The Trump administration has confirmed that it is pulling the nomination of private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA.<\/p>\n
First reported by Semafor, the decision appears to have been made because Isaacman was not politically loyal enough to the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump\u2019s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars,\u201d Liz Huston, a White House Spokesperson, said in a statement released Saturday. \u201cIt\u2019s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump\u2019s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The US Senate Commerce Committee approved Issacman\u2019s nomination by a vote of 19 to 9 one month ago, advancing his candidacy to the floor of the US Senate, with unanimous support from Republicans in that April vote. Approval was anticipated after the Memorial Day holiday. But the tide started to turn against Isaacman late this past week, with the first rumblings of problems coming on Friday, May 30.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, far-right political activist Laura Loomer said on X, \u201cDeep State operatives are trying to derail President Trump\u2019s NASA Administrator pick Jared Isaacman before his Senate confirmation vote this week.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the first public sign that Isaacman\u2019s candidacy was imperiled.<\/p>\n
So what happened? The waters of MAGA run murky, and the political machinations of the Trump administration are abstruse. However, the timing of Isaacman\u2019s derailment coincides with the recent departure of SpaceX founder Elon Musk from Washington. Musk had a central role in the Trump administration during its first four months. In an interview on Tuesday, Musk told Ars that he has now \u201csignificantly\u201d reduced his involvement in politics.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Musk was a key factor behind Isaacman\u2019s nomination as NASA administrator, and with his backing, Isaacman was able to skip some of the party purity tests that have been applied to other Trump administration nominees. One mark against Isaacman is that he had recently donated money to Democrats. He also indicated opposition to some of the White House\u2019s proposed cuts to NASA\u2019s science budget.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s role in the government was highly controversial, winning him enemies both among opponents of Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d agenda as well as inside the administration. One source told Ars that, with Musk\u2019s exit, his opponents within the administration sought to punish him by killing Isaacman\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n
The loss of Isaacman is almost certainly a blow to NASA, which faces substantial budget cuts. The Trump administration\u2019s budget request for fiscal year 2026, released Friday, seeks $18.8 billion for the agency next year\u2014a 24 percent cut from the agency\u2019s budget of $24.8 billion for FY 2025.<\/p>\n
Isaacman is generally well-liked in the space community and is known to care deeply about space exploration. Officials within the space agency\u2014and the larger space community\u2014hoped that having him as NASA\u2019s leader would help the agency restore some of these cuts.<\/p>\n
Now? \u201cNASA is f\u2014ed,\u201d one current leader in the agency told Ars on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cNASA\u2019s budget request is just a going-out-of-business mode without Jared there to innovate,\u201d a former senior NASA leader said.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration did not immediately name a new nominee, but two people told Ars that former US Air Force Lieutenant General Steven L. Kwast may be near the top of the list. Now retired, Kwast has a distinguished record in the Air Force and is politically loyal to Trump and MAGA.<\/p>\n
However, his background seems to be far less oriented toward NASA\u2019s civil space mission and far more focused on seeing space as a battlefield\u2014decidedly not an arena for cooperation and peaceful exploration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration has confirmed that it is pulling the nomination of private astronaut Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. First reported by Semafor, the decision appears to have been made because Isaacman was not politically loyal enough to the Trump administration. \u201cThe Administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9473,190,649],"class_list":["post-44210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-isaacman","tag-nasa","tag-trump"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}