US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he was withdrawing the nomination for technology billionaire Jared Isaacman, close to Elon Musk, to lead the space agency of national aviation and space administration (NASA). Trump said he would soon announce a new candidate.
“After a thorough review of the previous association, I withdraw the nomination of Jared Isaacman to lead NASA,” Trump wrote at his social place of truth. “I will soon announce a new nominee that will be leveled, and put America in the first place in space.”
Isaacman, a billionaire private astronaut who was Musk’s selection to lead NASA, was due next week for a very late confirmation vote before the US Senate. Its removal from the assessment surprised many in the space industry.
Trump and the White House did not explain what led to the decision. Isaacman, whose removal previously announced the Semafor, did not respond to the request for comment, Reuters reported.
Trump said last December before returning to the office that he wanted an entrepreneur online payments and the first private astronaut to make a space breeding to serve as another head of NASA.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk allegedly lobbied with the President of Isaacman, who had significant business negotiations with Musk’s SpaceX to get NASA’s highest work and raise questions of a possible conflict of interest.
It seems that nomination vibration is the wedding of billionaire Elon Musk, who resigned from his role, led by the US Ministry of Government Efficiency (Duge).
‘Musk disappointed’
Musk, according to a person who is familiar with his reaction, was disappointed by Isaacman’s removal.
“It is rare to find someone so competent and good,” Musk wrote about Isaacman on X and responded to the news of the White House’s decision.
Musk did not answer immediately to the request for comment.
Who will replace Isaacman?
It was not clear who the administration could replace Isaacman.
One name that floats is, according to three people familiar with discussions in retirement General Air Force Steven Kwast, early advocates creating the creation of US space force and Trump’s supporter.
Isaacman, a former CEO of Shift Plant Processor Company4, had support for a wide range of space industry support, but harassed lawmakers’ concerns over his ties to Musk and SpaceX, where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars as the first private customer Spaceflight.
The former nominee donated to the Democrats in the previous elections. In his confirmation hearing in April, he tried to balance the existing NASA strategy included in a month of aligned space with pressure to shift the focus of the agency on Mars and said the US could plan to travel to both destinations.
As a potential leader, approximately 18,000 NASA employees faced Isaacman’s depression task to make this decision to prefer Mars, given that NASA spent years and billions of dollars to return their astronauts to the Moon.
On Friday, the Space Agency published new details of the Trump Administration 2026 budget plan, which proposed to kill dozens of space science programs and release thousands of employees, which is a controversial overworking that it is advocating space and lawmakers as devastating to the agency.
Montana Republican Tim Sheeha, member of the Senate Commercial and Transport Committee, wrote on X that Isaacman “was president of Trump a strong choice to lead NASA” in response to reports of his departure.
“I was proud to introduce Jared at his hearing and was strongly opposed to the effort to derail his nomination,” Sheeha said.
Some scientists considered the nominated change to be another destabilization to NASA because they face dramatic budget cuts without introducing a confirmed leader to go through the political turbulence between Congress, White House and the workforce of the Space Agency.
“So if it was not for (Isaacman) as a NASA boss is a bad news for the agency,” said Harvard-Smithsonian Astronomer Jonathan McDowell on X.
“Maybe for Jared alone for Jared, because being NASA is now a bit of a screenplay of Kobayashi Maru,” McDowell added, referring to exercise in the sci-fi franchise trek, where the cadets are placed in the screenplay without victory.
(With Reuters inputs)
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