President Joe Biden on Monday rejected a controversial decision by former President Donald Trump to move the U.S. Space Command headquarters to Alabama, keeping the military’s space operations in Colorado, according to the Associated Press.

Biden was reportedly persuaded by Space Command General James Dickinson to keep the command in Colorado Springs in order to preserve the country’s military readiness, senior White House officials told AP..

The report follows a last-ditch effort by the Trump Administration in January 2021 to shuffle Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama, over five other cities that had been named finalists for the headquarters months earlier.

The headquarters have taken on special importance since the Space Force was launched as a sixth U.S. military branch in 2019 and has since been based temporarily at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

In November 2020, one year into using Peterson Air Force Base as its temporary location, U.S. Space Command narrowed its list of finalist sites for its permanent headquarters to Redstone Army Airfield, in Huntsville; as well as Texas’ Port San Antonio; Patrick Air Force Base, outside Melbourne, Florida; Offutt Air Force Base outside Omaha, Nebraska; and Colorado’s Peterson Air Force Base.

After a 17-year hiatus, Trump reestablished the Space Command in August 2019, just months before the foundation of the Space Force, through the enactment of a $738 billion defense spending bill. Trump’s decision to move its headquarters just over one year later was met with mixed reactions. Former Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula argued at the time in a Forbes piece in favor of keeping U.S. Space Command in Colorado, claiming that staying in place would avoid “diverting resources to move the command for no good reason.” Alabama’s Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, on the other hand, lauded the move, saying the state “has long provided exceptional support for our military and their families.

House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) criticized the Biden Administration for what he called its “shameful delay” to finalize the permanent relocation of the headquarters, saying he will “continue to hold the Biden Administration accountable for their egregious political meddling in our national security.” Rep. Dale Strong (R-Ala.) also slammed Biden’s decision, arguing the president is “ignoring what is best for our nation’s security and is instead using their woke agenda to make this decision,” while Ivey labeled the move “very simply the wrong decision for national security.”