As Trump Slashes Federal Jobs, Alabama's ‘Rocket City' Braces for Impact

New York Times

15-02-2025

Over galaxy-themed beers at InnerSpace Brewing in Huntsville, Ala., Stewart Money has heard it all recently from government engineers and contractors winding down after work: anxiety about how cuts to the federal work force could affect their own jobs in the city's aerospace and related industries, and speculation that defense investments under President Trump might spur even more growth there.
'You want to use an analogy, it's almost like launching a rocket that's not proven,' said Mr. Money, who owns the brewery. 'You don't know what's going to happen, but something is going to happen.'
There is no question that Huntsville, home to the Marshall Space Flight Center and a web of related businesses and research programs, has felt some tremors from the administration's aggressive campaign to shrink the federal work force. The 'Fork in the Road' resignation offers landed in email inboxes there, presenting NASA and other government employees with the difficult question of whether to stay in their jobs for now. There were reports of more traffic at the sprawling Redstone Arsenal military base after workers were mandated to be in person.
But Mr. Money's conversations with customers during Mr. Trump's first month in office suggest that despite much uncertainty, there is cautious optimism that his actions could help the Rocket City overall.
'The defense budget is probably not going to shrink,' said Jake Griffin, a government contracting consultant there, 'so overall, I don't think we're going to see a true economic downturn any time soon in Huntsville.'
Referring to Mr. Trump's stated goal of reducing government waste, Mr. Griffin added that if the administration 'reallocates some of those wasted dollars to the defense budget, I do think that Huntsville has the chance to boom even more again.'
Once an agricultural hub known for watercress, cotton and record-breaking butter production, Huntsville began its transformation into an aerospace behemoth as Wernher von Braun, once the leading missile scientist for the Nazis, and his team developed the rockets that were critical to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and '70s.
The city now has one of the highest numbers of engineers per capita in the country, and has embraced its aerospace reputation: there are colorful space murals scattered around, and space references in everything from restaurants to the local minor league baseball team. (Mr. Money's bar offers both a 'Sky Farmer' farmhouse ale and an 'Artemis I.P.A.')
The city of more than 225,000 people and its surrounding county are less staunchly conservative than most of Alabama: 54 percent of Madison County, which includes Huntsville, voted for Mr. Trump, compared with 65 percent of the state overall.
More than half of the roughly 40,000 federal civilian employees in Alabama live in the congressional district that includes Huntsville, according to the Congressional Research Service as of March 2024. There are also thousands of workers there whose jobs are tied to government contracts and could be affected.
'It is some form of, Hey, how is all this affecting you?' Jeff Gronberg, the chief executive of deciBel Research, one of several defense contract companies closely watching the changes, said of the talk around town. 'It's so early in the process that all you can really say is, We're trying to track things best we can.'
Much of Huntsville's federal work force is tied to Redstone Arsenal, the military base. Buoyed by former Senator Richard C. Shelby, a Republican with a legendary prowess for earmarking and sending money to his state, the base now houses the space center, F.B.I. offices, Army missile programs and rocketry research.
'It's very normal to be anxious in these times, because they just don't know,' Mayor Tommy Battle, a Republican, said in an interview, referring to government workers. But, he added, 'we've got a pretty good portfolio and it's diverse. And it's diverse enough that if one area goes down, another area goes up.'
More than 6,200 people work at the flight center alone, with about 2,300 of them classified as federal civil employees of NASA. There are lingering memories of past layoffs: more than 1,000 jobs in Huntsville were lost when Constellation, a program to return astronauts to the moon, was shut down in 2010.
'They remember Constellation and the shuttle program coming to an end,' Steve Cash, who ran NASA's shuttle propulsion program and held other jobs at Marshall before retiring in 2016, said of the city's space industry workers. 'Fear of the unknown is the worst thing.'
The center is now leading the development of NASA's giant Space Launch System rocket, part of its latest effort to get astronauts back to the moon. But Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX who is overseeing his own rocket development — and leading Mr. Trump's federal cost-cutting initiative as a special adviser — has been critical of the Space Launch System project .
Among other things, some in Huntsville are hoping Mr. Trump will make it the home of the nation's Space Command.
In the final days of Mr. Trump's first term, the Air Force announced it would permanently move the command, which coordinates defense activities in space, to Huntsville. (Mr. Trump later told a radio show it happened because he had 'single-handedly said, 'Let's go to Alabama.'')
But during the Biden administration, the Pentagon announced it would instead keep the headquarters at its temporary location in Colorado Springs.
With Mr. Trump back in office, Alabama's congressional delegation has already started a campaign to get Space Command. Days before the inauguration, Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt, the state's Republican U.S. senators, introduced a resolution commemorating the 2021 announcement of Huntsville as the headquarters location.
Ms. Britt said in a statement that Huntsville remains 'the best possible location to fulfill the mission and strengthen our national security long into the future.'
She is among a number of Republicans who have raised concerns about the effect of a plan that would cut $4 billion in federal funding for research at the nation's universities, cancer centers and hospitals. Those cuts, which a federal judge put on hold this week, could affect research programs at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and elsewhere in the state.
Such cuts could trickle to other facets of the Huntsville economy.
Terrence Harris, a real estate agent in Huntsville, said that in the last couple of weeks, several of his clients who work for the government have backtracked from plans to purchase a home because they feel concerned about their job security.
'These extreme swings at federal jobs, it really does affect people's buying confidence,' Mr. Harris said. 'It affects what kind of investor comes to this city. How much are they willing to invest?'