Republican-led States Angle for NASA Headquarters

Legislators and governors from Texas, Florida, and Ohio are working to draw NASA’s headquarters to their home states.

Led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), all 27 Republicans on Texas’s congressional delegation sent a letter in April to President Donald Trump urging him to relocate NASA’s headquarters to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “NASA is disconnected from the day-to-day work of its centers and hindered by bureaucratic micromanagement in Washington,” the letter states. It goes on to argue that the agency would be better served in Houston because Johnson Space Center “maintains the largest NASA workforce, accommodates extensive research and development partnerships, and houses Mission Control.”

Meanwhile, Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ashley Moody (R-FL) introduced the Consolidating Aerospace Programs Efficiently at Canaveral (CAPE Canaveral) Act to relocate NASA’s headquarters from Washington to Florida’s Space Coast in Brevard County. A companion bill was introduced in the House by 11 Republicans and three Democrats.

Cape Canaveral is home to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Florida Council of 100, a nonprofit organization comprised of business leaders, wrote a letter to Florida’s congressional delegation in support of relocating NASA’s headquarters to Florida’s Space Coast.

The same day that the CAPE Canaveral Act was introduced, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) sent a letter to Trump asking him to move NASA’s headquarters to Cleveland, the home of NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) and Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) followed suit by sending similar letters to Vice President JD Vance and NASA administrator nominee Jared Isaacman.

NASA published an update in November on its efforts to find a new headquarters building ahead of its lease expiration in 2028. The agency indicated it is seeking a 375,000 to 525,000 square-foot facility “in Washington or the immediate surrounding area.” However, Politico has reported that there have been internal discussions at NASA about possibly doing away with a centralized headquarters altogether and instead dispersing those responsibilities across states.

Discussions about relocating NASA’s headquarters come in the wake of the Trump administration’s February executive order directing agency heads to identify leases eligible for termination. A subsequent memo from the Office of Personnel Management instructed agency heads to develop reorganization and workforce downsizing plans that include “any proposed relocations of agency bureaus and offices from Washington, DC, and the National Capital Region to less-costly parts of the country.” Those plans were due in April and have not been made public.

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to move up to 100,000 federal workers out of DC. During his first term, he moved branches of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to Missouri and the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Colorado. The decision was reversed in 2021 under the Biden administration and the BLM moved back to DC.

Lawmakers in support of relocation across Texas, Florida, and Ohio all say that moving NASA’s headquarters out of DC would lower agency operating costs, save taxpayers money, improve efficiency, and provide a boost to their local economies. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) claims that relocation would save the agency “about a billion dollars.”

In Ohio, the Cleveland City Council passed a resolution aimed at persuading the federal government to relocate NASA’s headquarters there. “Moving NASA headquarters to Cleveland, Ohio would: provide significantly lower cost of living and operational costs than Washington, DC, resulting in substantial taxpayer savings; strategically align efforts to decentralize federal agencies; reinvigorate Ohio as the birthplace of aviation and the heart of America’s aerospace industry; and optimize workforce and facility use by consolidating operations near an existing NASA field center,” the resolution reads.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers have contested the notion that moving agency headquarters will result in new efficiencies. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) introduced a bill in March that would prohibit the relocation of agencies’ headquarters outside Washington without Congressional approval, arguing that “Congress cannot write laws or conduct oversight without the critical information provided by agencies” in the National Capital Region.

“Moving federal agencies is not about saving taxpayer money and will degrade the vital services provided to all Americans across the country,” Holmes Norton said in a March press release. “In the 1990s, the Bureau of Land Management moved its wildfire staff out West, only to move them back when Congress demanded briefings on new wildfires,” she added.