White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X-formerly-Twitter this week to mock the space agency’s since-abandoned commitment to sending the first woman and first person of color to the Moon.
Leavitt shared an April article by the conservative news website The Daily Signal, with the message of her tweet bearing only its title: “NASA Nominee Plans to Prioritize America First Agenda in Space, Not DEI.”
The whiplash is jarring. After all, it was the first Trump administration that boasted about its plans to send the “first woman” to the Moon just five years ago. In fact, the mission was already supposed to have happened, since it was slated for 2024 before delays pushed it back.
The Daily Signal article implied that SpaceX space tourist and billionaire Jared Isaacman — who was handpicked by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to lead NASA, but whose nomination was kicked to the curb by president Donald Trump in late May after his major falling out with Musk — was looking to further Trump’s so-called “America First” agenda by ditching the Biden administration’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.”
Leavitt likely shared the seven-month-old article this week because Isaacman has been back in the news lately, with Trump officially re-nominating him for the position of NASA administrator on Wednesday.
Per the Daily Signal, Isaacman will “refocus the agency on its founding mission statement, which was ‘to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery.’”
In reality, though, Isaacman has yet to personally comment on Trump’s staunchly anti-DEI agenda. Despite alluding to him prioritizing Trump’s agenda over DEI, the article fails to quote Isaacman a single time. Instead, it extensively quotes NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens, who told the publication that the agency was “ensuring hiring and promotion opportunities are based on merit alone” by removing “DEI considerations” altogether.
Futurism has reached out to Isaacman for comment.
While Isaacman made no mention of DEI initiatives during Congressional hearings in April, his nominations proved divisive among Republicans, given his extensive donations to Democrats during previous election cycles, with some arguing DEI should be “front-and-center,” according to The Washington Examiner. Isaacman’s payment processing company Shift4 also touted its DEI initiatives, per documents obtained by the publication.
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, his administration has taken direct aim at DEI initiatives across government agencies, going as far as to force NASA to purge all mentions of women in leadership on its websites.
Under Trump’s leadership, NASA also dropped its longstanding public commitment to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, a central goal of the Artemis program — which, again, was a commitment actually made during Trump’s first term, under the leadership that he appointed.
The hypocrisy of Trump’s reimagined NASA is on full display, in other words. His first administration actively sold the program as a way to specifically “land the first woman” on the Moon by 2024 in a 2020 press release, as NASA Watch points out.
Whether Isaacman stands a chance to finally take on the role of NASA administrator — after Trump berated him in June for betraying the Republican party by donating to Democrats — remains unclear at best.
With or without Isaacman at the helm, NASA is facing an existential crisis as entire buildings are being emptied and the threat of devastating budget cuts looms large. In other words, focusing on eviscerating diversity and inclusion initiatives at an agency with an already extensive history of racial discrimination and segregation may be the least of his concerns.
More on NASA: NASA Issues Horrified Response to Kim Kardashian
