On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social that he was renominating Shift 4 founder Jared Isaacman to lead the nation’s space agency, NASA, months after declining the nomination.
The reversal comes after weeks of online sniping by Elon Musk and others against Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is leading NASA in an interim capacity.
“The support from the space-loving community has been overwhelming. I don’t know how we gained the trust of so many people, but we will do everything in our power to live up to their expectations,” Isaacman, a billionaire pilot and commercial astronaut, wrote in a post on X on Tuesday night.
Early Tuesday morning before his renomination, Isaacman posted on the platform his vision for NASA. After a draft version was circulated among those in Washington who wanted to put Duffy in charge of NASA, he decided to make those plans public. Isaacman said he suspected “political operatives” were “sparking a dispute” between him and Duffy.
