, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is seeking an estimated $2.7 billion appropriated to 13 states through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act during the Biden administration.

“This executive branch seems to think they have the power of the purse. They get to decide what’s funded. That’s not how our Constitution works,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who announced the lawsuit with California Attorney General Rob Bonta during a Wednesday news conference.

That’s why Colorado is suing the Trump administration for the 54th time, Weiser said.

“We’ve done it before, 57 other times,” Bonta said of his state’s lawsuits. “And today’s proof that we’ll do it again until Trump gets the message that California will not back down.”

The lawsuit said the federal funding terminated by the Department of Energy and the Office of Management and Budget is part of several billion dollars approved by Congress for “a broad array of funding for energy, technology and infrastructure development.”

In Colorado, Weiser said the approximately $600 million withheld includes nearly $300 million for Colorado State University to cut methane emissions from low-producing oil and gas wells.

More than $32 million was awarded to the Colorado School of Mines for the development of a carbon-storage hub in Pueblo. Another $8 million was approved for the development of new solar technology at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Colorado is committed to a clean energy future, protecting our land, air and water, and the types of grants that are literally being undermined by this action is what we need to do,” Weiser said.

The administration is targeting Democratic-led states with its cut-off of money for programs, he added. Withholding grants from Democratic states while allowing grants to go to Republican states “is a classic arbitrary and capricious action that cannot stand.”

Bonta, Weiser and Washington Attorney General Nicholas Brown are leading the lawsuit. The other plaintiffs are Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Lawsuits against the administration signed onto by Weiser, a Democratic candidate for governor, include a challenge of President Donald Trump’s decision to move U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama; moves to cancel more than $25 million in public health grants; not releasing billions of dollars to build charging stations for electric vehicles; and a hold-up in money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois issued a temporary restraining order Feb. 12 to keep the public health funds flowing, saying the states stood a good chance of proving the federal government violated the law.

Asked by reporters about the resources spent to fight the Trump administration in court, Weiser and Bonta said it has paid off for the states in terms of the return on dollars. Weiser said his office received an additional $600,000 in state funding, which is being used to work on federal litigation.

“We have protected over $1 billion in funding,” Weiser said.

Repeat, outbound, not inbound.

The UniGroup Cos., parent of United Van Lines and Mayflower, has measured the ratio of inbound moves to outbound moves for states since 1977. And for the vast majority of those years, Colorado has had a higher share of moves in than moves out. From 2013-17, not counting 2016, it was a “high inbound” state, with 55% or more of its moves inbound.

“2025 is the first year that Colorado has been listed as a high outbound state since 1990,” said Eily Cummings, vice president of corporate communications at United Van Lines.

In 1990, the state was dealing with the aftermath of an oil and real estate boom that got out of hand and resulted in massive job losses. Today, the jobs remain, but housing costs have greatly outstripped incomes, chewing away at affordability for new and old residents alike, in both urban and rural areas.

Colorado is now running with a different crowd demographically. New Jersey leads the country with nearly 70% of its moves outbound. New York, with its larger and older population and high living expenses, had the second-highest outbound ratio at 57.8%. Retirees are a big part of the outbound moves in both states.

California matched New York’s outbound rate. Historically, it has been a more balanced state, but it has shifted to the high outbound camp as workers follow corporate relocations. Tesla, SpaceX, McKesson, Chevron, Charles Schwab, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard Enterprises and Toyota North America are among the bigger names that have relocated from California to Texas.

A little bit ahead of Colorado was North Dakota, which has both one of the smallest populations in the country and one of the most extreme climates. It is hard to blame people for leaving a state where the record temperatures have ranged from a high of 121 degrees to a low of 60 degrees below zero, both in the same year, and where the economy is prone to boom and bust cycles.

“This report provides some interesting information, and the data may suggest there are challenges in some areas. I think outmigration is a big issue that has economic development implications. Those issues will likely be part of the 2026 elections,” said Broomfield economist Gary Horvath after reviewing the report.

Compared to 2019, Horvath notes that a higher share of people aged 55-plus and households with incomes above $150,000 are moving out. As for the state’s job opportunities and lifestyle, they have lost some of their drawing power. Whether that is temporary or a trend will determine the state’s future.

So, where are the former Colorado residents headed to? Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Virginia and nearby states like Kansas are where most of the moving trucks leaving Colorado stop to unload, Cummings said.

Looking at moves nationally, Oregon is the top state for its ratio of inbound moves at 64.5%. Jobs, especially in tech and health care, are drawing workers. But secondary cities like Eugene, not Portland, are the ones that are benefiting.

West Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, Minnesota and Idaho, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama and Nevada are the other “popular” states in terms of inbound moves, at least by United Van Lines counts. For Colorado, Alabama’s presence is noteworthy, given that the Trump administration plans to shift U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville.

One of the arguments for keeping the headquarters in place is that people want to live here, not in Alabama. But the United Van Line numbers are telling a different story.

Family has become the top reason for moving nationally, nudging out jobs, which were the main motivator before the pandemic, Cummings said. About 3 in 10 of Colorado movers, in either direction, cite family as the primary reason for relocating.

The largest age groups moving in both directions are 65-plus, followed by 55- to 64-year-olds. Combined, they accounted for six in 10 outbound moves and about 54% of inbound moves.

It is important to note the survey’s limitations. Although United Van Lines examined more than 100,000 moves, its customers tend to be established homeowners with families who can afford a full-service mover. A recent college graduate or young professional would be more inclined to rent a U-Haul trailer or borrow grandpa’s pickup truck and move themselves.

Colorado’s migration picture looks more balanced in a released Tuesday. The state moved into the 23rd spot for inbound moves by do-it-yourself movers last year after ranking 40th in 2024. Last decade and during the pandemic, the state was a regular visitor on the top 10 list for inbound moves.

Outbound moves surpassed inbound moves in 2024, but last year Metro Denver .

Texas, Florida and North Carolina were the three most popular inbound states, per the U-Haul study, while California, Illinois and New Jersey were the three states with the highest share of outbound moves.

Former state demographer Elizabeth Garner, in explaining the state’s shrinking domestic migration counts, said that Colorado continues to attract young adults on the move, but is seeing an increase in older households moving out.

A majority of movers captured in the United Van Lines had household incomes above $150,000 — about six in 10 of those moving in and 55% of those moving out. Some of those moves might reflect highly-paid remote workers who relocated during the pandemic being called back to the home office. But it could also be a signal that even $150,000 a year isn’t enough to afford Colorado.

About 5% of those leaving Colorado cited living costs as the primary reason for the move. That may not seem like a lot, but it is one of the highest shares cited in any state, given that people don’t like to admit they can’t afford the place they once called home.

“A lot of people don’t choose cost of living. That is telling. The only states that are higher on that are California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Montana,” Cummings said.

Within Colorado, Fort Collins is the only “strong inbound” metro area left. Boulder and Grand Junction are balanced. Denver and Colorado Springs are at 57% outbound, higher than the state average, while Greeley matches the state average at 55%.

And then there is Pueblo, where three people moved out for every person moving in. Its 75% outbound ratio was third third-highest in the country of any city. If there is a bright side to that dire number, it is that things have improved from 2024, when 81% of the moves were outbound.

About the only thing supporting population growth in Colorado the past couple of years has been international migration, but that is slowing sharply. If the United Van Line numbers are right, the state can’t expect domestic migration, already weak, to fill in the gap.

Cummings notes that there is a discernible shift nationally of younger adults leaving large metro areas for smaller- to medium-sized metro areas that are more affordable. If families, not jobs, remain the biggest driver of moves, and if the state’s young adults have to move elsewhere to afford a home, then outbound flows could continue.

Colorado’s population is younger than that of other outbound states, but aging, and the lure of being closer to grandchildren or living in a milder climate, could fuel more departures in the years ahead.

And in that regard, Colorado risks heading down the path of New Jersey, which has been a high outbound state for the past 15 years. Like Colorado, it is considered a “launch” state able to attract young professionals. But it has become a state where its oldest residents are symbolically raising the unofficial New Jersey state bird in the rear view mirror as they head out on the turnpike.

Led by the  the new organization wants to strengthen the state’s position as a national leader in the industry. The foundation is the nonprofit, educational arm of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

The Aerospace & Defense Alliance is an initiative of the chamber’s “Vision 2033: Blueprint for Colorado’s Future.” The plan grew out of talking to chambers of commerce around the state over two years and an analysis by economists of Colorado’s economy and business climate.

The blueprint looks at challenges and areas where Colorado is competitive, said Rachel Beck, executive director of the chamber foundation. “We have some tailwinds and one of those was aerospace.”

Colorado’s aerospace industry is the country’s second-largest, behind only California. The state has the most aerospace employees per capita in the nation. Approximately 2,000 aerospace businesses employ 55,000 people directly and another 184,000 directly, according to the

Nearly $23 billion in federal contracts went to Colorado aerospace and defense companies from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.

Beck said the aim of the new space alliance is to ensure that Colorado’s aerospace and defense industries continue to be strong and grow. The group, which includes industry representatives, wants to make sure Colorado’s interests are known in Washington, D.C.

“We want to make sure that those companies stay here, they come here, they grow here and they don’t go to other states instead,” she said.

U.S. Space Command is one that’s getting away. President Donald Trump announced in September that he will move the command to Huntsville, Ala., the spot he chose during his first term as president. Joe Biden had reversed Trump’s decision and declared Colorado Springs as the command’s permanent home.

Losing Space Command “was a bit of a red flag,” Beck said.

The Air Force cited cost and other factors in 2021 when it identified Army Redstone Arsenal in Alabama as the preferred location for the new U.S. Space Command.

But Trump also raised politics when he said one of the factors in his decision was that voters in Colorado mostly vote by mail. He has said he wants to calling them “corrupt.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is suing over the Trump administration’s decision.

“We think the data showed that Colorado was the best place for Space Command,” Beck said. “I think that the business community and the state did a great job of pulling together to advocate for that. It’s clear to me that the industry does have a lot of advocates and a lot of allies who understand how important the industry is here.”

Beck said the Colorado Chamber Foundation doesn’t intend to duplicate the work being done by other advocates, including the and the. She said folks in the industry expressed the need to communicate more with people at the federal level about “what����ap happening in Colorado and what we bring to the table.”

The alliance will be headed by Christie Lee, director of state and local affairs at United Launch Alliance, and Chad Vorthmann, government relations representative at Lockheed Martin Space.

One of the first plans is to work with economists on a comprehensive analysis of Colorado’s aerospace and defense industries.

At the top of his list of reasons for taking the legal action, Weiser said during an online news conference, was President Donald Trump publicly citing Colorado’s mail-in balloting system as a “big factor” in last month’s decision to authorize the relocation of the facility. It will move from Peterson Space Force Base to Redstone Arsenal in Alabama in coming years.

“We are filing this lawsuit today in federal District Court in Denver to challenge a decision to move Space Command as a form of punishment, because Colorado chooses to exercise its authority to have a mail-in voting system,” he said. “This action is unconstitutional because in our Constitution, the executive branch isn’t allowed to punish, retaliate or seek to coerce states who lawfully exercise powers that are reserved to them.”

Those powers held by Colorado, Weiser said, include the authority to “oversee the time, place and manner of elections.” In the lawsuit, he described Colorado’s election system, with its multiple ways for voters to cast their ballots, as the “gold standard” for access and enfranchisement.

Colorado voters by 5 percentage points in the 2016 election and by more than 10 percentage points in 2020 and 2024.

�հ��ܳ�����announced the relocation of Space Command from the White House on Sept. 2. As part of his remarks, he said: “The problem I have with Colorado … 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.”

Within minutes of that announcement, Weiser said his office would file suit to attempt to block it.

The resulting lawsuit, which names Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink as defendants, says the president’s actions illegally encroach on states’ rights.

“The President����ap 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,” the .

The suit also accuses the president of violating “statutory requirements mandating detailed processes and public disclosures through the submission of reports to Congress before taking action to relocate a major military headquarters.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, a Republican who represents Colorado Springs in Congress, showed no support for Weiser’s challenge on Wednesday. That’s despite having signed on to a statement last month — alongside the state’s entire congressional delegation — saying Trump’s decision “will directly harm our state and the nation.”

The lawmakers on Sept. 2 said Space Command was “already fully operational” at Peterson and that the president’s move “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.”

On Wednesday, Crank accused Weiser of pursuing a “politically motivated and novel legal theory that is opposed by almost every leader in our community.”

“I remain focused on productive efforts on fighting for El Paso County and its future as a critical part of our national defense,” Crank said in the email statement.

In Alabama, that state’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, that he was ready to fight to keep Space Command in his state if Colorado challenged the president’s decision.

“Bring it on,” Marshall said. “We’re prepared to be able to defend (the move), and I think we’ll win very easily.”

Weiser, during his news conference, said he was taking action now in hopes that a judge would “put a pause” on the decision.

“Our objective here is to make sure that while this lawsuit is pending, no actions happen, and in many of the lawsuits that we filed, that is one of the forms of relief we’ve been able to obtain,” he said of the dozens of lawsuits his office has filed to challenge varying Trump actions.

Weiser, who is running as a Democratic candidate for Colorado governor next year, said the suit filed Wednesday was Colorado’s 41st against the Trump administration since the Republican president took office for a second term in January.

The permanent location of Space Command headquarters — which is responsible for the nation’s military operations in outer space — has been a political hot potato since the end of Trump’s first administration. His successor, Democrat Joe Biden, opted not to act on Trump’s initiation of a move to Huntsville, citing the potential disruptions to Space Command.

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates that Space Command supports nearly 1,400 direct jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the Colorado Springs economy. The state has a significant Space Force presence, hosting half the bases with its major operations, including Peterson as well as Schriever Space Force Base in the Colorado Springs area and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora.

Space Command’s functions include conducting operations like enabling satellite-based navigation and troop communication and providing warning of missile launches.

formally started in November 2024 after about eight years of developing and testing technology that uses programmed tiles that autonomously assemble themselves to form modular structures and reconfigure when needed. Strong magnets help the tiles click in place.

The tiles can be stacked in a rocket and released at their destination to start forming a structure. During a TED talk in April, inventor of the patented technology and co-founder of Rendezvous Robotics, said her team jokes the process is like “a glorified” PEZ candy dispenser.

The magnets bring the modular tiles together to “dock, to rendezvous,” Ekblaw said. “Think about space Legos with magnets that click, click, click into place.”

The company opened for business a few weeks ago in Golden. Rendezvous recently secured $3 million in pre-seed funding to commercialize the technology invented while Ekblaw was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The funding was led by Aurelia Foundry and 8090 Industries, with participation from ATX Venture Partners, Mana Ventures and a group of other investors. Most of the company’s 10 staffers, including Joe Landon, are in the Denver area.

Landon, Rendezvous co-founder and president, has worked for other aerospace companies, including Lockheed Martin in Jefferson County. He first met Ekblaw through his work at Lockheed. He, Ekblaw and Phil Frank, co-founder and CEO of Rendezvous, settled on the Denver area as the company’s home.

“It wasn’t just convenient that Joe was there and that there is a great talent pool in the Denver metro area in aerospace and defense, but a lot of people wanted to move there,” said Frank, an experienced technology executive and self-described serial entrepreneur who lives outside of Boston.

Members of the Rendezvous team previously worked for NASA and such companies as SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and Nokia. The company is looking at serving clients in both the commercial and defense sectors and was keeping an eye on whether President Donald Trump would move U.S. Space Command out of Colorado.

Last month, Trump announced that Space Command would be moved to Alabama, reversing the Biden administration’s decision to keep the headquarters in Colorado Springs. The decision didn’t deter Rendezvous from locating in Colorado. Landon said there’s so much space and defense activity and military facilities stretching along the Front Range, from Boulder to Colorado Springs.

“Quite a few of the folks that we will need to talk to are still going to be here,” Landon said.

The staff could grow by as many as 50 people within a year, Landon added. And in the next year, Rendezvous expects to demonstrate its technology on the International Space Station. The technology called TESSERAE — Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments — has previously been tested on the space station as well as in low Earth orbit and on flights simulating weightlessness.

The goal is to more easily build infrastructure in space. A significant obstacle now is being able to get the building blocks where they’re needed.

“What we’re looking at is an alternative to the way we build spacecraft systems today, which is we have to build them on the ground,” Landon said. “And we have to design them to be folded up and then unfolded once they get into space because they have to fit into a rocket.”

The International Space Station and James Webb Space Telescope took numerous trips to space to construct, Frank said. Astronauts building the space station were put in harm’s way, he added.

Using Rendezvous Robotics’ technology, Frank said the company can progressively send more and more material up and build bigger and bigger structures. He said the company will try to use more consumer electronics to make the process faster and less expensive.

“We’re not going to use a person with a joystick sitting on the ground,” Frank said. “We’re going to program the software to be able to figure out how to do it on its own.”

During her TED talk, Ekblaw said applications of the technology might include building factories to manufacture products such as therapeutic drugs that are easier to manufacture in a low-gravity environment. “It turns out that in microgravity protein crystals grow differently. Certain types of tissues grow faster or mature better.”

Another possibility is to assemble thousands of solar panels in orbit, Ekblaw said. Sunlight could be captured and beamed to Earth, even at night.

Ekblaw founded the a nonprofit space architecture research and development lab, education and outreach center.

The conditions in low orbit, 100 to 1,200 miles above the Earth, can make for easier manipulation of materials, speed up development cycles and provide new insights into research on cures for diseases because cell cultures grow differently. More businesses are interested in taking advantage of the properties of space, according to

Among General Manager Sam Avina’s regulars are members of the 1,400-person U.S. Space Command, who work just a few hundred yards away inside the secure perimeter of Peterson Space Force Base. Over the next few years, their visits to his diner will dwindle as President Donald Trump’s decision to move the command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama, takes shape.

But the loss of those customers won’t threaten the long-term viability of Sandy’s, which has been in operation on Space Village Way since the 1970s, Avina said.

“It’s an institution,” he said of his restaurant, as a small line formed at the cash register behind him during a recent lunch rush, “and the area is growing.”

Sandy’s story serves as a microcosm of how the broader Colorado Springs economy is expected to fare as the beginning of the end for U.S. Space Command in Colorado comes into view — the result of a fierce yearslong political battle between two presidential administrations over where the combatant command responsible for all U.S. military operations in space should permanently land.

While few in this city of half a million were happy with the president’s decision to relocate Space Command, there’s little sense among industry types and civic boosters that the move will be an economic deathblow to a city with five military installations, including the U.S. Air Force Academy, in a region served by more than employing more than 100,000 people.

According to the , El Paso County far outpaces every other Colorado county when it comes to defense contractor spending and defense personnel spending — at $2.9 billion and $3.3 billion in fiscal year 2023, respectively.

“It’s a huge sector of our economy in the state of Colorado and will continue to be,” said Johnna Reeder Kleymeyer, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs Chamber and Economic Development Corporation. “We’re disappointed (in the president’s decision) but now we have some certainty.”

Mark Stafford, owner and CEO of Delta Solutions & Strategies LLC, said Colorado Springs is resilient enough to weather the move economically but wonders what impact losing a marquee facility like U.S. Space Command, which delivers space capabilities to all branches of the military, could have on the city’s standing.

Delta has several contracts with Space Command providing defense and government support services.

“Prestige and perception will take a hit,” Stafford said.

Which is why Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade, along with economic development officials and county commissioners, are headed to Washington, D.C., this week to meet with members of the Pentagon and Congress to ensure the city continues to play a major role in what promises to be a burgeoning part of American military readiness, as .

Mobolade wants his city’s aerospace sector to have a major hand in developing Golden Dome, an air defense system touted by the Trump administration that would — similar to, but much larger than, Israel’s Iron Dome.

Just a day before Mobolade sat down with The Denver Post in his sixth-floor office in downtown Colorado Springs earlier this month, space and missile defense company Mobius announced it would be opening a new office in the city, and with it, 75 new high-paying jobs.

“We were a strong aerospace, defense, cyber security community before the Air Force established Space Command — it’s 40% of our economy,” the mayor said. “We were strong before. We’re going to be strong afterwards.”

Long-lasting political tussle

The fight over U.S. Space Command’s permanent location stretches back the better part of a decade. In 2019, Trump, in his first term, at Peterson Space Force Base as a standalone entity after a 17-year dormancy.

But in the waning days of Trump’s first administration, the president decided to make Space Command’s permanent home at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville — pending an environmental review.

That review was completed approximately nine months into President Biden’s term in 2021 and found no significant impact from Alabama being the command site. But the new administration did not act on the finding. Instead, in mid-2023, the Biden White House said the headquarters would remain at Peterson, citing a potential disruption in readiness and the time that would be lost relocating staff across the country.

Cost and mission readiness has been a common refrain against the Space Command move from Colorado politicians on both sides of the aisle ever since — right up to the day Trump announced his decision on Sept. 2. In a rare , made up of eight members of Congress and a pair of U.S. senators, the assessment was blunt: “Bottom line — moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time.”

In a statement sent to the Post last week, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow said the relocation of U.S. Space Command “eliminates Colorado jobs, wastes millions of taxpayer dollars and makes America less safe.”

An attempt to reach the office of Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, who represents Colorado Springs, went unanswered.

“Colorado has a highly-skilled workforce, and America cannot afford to sideline this talent and lose the new space race — yet this decision hands the advantage to America’s adversaries,” said Crow, a Democrat and a former Army officer.

But Trump’s victory last fall gave Alabama officials renewed hope that Huntsville, known as for its long history in the rocket and space industries and as home of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, could claim U.S. Space Command as its own.

Just a couple of weeks after Trump’s November win, Colorado’s elected leaders began the mad scramble to persuade the president to keep the command at Peterson with a letter. That was followed by another entreaty in April, this time by just the Republican half of the state’s congressional delegation.

But the smart money at that point said it was just a matter of time before the president would act on his original commitment to make Alabama the permanent command headquarters. That moment arrived the day after Labor Day with an announcement from the Oval Office.

Citing Colorado’s system of mail-in voting as “a big factor” in his decision, Trump congratulated the Alabama delegation and playfully asked them “to leave me alone now” — an indication of just how hard the behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts had been on both sides.

But the decision was no laughing matter to Colorado officials. Attorney General Phil Weiser immediately threatened to sue the Trump administration to keep the command in Colorado, that his office is “very confident in our ability to defend whatever allegations are made.”

And Crow, in his statement to the Post, made clear that he doesn’t believe the fight is over.

“I will continue fighting to keep Space Command in Colorado,” he said.

‘So many other space jobs’

For now, experts and others are trying to determine just what the economic and reputational damage might be to Colorado Springs from the move, and whether it could impact U.S. Space Command’s mission readiness.

Kari Bingen, senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the issue is more complicated than the way some in Colorado are portraying it. The relocation, while it may appear to be a whimsical act on the part of the president, has been studied thoroughly with multiple evaluations done by the and the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

“There was a process and objective criteria, and that’s what the GAO was asked to look at twice,” she said.

One of those GAO reports, , concluded that Huntsville was the preferred site largely due to lower costs. While U.S. Space Command at Peterson was deemed “fully operational,” the report noted that “the current command posture is not sustainable long-term…”

The command currently operates out of four buildings, two on “military installations” and two in leased facilities “located in commercial and residential areas” of Colorado Springs. The report describes “aging infrastructure that cannot fully support the dynamic information technology requirements of the Command.”

The “ad hoc” facilities in Colorado Springs are “inefficient and cumbersome, adversely affecting both mission and command and control,” the GAO states.

“U.S Space Command proposed a construction project for a new multi-story, permanent headquarters facility to replace its current temporary and leased facilities,” the report said.

Those challenges, and the $1.5 billion price tag the GAO cited to rectify them, likely contributed to the military choosing Redstone Arsenal in Alabama as the permanent home of U.S Space Command, Bingen said. Colorado Springs’ best bet at this point, she said, is to position itself optimally for other aerospace and defense initiatives.

“Let’s execute on the decision so we can focus on the mission operational challenges and capabilities ahead,” Bingen said. “I’m not worried for Colorado Springs. It’s clearly an epicenter of national security and space activities.”

There’s also a question of whether all of Colorado’s U.S. Space Command positions would have to move east. The command already has personnel in two other states — at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

“Do all the elements of a combatant command need to be located in the same city?” Bingen said. “No.”

Air Force Maj. Chris Bowyer-Meeder, a public affairs officer with U.S. Space Command at Peterson Space Force Base, said it was too early to talk about the “logistical impacts” of the move.

“U.S. Space Command will expeditiously carry out the direction of the President following last week’s announcement of Huntsville, Alabama, as the command’s permanent headquarters location, while continuing to execute our vital national security missions,” he said in a statement to the Post.

Even absent Space Command, Colorado Springs will have plenty of personnel from the U.S. military’s Space Force branch, which has more than 14,000 military and civilian members, called Guardians, across the nation. Peterson and Schriever Space Force Base, both in Colorado Springs, and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora together make up half the bases with major Space Force operations.

Then there’s the private sector. L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies are among the more than 200 companies in that sector with a presence in Colorado Springs. Delta Solutions, based in the city, works with 150 subcontractors in its support of military and space projects.

“There are so many other space jobs in Colorado Springs,” said Stafford, Delta’s CEO.

He’s looking to expand on the 25,000 square feet Delta already occupies in the city.

Raymond Gonzales, who serves as president of the Denver Metro Economic Development Corporation and as head of the Colorado Space Coalition, said private aerospace employment has leapt 35% along the Front Range in the last decade — to 57,000 workers across 2,500 companies.

Another dozen “active prospects” in the industry are in the pipeline to commence business in Colorado’s urban corridor in the coming years, he said.

“Colorado’s aerospace economy is not dependent on where U.S. Space Command is,” Gonzales said.

Space’s ‘sizzle factor’

Perhaps more elusive than sizing up the economic impact of Space Command’s migration is what such a move could do to Colorado Springs’ image as a leader in space. John Boyd, principal of The Boyd Co., a corporate site selection firm, said there’s no doubt about the prestige U.S. Space Command lends a city.

“There’s no industry that has the sizzle factor like space,” he said. “It’s a tremendous economic development recruiting tool.”

That was evident the day after Trump made his decision known. In front of a screen that bore the words “Huntsville Welcomes U.S. Space Command — You’ve Landed in a Smart Place,” a gathering of .

“Huntsville, and Team Redstone, are mission-ready to support Space Command with our highly skilled workforce, strong military community and a city that embraces innovation,” Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said, making sure to emphasize some of the road and infrastructure improvements the area was undertaking.

On the positive side, Boyd said, is that the hit to Colorado Springs’ prestige of a Space Command migration would be far greater if the city wasn’t already well regarded for its aerospace prowess.

“The reputation and stature of Colorado Springs is well known,” he said. “It will be able to weather this storm.”

That’s how Steve Kanatzar, who founded The Airplane Restaurant nearly 25 years ago on the west boundary of Peterson Space Force Base, sees it.

Kanatzar’s restaurant, which features an eye-catching Boeing KC-97 Air Force plane inside of which diners can eat, has hosted high-level foreign military officials attending the Space Symposium at the Broadmoor Hotel, among other aviation and space enthusiasts.

“You hate to see anyone leave the state,” he said.

But 80% of his customers are locals and tourists, he said. The departure of U.S. Space Command won’t collapse his business.

The last time he worried about the future of his eatery had nothing to do with the military installation next door. It came five years ago during the pandemic, when government orders closed his restaurant for weeks.

“If you put COVID into the picture, nothing will compare with that,” he said.

First, he said voters in Alabama supported his re-election in 2024 by 47 points.

Second, he said that Colorado’s mail-in ballots allow election fraud.

The president of the United States held a press conference on a major decision and told Americans that it was based on his political popularity in one state and a gross lie that he has perpetuated since he lost his first bid for re-election and tried to illegally remain in office.

So we will set the record straight.

Trump won Alabama by almost 31 points in 2024.

Funny thing is that he also won El Paso County in 2024 – by almost 10 points.

Guess that wasn’t enough to sway the president����ap decision as he callously explained.

“We love Alabama. I only won it by about 47 points. I don’t think that influenced my decision, though, right? Right?” Trump quipped with Alabama Sen. Katie Britt standing to one side and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth standing on the other, sharing in a laugh because we all know the answer to that rhetorical question.

We’ve detailed all the ways that keeping the Space Command in El Paso County at Peterson Space Force Base makes sense. It would save time and money by not moving the temporary headquarters out of state. It allows for vast efficiencies because of its proximity to other key military bases in Colorado Springs – the National Space Defense Center, the U.S. Northern Command, North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain Space Force Station, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The Air Force Academy is producing new cadets for the Space Force every year, and Space Force also has a significant presence at Aurora’s Buckley Space Force Base.

Trump isn’t the first president to make a politically motivated decision like this, but he is the first to gloat openly about using his power to punish a state for not supporting his re-election. The message the president is sending is clear — get on board with team Trump or he will try to hurt your state. Trump could have instead lauded Huntsville’s infrastructure or mentioned “Rocket City’s” low cost of living (the main reason Huntsville was selected as the new home for the command during his first term in office). Trump highlighted the political reasons to move the command to send a warning.

And this is par for the course. Since taking office, Trump has flouted long-held ethical standards meant to protect the American people from a president who is full of anger and wrath, and to prevent corruption of our great nation.

We hope this decision and his attack on Colorado will help sway voters in places like El Paso County when Trump tries to retain office in just a few short years.

“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,” Trump said. “That played a big factor also.”

Colorado’s mail-in ballots are secure, and despite Trump’s claims, repeated audits done by hand have shown that the 2020 election results in Colorado were not fraudulent. The list of voters who participated in the election is public, and despite hours of scouring the list, there is no evidence that any of those voters are fake.

Ballots are tied to individual voters and were audited in counties across the state.

There is simply no evidence that Colorado’s mail-in elections allow widespread fraud, and certainly no evidence that the ballot machines were rigged as Trump continues to claim, supporting his unconstitutional bid to remain in the White House after he lost in 2020.

But Coloradans should not despair at the unfortunate turn the executive branch has taken.

This bad decision has at least united our entire congressional delegation. Our Republican elected representatives, Jeff Hurd, Jeff Crank, Lauren Boebert and Gabe Evans, joined our Democratic representatives, Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Jason Crow, and Brittany Pettersen, in denouncing the move.

U.S. Senators John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet also joined the letter, making the sentiment unanimous.

“We are united in fighting to reverse this decision,” they wrote. “Bottom line – moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time. … Colorado Springs is the appropriate home for U.S. Space Command, and we will take the necessary action to keep it there.”

Well done.

Such a united front gives us hope that, as President Donald Trump continues to exceed his constitutionally granted authority, our elected representatives will stand strong. For now, it is about Space Command, but soon we will need both the House and the Senate to affirm that states are allowed to hold their elections as they see fit without dangerous federal meddling.

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More than seven months after his return to office, Trump’s long-expected announcement that his administration would move the command to Alabama reversed to keep its headquarters in Colorado Springs. A military review previously had recommended the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, but the Republican president also invoked politics by saying one of the considerations was that voters in Colorado largely vote by mail.

Trump punishes Colorado for voting against him by moving Space Command (Editorial)

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he was planning a legal challenge to try to stop the relocation. And in a joint statement, the state's entire congressional delegation said the president's decision "will directly harm our state and the nation."

Space Command, the lawmakers stated, is "already fully operational" in Colorado Springs and relocating it "would not result in any additional operational capabilities." The move "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 delegation wrote.

Trump spoke from the White House and was surrounded by members of the Alabama congressional delegation, along with Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In citing Colorado's mail voting system as one of the factors, Trump seized on a longtime fixation.

He has long criticized the practice and has cited it as a major reason he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. He has not provided evidence of fraud emanating from mail-in ballots.

"I will say I want to thank Colorado," Trump said Tuesday. "The problem I have with Colorado ... 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."

He called Colorado's mail-in voting system a "big factor" in his Space Command decision.

Gov. Jared Polis called it "the wrong decision" in a statement.

“Colorado Springs is home to a proud military community and a thriving aerospace ecosystem, and significant national security missions and units, all of which are critical to U.S. Space Command," he said. "Coloradans and Americans should all be provided full transparency and the full details of this poor decision.”

In recent weeks, members of Alabama's congressional delegation that the relocation of Space Command to the Redstone Arsenal was all but certain, citing conversations with Trump or the White House.

At the same time, Colorado representatives have been pushing to keep the command in Colorado Springs. In early April, the four Republicans in its congressional delegation outlining their desire to see the command remain in Colorado.

On Tuesday, Colorado's delegation, made up of eight members of Congress and a pair of U.S. senators, warned in the new statement that many of the people who work at Peterson Space Force Base -- where the command has been headquartered for more than half a decade -- "will leave the industry altogether, creating a disruption in the workforce that will take our national defense systems decades to recreate."

"We are united in fighting to reverse this decision," the statement says. "Bottom line -- moving Space Command headquarters weakens our national security at the worst possible time."

$1 billion economic impact

The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates that Space Command supports nearly 1,400 direct jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the Colorado Springs economy. The state has a significant Space Force presence, hosting half the bases with its major operations, including Peterson as well as Schriever Space Force Base in the Colorado Springs area and Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora.

Nationally, the Space Force branch, which is separate from Space Command, has more than 14,000 military and civilian members, who are called Guardians.

The Colorado Space Coalition, a business-oriented group led by the chamber and the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation, lambasted Trump's decision Tuesday, saying the relocation is "unnecessary and risks disrupting a mission-critical command at a time when national security demands stability, speed and excellence."

"Colorado’s aerospace ecosystem is unmatched in talent, infrastructure and innovation, and has proven time and again it is the optimal home for Space Command," the coalition wrote in a statement.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said the command's 1,400 or so jobs were expected to transition to Redstone Arsenal over the next five years.

Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade expressed disappointment over the move. The president's decision, he said, "threatens operational continuity at a time when space-related threats are only increasing."

"U.S. Space Command reached full operational capability in 2023 because of the unmatched talent here in Colorado Springs, much of which will not relocate," Mobolade said. "Losing that expertise in relocation risks mission success and wastes billions in taxpayer dollars."

Weiser came out swinging Tuesday morning, even before Trump made the relocation announcement official.

His office, he said, was prepared to challenge Trump's decision in court, though he did not elaborate on the legal rationale for a lawsuit.

But Hegseth said at the afternoon press conference that Trump "is restoring (Space Command) to precisely where it should be based."

"And you, through the Air Force, independently identified that Huntsville, Alabama, was the right place to put it," he said, turning to the president.

A political hot potato

The permanent location of Space Command headquarters has been a political hot potato since the end of Trump's first administration.

Space Command, which is responsible for the nation’s military operations in outer space, was established at Peterson Space Force Base (then Peterson Air Force Space) in Colorado Springs in 1985 but was later folded into another military division.

It under Trump. But in the waning days of his first tenure in the White House, the president decided to move it to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal -- pending an environmental review.

That review was completed approximately nine months into President Biden’s term in 2021 and found no significant impact with Alabama as the command site. But the administration did not act on the decision.

Instead, in mid-2023, the Biden White House said it would keep the headquarters at Peterson, citing the time that would be lost relocating staff to Huntsville and a potential disruption in readiness.

At the time, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville called Biden's decision shameful and vowed that the fight over the command’s home was “absolutely not over.”

On Tuesday, Tuberville said Redstone Arsenal was the right place for Space Command.

"We have 40,000 people there. We have the FBI here. We have missile defense there," he said. "We have NASA, Blue Origin and SpaceX. It is the perfect place for Space Command."

Space Command’s functions include conducting operations like enabling satellite-based navigation and troop communication and providing warning of missile launches.

Huntsville, nicknamed , has long been home to Redstone and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is also located in Huntsville, which drew its nickname because of its role in building the first rockets for the U.S. space program.

In January, when Trump began his second presidential term, speculation bubbled up again that he likely would move Space Command east. Even U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, an avid Trump supporter, urged the president to keep the facility in Colorado Springs, citing a minimum $2 billion price tag for relocation.

In April, the Defense Department inspector general it could not determine why Colorado was chosen over Alabama. The inspector general’s report, , said this was partly due to a lack of access to senior defense officials from the Biden administration, when the review began.

The Air Force in early 2021 had identified Redstone Arsenal as for the new Space Command. The city was picked after site visits to six states that compared factors such as infrastructure capacity, community support and costs to the Defense Department.

On Tuesday, Trump said the decision to place the command in Alabama was "wrongfully obstructed by the Biden administration." In a moment of levity, the president indicated that he was glad the long-awaited decision was behind him.

Turning to members of the Alabama congressional delegation, he asked them if they were done trying to lobby him on Space Command.

"You are going to leave me alone now," Trump said. "You're not going to call me anymore and talk about this subject, right?"

Staff writers Seth Klamann and Nick Coltrain and the Associated Press contributed to this story.

“We’re not waiting to make our case,” U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank said in an early morning video call with reporters. “We’re making our case and we’re doing it right now. We’re going to continue to fight — it makes sense that it be in Colorado. It’s already in Colorado.”

Crank is a freshman who represents the 5th Congressional District where , home to Space Command, sits. He was joined by Reps. Lauren Boebert, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd, who spoke from an office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Members of Alabama’s congressional delegation , with U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers saying on a podcast that contractors are “ready to turn dirt” on a future Space Command headquarters at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville.

Rogers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Auburn University’s  Tuesday that he expected a final decision from the Trump administration this month.

“We do expect it to be announced right after the Air Force secretary is named,” he said.

President Donald Trump in January to lead the Air Force. He hasn’t been confirmed to the post yet.

But Colorado’s Republicans were hopeful that no move would happen.

“I’ve asked many of our senior military leaders: What is the military value of moving Space Command out of Colorado Springs?” Crank said Thursday. “And, point blank, they say there isn’t any.”

Evans, who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional District and is an Army veteran, said he was encouraged by the fact that Trump didn’t immediately move Space Command upon taking office nearly three months ago — shortly after the November election.

“There were a lot of rumors swirling that this was going to be one of those first executive orders dropped on Jan. 20,” Evans said. “As we all know, there was no executive order on Day 1 talking about Space Command.”

Space Command, which is responsible for the nation’s military operations in outer space, was . Located first in Colorado Springs, it was set to move to Alabama after Trump announced that state as his selection for a permanent headquarters in the waning days of his first administration in early 2021.

But former President Joe Biden later and the command remained in Colorado. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce estimates it supports nearly 1,400 jobs and has a $1 billion impact on the local economy.

Huntsville, home to some of the earliest missiles used in the nation’s space programs, scored higher than Colorado Springs in a Government Accountability Office assessment of potential locations for the command. That same office, however, gave the selection process low marks for documentation, credibility and impartiality and said that senior U.S. officials who were interviewed conveyed that remaining in Colorado Springs “would allow U.S. Space Command to reach full operational capability as quickly as possible.”

With rising military threats from Russia and China, Boebert said Thursday that it was “even more critical for Space Command to avoid being moved across the country.”

The minimum $2 billion price tag to relocate the command would undermine the priorities the administration has set with its budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency office.

“It really flies in the face of the DOGE operations that are taking place,” the congresswoman said on the call.

The Republican delegation on Monday outlining Colorado’s position on the issue. They wrote that a move to Alabama “would introduce unnecessary risks, disrupt established operations and waste valuable resources.”

The state’s Democratic members of Congress, along with both of the state’s Democratic U.S. senators, have also been vocal about keeping the Space Command in Colorado.

On Thursday’s call, Crank said that with the president’s announcement during his first week back in office of the creation of the — a futuristic network of U.S. weapons in space designed to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch — it’s all the more critical to keep Space Command in Colorado.

“We have to have this seamless coordination between (Colorado Springs-based) Northern Command and Space Command, especially if we’re going to be successful implementing Golden Dome,” he said. “They literally share the same parking lot at Peterson Space Force Base, so I believe there would be a great loss in capability there.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

But for some members of , the more-than-9-percentage-point electoral margin backing the establishment of a retail cannabis industry in Colorado’s second-largest city wasn’t definitive enough. Elected leaders in the politically conservative community are gearing up to place a new measure on the April 1 municipal ballot that would overturn November’s vote.

“We’re just going to give the citizens one chance to make sure this was their intent,” Councilman Dave Donelson told The Denver Post in an interview.

Referral of a recreational marijuana prohibition measure to the spring ballot is expected to pass at the council’s next meeting Jan. 28.

Donelson points to last fall’s , which included language about license limitations and setbacks from schools and day care operations, as overly dense and confusing. That there was a competing measure on the same ballot all-out banning recreational marijuana sales — put there by the council — muddled things more, he said.

“Regular people are busy — they have kids crying, they have jobs. They don’t read this like lawyers,” the first-term councilman said.

But while he says the goal is “simply verifying that this is what the voters truly intended,” those behind November’s ballot question say the people have already spoken, . They approved Question 300 and rejected , the marijuana prohibition measure.

Question 300 supporters accuse the anti-marijuana majority on the council of using baldly underhanded tactics to thwart the will of the voters in this city of nearly half a million people.

“Older and more conservative voters tend to vote more in off-cycle elections,” said Karlie Van Arnam, the general manager of the medical cannabis dispensary Pure, of the potential new ballot measure. “It’s the crowd they want — the will of the few to override the will of the many.”

Pure is one of nearly 90 medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado Springs. Medical sales have been legal in the city for more than a decade, while the recreational side of the industry has failed to take hold in the 11 years since the first retail weed shop opened in Colorado.

Just two years ago, Colorado Springs voters , though they passed a separate measure to tax those sales at 5%, should they become legal.

Then, last fall, nearly 55% of Colorado Springs voters said yes to recreational sales.

At a meeting last week that packed City Hall with dozens of agitated residents, Councilwoman Yolanda Avila, a voice of dissent on the nine-member body, accused her colleagues of trying to engineer a favorable electoral outcome this spring.

“We are going to have the least voter turnout on April 1 because we don’t even have a mayor running,” Avila said. “It’s the lowest, lowest turnout.”

Kent Jarnig, a Vietnam War combat vet who helped found , told the council it should be easier for veterans to access marijuana to help them treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other traumas incurred from their service.

“I just get the feeling the City Council is going to keep putting this on the ballot until it is voted down,” he said at Tuesday’s meeting, eliciting loud applause from the audience.

Longtime anti-cannabis ethos

Colorado Springs, by not allowing recreational cannabis sales, is an outlier among Colorado’s five biggest cities.

For eight years ending in 2023, the city was led by Mayor John Suthers, who previously served as Colorado’s attorney general and U.S. attorney. He was known as an ardent opponent of cannabis legalization.

While Colorado Springs has a wealth of medical marijuana dispensaries, there are enough hurdles in place — the need to get a doctor’s note and purchase a green card from the state — that Tom Scudder says that side of the industry simply can’t compete with the recreational side. In a retail storefront, the only requirement is that the customer has 21 years under her belt.

“We’ve been going out of business for three years,” said Scudder, who owns a pair of medical stores and a grow operation in the city. He serves as president of the Colorado Springs Cannabis Association.

While the entire industry in Colorado has taken a hit following the COVID-19 pandemic cannabis surge that sent sales to a record $2.2 billion statewide in 2021, the medical market has been on an even steeper decline in recent years.

Scudder said that what is now a $72 million annual business in the city could blossom to $130 million in the first year of recreational cannabis sales — and $171 million a year by 2030. The city could see anywhere from $7 million to $10 million in annual sales tax revenue by that later date, he said.

“They literally could solve homelessness overnight if they allowed these sales to go through and used it for that,” Scudder said. “It’s just insane we’re not doing that. They are fanatics in this respect.”

The tax on recreational marijuana sales that voters passed in 2022 would allocate the money to three buckets: support for military veterans, enhanced public safety and funding for mental health.

But that’s only if voters in April don’t overturn what voters in November decided.

The whole situation has Aaron Bluse beyond frustrated. The 38-year-old entrepreneur, who has been in the cannabis industry for more than a decade, has three medical shops in Colorado Springs. He also has a dual-license storefront in Dillon in Summit County, which he says often pulls in as much business in one day as all three of his Altitude Organic Medicine shops do.

A big part of the problem, Bluse said, is that Colorado Springs’ dozens of medical pot shops are largely chasing after just over in El Paso County. That reality prompted him and other marijuana advocates to spearhead a signature-gathering effort last spring to get Question 300 on the November ballot.

They to assure voters that the industry wouldn’t be able to operate in too freewheeling of a manner, Bluse said. It stated that only existing medical shops could apply for a recreational license, creating a de facto cap on the number of retail stores allowed in Colorado Springs. It also stipulated that any dispensaries selling recreational weed would have to be at least 1,000 feet from schools or day care centers.

Right away, Bluse said, the City Council began to fight the measure.

In September, it passed a preemptive ordinance to increase the 1,000-foot setback to a mile, effectively precluding just about any location in the city from qualifying for a retail license.

Then the council placed Question 2D, the recreational marijuana prohibition measure — an amendment to the city charter that could have trumped 300 — on the same ballot. Just this month, Colorado Springs’ elected leaders advanced a new ordinance to again increase setbacks to a mile.

While that ordinance was voted down last week, the new ballot measure wiping out the old one potentially looms in April. Councilwoman Nancy Henjum has been outspoken on the aggressive tactics her council colleagues have taken to throw a monkey wrench into a situation the voters approved.

“I find it a blatant disregard of the will of the voters and am gobsmacked that in the city that is known to be the birthplace of libertarianism, that this City Council would conclude that it knows what is better for people than the will of its own constituents and voters by majority,” she said.

“Every day, like clockwork”

If the aim of city leaders is to reduce residents’ overall access to marijuana, Bluse says it’s not working.

“Eleven minutes from City Hall, you can get recreational pot in Manitou Springs,” he said.

Or in Pueblo, 30 minutes down the road. Or in Palmer Lake, 23 minutes to the north.

Bluse has to turn away at least 10 people a day who seek recreational pot at his medical stores.

“It’s every day, like clockwork,” he said.

Often, he sends them to Dead Flowers in Palmer Lake, an eclectic retail pot shop decorated in evocative murals of classic rockers like Jim Morrison, Slash, Freddie Mercury and — owner Dino Salvatori’s favorite — the Rolling Stones.

“I’ve been in medical for a long time, and there is no money in it,” said Salvatori, who has run a medical marijuana shop in Palmer Lake for more than a decade. He now owns a dual-license shop after voters in the northern El Paso County town legalized recreational sales in 2022.

Salvatori, 64, went from greeting 12 to 15 people a day in the year leading up to Palmer Lake’s marijuana election to around 350 people daily now — even up to 450 on Fridays.

“Had that not passed, I would have gotten out,” he said.

Now business is going gangbusters with referrals from Colorado Springs. But nearly half his clientele comes from the opposite direction in Douglas County, which permits no cannabis sales of any kind.

He recognizes that as long as there are no recreational cannabis sales in Colorado Springs, it will be good for his pocketbook. But Salvatori also feels badly for the voters to his south, who he feels are being disenfranchised by their own elected leaders.

“The people voted for it — and last time I checked, that’s what elections are about,” he said. “I’m leaning more towards letting them have it.”

Worries about youth use

Arguments against recreational marijuana in Colorado Springs have run the gamut from concern over youth use to worries about whether, as a military town, the city could see its role as host of U.S. Space Command jeopardized by the commercialization of a drug that is still illegal at the federal level.

At last week’s council meeting, Councilman David Leinweber made it clear that he is a supporter of medical marijuana — even calling the industry “awesome.” But he said he had “deep concerns” about the drug getting into the hands of young people, which he feels is more likely if the industry expands in the city.

“Research has increasingly linked early and frequent marijuana (use) to elevated risks of psychosis, anxiety and mental health challenges, particularly in youth whose brains are still developing,” Leinweber said.

A 2024 stated, “There are concerns that the use of products with increased potency will increase risk for cannabis use and comorbid mental health disorders, particularly cannabis-induced psychosis and suicidal behavior …”

It concluded that because young brains develop over a long time, “youth are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of cannabis.”

“We have to find a balance between the benefits and the negative aspects of this,” Leinweber said.

The Post’s attempts to reach several other council members who look dimly on cannabis use were unsuccessful.

Van Arnam, with Pure, said youth use of marijuana is actually on the decline.

“We have seen youth use drop in regulated markets,” she said.

According to the most recent , the share of high school students in Colorado reporting use of marijuana at least once in the previous month dropped to 12.8% in 2023 from 13.3% two years earlier. Both of those figures were well below the more than 20% who answered the question affirmatively in 2019.

And compliance with state rules on youth restrictions has been strong in the industry, Van Arnam said. that undercover underage operatives who attempted to purchase marijuana in Colorado were denied 99% of the time in each of the last three years.

If Colorado Springs’ council votes to put its prohibition measure on the April ballot at the end of this month, industry advocate Scudder said, there’s no saying what might happen. The city is scheduled to begin accepting applications for recreational licenses in February, with the first licenses expected to be issued in April.

Scudder said voters in Colorado Springs have rejected recreational marijuana before. With the much smaller — and more conservative — pool of voters likely to turn out for a spring municipal election, the anti-cannabis forces would hold the advantage, he thinks.

He and his allies will have to make as much noise as they can and appeal to voters’ sense of fairness, Scudder said.

“It’s going to be a hell of a challenge,” he said, “and I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do it.”