacity, according to the Pentagon.

Trump delivered the news Tuesday from the White House, flanked by Alabama’s two U.S. senators and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. During his remarks, Trump said that “a big factor” in his decision is Colorado’s all-mail election system.

“The problem I have with Colorado — one of the big problems — is they do mail-in voting,” Trump said. “They do all mail in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections. And we can’t have that.”

Calling Trump’s announcement “a deeply disappointing decision for our state and nation,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, in a statement called the move “the wrong decision, diminishing military readiness and national security and eroding the trust Americans have in our country and its leaders to do the right thing.”

Polis said that moving the command will “weaken national security and readiness, waste taxpayer dollars, and inconvenience military families.”

In addition, Polis called for “full transparency” and for the White House to provide “the full details of this poor decision.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said in a statement that the Trump administration “should not play political games with our nation’s military readiness and military families.”

Calling the decision “unlawful,” Weiser added that his office has been preparing for the possible announcement and was prepared to challenge the move in court.