Alabama’s far-right leaders cost state billions by blocking Space Force HQ move
When President Biden announced that Space Force Headquarters would remain in Colorado rather than move to Huntsville, Alabama, there was a sigh of disappointment heard across the state. We’ve allowed our far-right leaders to cost Alabama, us, billions of dollars.
Alabama’s leaders were warned that this could happen, yet they gleefully tied themselves to fighting culture wars on the heels of our citizens.
Access to abortion services and Senator Tuberville’s blockade of senior military promotions over the military’s abortion policy, was the biggest reason President Biden decided for Colorado over Alabama. Why? He, and our extreme right state leaders, apparently don’t believe women, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, can make their own decisions about their own bodies.
But that’s not all either. There are also transgender and gender-diverse servicemembers currently serving our nation in the Space Force as technicians and space scientists. Alabama’s deliberately discriminatory laws and bills attacking the rights of transgender and gender-diverse people in the state, and their march backward by halting conversations around race and diversity, has a direct and measurable impact on all minorities in the state, many of whom are active duty servicemembers and veterans.
“We are deeply saddened that Space Force HQ will stay in Colorado rather than move to Huntsville,” said Cassandra Williamson, Executive Director of the Alabama based Transgender and Diverse Veterans of America Action Group, “especially since this outcome could have been averted.”
She also said, “Our state leaders bargained away potentially billions in state revenue simply because they are beholden to an extreme far right ideology that does not truly represent the vast majority of conservatives.”
