Donald Trump

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Whistleblower scientists outline Trump’s plan to politicize and dismantle NSF

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Nearly 150 employees of the National Science Foundation (NSF) sent an urgent letter of dissent to Congress on Tuesday, warning that the Trump administration’s recent “politically motivated and legally questionable” actions threaten to dismantle the independent “world-renowned scientific agency.”

Most NSF employees signed the letter anonymously, with only Jesus Soriano, the president of their local union (AFGE Local 3403), publicly disclosing his name. Addressed to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the letter insisted that Congress intervene to stop steep budget cuts, mass firings and grant terminations, withholding of billions in appropriated funds, allegedly coerced resignations, and the sudden eviction of NSF from its headquarters planned for next year.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the letter revealed “a covert and ideologically driven secondary review process by unqualified political appointees” that is now allegedly “interfering with the scientific merit-based review system” that historically has made NSF a leading, trusted science agency. Soriano further warned that “scientists, program officers, and staff” have all “been targeted for doing their jobs with integrity” in what the letter warned was “a broader agenda to dismantle institutional safeguards, impose demagoguery in research funding decisions, and undermine science.”

At a press conference with Lofgren on Wednesday, AFGE National president Everett Kelley backed NSF workers and reminded Congress that their oversight of the executive branch “is not optional.”

Taking up the fight, Lofgren promised to do “all” that she “can” to protect the agency and the entire US scientific enterprise.

She also promised to protect Soriano from any retaliation, as some federal workers, including NSF workers, alleged they’ve already faced retaliation, necessitating their anonymity to speak publicly. Lofgren criticized the “deep shame” of the Trump administration creating a culture of fear permeating NSF, noting that all the “horrifying” statements in the letter are “all true,” yet filed as a whistleblower complaint as if they’re sharing secrets.

Whistleblower scientists outline Trump’s plan to politicize and dismantle NSF Read More »

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Trump to sign stablecoin bill that may make it easier to bribe the president

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Donald Trump’s first big crypto win “nothing to crow about,” analyst says.

Donald Trump is expected to sign the GENIUS Act into law Friday, securing his first big win as a self-described “pro-crypto president.” The act is the first major piece of cryptocurrency legislation passed in the US.

The House of Representatives voted to pass the GENIUS Act on Thursday, approving the same bill that the Senate passed last month. The law provides a federal framework for stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency that’s considered less volatile than other cryptocurrencies, as each token is backed by the US dollar or other supposedly low-risk assets.

The GENIUS Act is expected to spur more widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies, since stablecoins are often used to move funds between different tokens. It could become a gateway for many Americans who are otherwise shy about investing in cryptocurrencies, which is what the industry wants. Ahead of Thursday’s vote, critics had warned that Republicans were rushing the pro-industry bill without ensuring adequate consumer protections, though, seemingly setting Americans up to embrace stablecoins as legitimate so-called “cash of the blockchain” without actually insuring their investments.

A big concern is that stablecoins will appear as safe investments, legitimized by the law, while supposedly private companies issuing stablecoins could peg their tokens to riskier assets that could tank reserves, cause bank runs, and potentially blindside and financially ruin Americans. Stablecoin scams could also target naïve stablecoin investors, luring them into making deposits that cannot be withdrawn.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)—part of a group of Democrats who had strongly opposed the bill—further warned Thursday that the GENIUS Act prevents lawmakers from owning or promoting stablecoins, but not the president. Trump and his family have allegedly made more than a billion dollars through their crypto ventures, and Waters is concerned that the law will make it easier for Trump and other presidents to use the office to grift and possibly even obscure foreign bribes.

“By passing this bill, Congress will be telling the world that Congress is OK with corruption, OK with foreign companies buying influence,” Waters said Thursday, CBS News reported.

Some lawmakers fear such corruption is already happening. Senators previously urged the Office of Government Ethics in a letter to investigate why “a crypto firm whose founder needs a pardon” (Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, also known as “CZ”) “and a foreign government spymaker coveting sensitive US technology” (United Arab Emirates-controlled MGX) “plan to pay the Trump and Witkoff families hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The White House continues to insist that Trump has “no conflicts of interest” because “his assets are in a trust managed by his children,” Reuters reported.

Ultimately, Waters and other Democrats failed to amend the bill to prevent presidents from benefiting from the stablecoin framework and promoting their own crypto projects.

Markets for various cryptocurrencies spiked Thursday, as the industry anticipates that more people will hold crypto wallets in a world where it’s fast, cheap, and easy to move money on the blockchain with stablecoins, as compared to relying on traditional bank services. And any fees associated with stablecoin transfers will likely be paid with other forms of cryptocurrencies, with a token called ether predicted to benefit most since “most stablecoins are issued and transacted on the underlying blockchain Ethereum,” Reuters reported.

Unsurprisingly, ether-linked stocks jumped Friday, with the token’s value hitting a six-month high. Notably, Bitcoin recently hit a record high; it was valued at above $120,000 as the stablecoin bill moved closer to Trump’s desk.

GENIUS Act plants “seeds for the next financial crisis”

As Trump prepares to sign the law, Consumer Reports’ senior director monitoring digital marketplaces, Delicia Hand, told Ars that the group plans to work with other consumer advocates and the implementing regulator to try to close any gaps in the stablecoin legislation that would leave Americans vulnerable.

Some Democrats supported the GENIUS Act, arguing that some regulation is better than none as cryptocurrency activity increases globally and the technology has the potential to revolutionize the US financial system.

But Hand told Ars that “we’ve already seen what happens when there are no protections” for consumers, like during the FTX collapse.

She joins critics that the BBC reported are concerned that stablecoin investors could get stuck in convoluted bankruptcy processes as tech firms engage more and more in “bank-like activities” without the same oversight as banks.

The only real assurances for stablecoin investors are requirements that all firms must publish monthly reserves backing their tokens, as well as annual statements required from the biggest companies issuing tokens. Those will likely include e-commerce and digital payments giants like Amazon, PayPal, and Shopify, as well as major social media companies.

Meanwhile, Trump seemingly wants to lure more elderly people into investing in crypto, reportedly “working on a presidential order that could allow retirement accounts to be invested in private assets, such as crypto, gold, and private equity,” the BBC reported.

Waters, a top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, is predicting the worst. She has warned that the law gives “Trump the pen to write the rules that would put more money in his family’s pocket” while causing “consumer harm” and planting “the seeds for the next financial crisis.”

Analyst: End of Trump’s crypto wins

The House of Representatives passed two other crypto bills this week, but those bills now go to the Senate, where they may not have enough support to pass.

The CLARITY Act—which creates a regulatory framework for digital assets and cryptocurrencies to allow for more innovation and competition—is “absolutely the most important thing” the crypto industry has been pushing since spending more than $119 million backing pro-crypto congressional candidates last year, a Coinbase policy official, Kara Calvert, told The New York Times.

Republicans and industry see the CLARITY Act as critical because it strips the Securities and Exchange Commission of power to police cryptocurrencies and digital assets and gives that power instead to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is viewed as friendlier to industry. If it passed, the CLARITY Act would not just make it harder for the SEC to raise lawsuits, but it would also box out any future SEC officials under less crypto-friendly presidents from “bringing any cases for past misconduct,” Amanda Fischer, a top SEC official under the Biden administration, told the NYT.

“It would retroactively bless all the conduct of the crypto industry,” Fischer suggested.

But Senators aren’t happy with the CLARITY Act and expect to draft their own version of the bill, striving to lay out a crypto market structure that isn’t “reviled by consumer protection groups,” the NYT reported.

And the other bill that the House sent to the Senate on Thursday—which would ban the US from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that some conservatives believe would allow for government financial surveillance—faces an uphill battle, in part due to Republicans seemingly downgrading it as a priority.

The anti-CBDC bill will likely be added to a “must-pass” annual defense policy bill facing a vote later this year, the NYT reported. But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R.-Ga.) “mocked” that plan, claiming she did not expect it to be “honored.”

Terry Haines, founder of the Washington-based analysis firm Pangaea Policy, has forecasted that both the CLARITY Act and the anti-CBDC bills will likely die in the Senate, the BBC reported.

“This is the end of crypto’s wins for quite a while—and the only one,” Haines suggested. “When the easy part, stablecoin, takes [approximately] four to five years and barely survives industry scandals, it’s not much to crow about.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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GOP’s pro-industry crypto bills could financially ruin millions, lawmaker warns

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Trump’s crypto bills could turn trusted Big Tech companies into the next FTX.

It’s “Crypto Week” in Congress, and experts continue to warn that legislation Donald Trump wants passed quickly could give the president ample opportunities to grift while leaving Americans more vulnerable to scams and financial ruin.

Perhaps most controversial of the bills is the one that’s closest to reaching Trump’s desk, the GENIUS Act, which creates a framework for banks and private companies to issue stablecoins. After passing in the Senate last month, the House of Representatives is hoping to hold a vote as soon as Thursday, insiders told Politico.

Stablecoins are often hyped as a more reliable form of cryptocurrency, considered the “cash of the blockchain” because their value can be pegged to the US dollar, Delicia Hand, Consumer Reports’ senior director monitoring digital marketplaces, told Ars.

But the GENIUS Act doesn’t require stablecoins to be pegged to the dollar, and that’s a problem, critics say. The law’s alleged flaws allow large technology companies to peg their stablecoins to riskier assets that could make both their cryptocurrency tokens and, ultimately, the entire global financial system less stable.

For Americans, the stakes are high. In June, Hand warned that Consumer Reports had “a number of concerns about the GENIUS Act.” Chief among them were “insufficient consumer protections” that Americans expect when conducting financial transactions.

Stablecoin issuers will likely include every major payment app, social media app, and e-commerce platform. There is already interest from Amazon, Meta, PayPal, and Shopify. But unlike companies providing traditional bank services, stablecoin providers will not be required to provide clear dispute-resolution processes, offer deposit insurance, or limit liability for unauthorized transactions on their customers’ accounts.

Additionally, with limited oversight, big tech companies could avoid scrutiny while potentially seizing sensitive financial data for non-bank purposes, pushing competition out of markets, and benefiting from other conflicts of interest from other areas of their businesses. Last month, Congressional researchers highlighting key issues with the GENIUS Act advised that possibly restricting stablecoin regulation to only apply to financial institutions would likely have required big tech firms to divest chunks of their business to prevent them from using stablecoins to illegally dominate the digital payments industry. But Republicans have not yet adopted any recommendations.

Most ominously in light of recent collapses of crypto exchanges like FTX—which made it difficult for customers to recover billions—”the bill does not provide adequate authority to federal and state regulators to ensure consumers have full protection and redemption rights for stablecoin transactions,” Consumer Reports warned. Hand reiterated this concern to Ars as the House mulls the same bill this week.

“I think one major concern that we have is if the bill doesn’t guarantee that consumers can redeem their stablecoins quickly or at all in a crisis, and that’s kind of what is the irony is that at its core, the notion of a stablecoin is that there’s some stability,” Hand said.

Pro-industry crypto bills could financially ruin millions

House Republicans are hoping to pass the bill as is, Politico reported, but some Democrats are putting up a fight that could possibly force changes. Among them is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who penned an op-ed this week, alleging that “Crypto Week” legislation was written “by and for the crypto industry” and “will open the floodgates to massive fraud and financial ruin for millions of American families.”

“All they really do is replicate the same mess that led to past financial crises: They call for few regulations, minimal enforcement, weak consumer protections, and more industry consolidation,” Waters wrote. And “on top of that, these bills have a special, intentional wrinkle that makes them especially dangerous: They would legitimize and legalize the unprecedented crypto corruption by the president of the United States.”

Waters joined critics warning that the GENIUS Act is deeply flawed, with “weak consumer protections” and “no funding provided to regulators to implement the law.” Additionally, the CLARITY Act—which seeks to create a regulatory framework for digital assets and cryptocurrencies to allow for more innovation and will likely come to a House vote on Wednesday before heading to the Senate—”actually creates space for similar schemes” to Sam Bankman-Fried’s stunning fraud that caused FTX’s collapse.

She accused Republicans of rushing the votes on these bills to benefit Trump, whose “shady crypto ventures” have allegedly enriched Trump by $1.2 billion. (The White House has said that Trump has no conflicts of interest, as the crypto ventures are managed by his children.)

Further, “the GENIUS Act opens the floodgates to foreign-controlled crypto that poses serious national security risks, all to appease Trump’s inner circle, which has ties to crypto,” Waters wrote.

Waters has so far submitted amendments that would “block any US president, vice president, members of Congress and their immediate families from promoting or holding crypto” and stop the US from deeming “a foreign country to have a stablecoin regime comparable to that of the US if the current leader of that country has described themselves as a dictator,” CoinTelegraph reported.

Pushback from Democrats may not be enough, as White House crypto advisor Bo Hines seemed to predict on X that the GENIUS Act would be signed into law without much debate this week.

Tim Scott, a chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, counted concerns about consumer protections among “myths” he claims to have busted in advocating for the bill. Scott suggested that “simple monthly disclosure” of reserves backing stablecoins and annual statements from the biggest companies issuing stablecoins would be enough to protect consumers from potential losses, should stablecoins be mismanaged.

He also defended not requiring “essential insolvency protections for consumers” by noting that customers will be “explicitly” prioritized above creditors in any insolvency proceedings.

But Waters did not buy that logic, warning that the “Crypto Week” bills becoming law without any amendments will “eventually” trigger the first American crypto financial crisis.

Widespread stablecoin adoption will take time, bank says

If these bills pass without meaningful changes, Hand told Ars that consumers should be wary of stablecoins, no matter what trusted brand is pushing a new token.

In a post detailing risks of allowing big tech companies to “open banks without becoming banks,” Brian Shearer, the director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, provided an example.

Imagine if Apple—which “already has quite a bit of power to force adoption of ApplePay”—issues a stablecoin through a competing “payment card” accessed through its popular devices. Apple could possibly lure merchants to adopt the payment form by charging lower fees, and customers “probably wouldn’t revolt because it would be free for them.” Eventually, Apple could be motivated to force all payments through stablecoins, cutting banks entirely out, then potentially raising fees to merchants.

“It’s not a stretch to imagine a scenario where Google, Apple, Amazon, PayPal, Block, and Meta all do something like this and quickly become the largest payment networks and banks in the world,” Shearer wrote. And Hand told Ars that these trusted brands “could kind of imbue some sort of confidence that may be not necessarily yet earned” when rolling out stablecoins.

Bank of America’s head of North American banks research, Ebrahim Poonawala, told Business Insider that “it could take between three to five years to fully build out the infrastructure needed for widespread stablecoin adoption.”

Mastercard’s chief product officer, Jorn Lambert, agreed, telling Bloomberg that stablecoins have a “long road to mainstream payments.” Specifically, Lambert suggested that consumers broadly won’t embrace stablecoins without “a seamless and predictable user experience” and current “friction” causing online checkout hurdles—even for an experienced company like Shopify—”will be difficult to clear in the near-term.”

In the meantime, customers will likely be pushed to embrace stablecoins as being more reliable than other cryptocurrencies. Hand advised that anyone intrigued by stablecoins should proceed cautiously in an environment lacking basic consumer protections, conditions which one nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition, Americans for Financial Reform, suggested could create “an incubator for even more predatory and scammy activity” plaguing the entire crypto industry.

Hand told Ars she is not “anti-digital assets or crypto,” but she recommends that customers “start conservatively” with stablecoin investments. Consider who is advertising the stablecoin, Hand recommended, suggesting that celebrity endorsements should be viewed as red flags without more research. At least to start, treat any stablecoins acquired “more like a prepaid card than a bank account,” using it for certain payments but keeping life savings in less volatile accounts until you learn more about the risks of holding stablecoins.

Possibly most critically, customers should explore companies’ promised resolution processes before investing in stablecoins, Hand said, and fully vet customer support. In China, regulators are already struggling with stablecoin scams, where “a group of semi-informed people is being deceived by ill-intentioned people” luring them into stablecoin deposits that cannot be withdrawn, the South China Morning Post reported.

“Just because something is called a coin or digital dollar doesn’t mean it’s regulated like cash,” Hand said. “Don’t wait until you get in trouble to know what you can expect.”

In this potential future, stablecoin issuers could never really be considered “stable institutions,” Shearer said. Shearer referenced a possible “sci-fi disaster” that could end in bank runs, leading the government to one day bail out tech companies who bungle stablecoin investments but become “too big to fail.”

Hand told Ars that Consumer Reports will work with other consumer advocates and the implementing regulator to try to close any gaps that would leave Americans vulnerable. Those groups would submit comments and feedback to help with rule-making around implementation and monitoring and provide consumer education resources.

However, these steps may not be enough to protect Americans, as the crypto industry continues to be deregulated under self-described “pro-crypto President” Trump.

“Sometimes if something is just fundamentally flawed, I’m not quite sure, particularly in the current regulatory or deregulatory environment, whether any amount of guidance or rulemaking could really fix a flawed framework,” Hand told Ars.

At the same time, Trump’s Justice Department has largely backed off crypto lawsuits and probes, creating an impression of Wild West-like lawlessness where even a proven fraudster like Bankman-Fried dares hope he may be pardoned for misdeeds.

“The CLARITY Act handcuffs the Securities and Exchange Commission, preventing it from proactively protecting people against fraud,” Waters wrote. “Regulators would have to wait until after investors have already been harmed to act—potentially after a company has collapsed and life savings have vanished. We’ve seen this before. FTX collapsed because insiders illegally operated the exchange, controlled customer funds and traded against their own clients. The CLARITY bill does nothing to address that.”

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

GOP’s pro-industry crypto bills could financially ruin millions, lawmaker warns Read More »

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US may get its own glitchy version of TikTok if Trump’s deal works out

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“Even if Beijing would choose to overlook the recent tariff hikes and ratcheting up of US export controls on chip technologies, they still wouldn’t grant export licenses for the algorithms,” Capri said.

US version of TikTok may be buggy

Trump claims that he has found US buyers for TikTok, which Bloomberg reported is believed to be the same group behind the prior stalled deal, including Oracle, Blackstone Inc., and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

If a sale is approved, a new US version of TikTok would roll out on September 5, The Information reported. All US-based TikTok users would be prompted to switch over to the new app by March 2026, at which point the original app would stop working, sources told The Information.

It’s unclear how different the US app will be from the global app, but The Information noted that transferring up to 170 million US users’ profiles to address US fears of China using the app to spy on or manipulate Americans may not be easy. Once source suggested the transfers “could pose technical issues in practice,” possibly negatively affecting the US experience of the app from the start.

That, in turn, could drive users to alternative apps if too much content is lost or the algorithm is viewed as less effective at recommending content.

For ByteDance—which The Information reported has been “finalizing the legal and financial details” of the deal with Trump’s chosen buyers—losing US users could risk disrupting the growth of TikTok Shop, which is the company’s major focus globally as the fastest-growing part of its business, the SCMP reported. Prioritizing TikTok Shop’s growth could motivate ByteDance to back down from refusing to sell the app, but ultimately, China would still need to sign off, Trump has said.

Although critics and Trump himself continue to doubt that China will agree to Trump’s deal, the preparation of a US app sets up one potential timeline for when big changes may be coming to TikTok.

For TikTok users—many of whom depend on TikTok for income—this fall could make or break their online businesses, depending on how the deal ultimately affects TikTok’s algorithm.

US may get its own glitchy version of TikTok if Trump’s deal works out Read More »

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Trump’s tariff threat pushes Canada to scrap digital services tax

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In a sudden reversal, Canada has caved and will remove its digital services tax after trade talks with the US suddenly fell apart this weekend.

Blocked just hours before taking effect, the controversial digital services tax (DST) would have charged big US tech companies like Apple, Google, and Meta a 3 percent tax on all digital services revenue earned from Canadian users. Frustrating US tech giants, Canada also sought to collect retroactive taxes dating back to 2022.

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump claimed the tax was a “direct and blatant attack” on US tech companies and terminated the trade talks, while threatening to impose a new tariff rate on Canadian goods by July 4.

On Sunday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seemingly bowed to Trump’s pressure campaign, abruptly doing an “about turn” after previously refusing to pause the DST despite Trump’s opposition, NBC News reported.

But it wasn’t just Trump pushing Carney to reconsider the tax. A nonprofit representing CEOs and leaders of some of Canada’s biggest businesses, the Business Council of Canada, had warned that Carney defending the tax risked “undermining Canada’s economic relationship with its most important trading partner,” Al Jazeera reported.

If Trump were to impose new tariffs on Canada, it could have “large ripple effects across both economies,” the Council warned, potentially disrupting markets for automobiles, minerals, energy, and aluminum. And Trump—who has been bashing Canada with annexation threats throughout trade talks—had also threatened a Section 301 investigation into impacts of the DST on the US economy, which meant other punitive measures could be coming if the DST wasn’t removed. To Canada’s business leaders, the costs of defending the DST were seemingly becoming too high.

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During a town hall Wednesday, NASA officials on stage looked like hostages

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A Trump appointee suggests NASA may not have a new administrator until next year.

NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens, acting administrator Janet Petro, chief of staff Brian Hughes, associate administrator Vanessa Wyche, and deputy associate administrator Casey Swails held a town hall with NASA employees Wednesday. Credit: NASA

The four people at the helm of America’s space agency held a town hall meeting with employees Wednesday, fielding questions about downsizing, layoffs, and proposed budget cuts that threaten to undermine NASA’s mission and prestige.

Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, addressed questions from an auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. She was joined by Brian Hughes, the agency’s chief of staff, a political appointee who was formerly a Florida-based consultant active in city politics and in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Two other senior career managers, Vanessa Wyche and Casey Swails, were also on the stage.

They tried to put a positive spin on the situation at NASA. Petro, Wyche, and Swails are civil servants, not Trump loyalists. None of them looked like they wanted to be there. The town hall was not publicized outside of NASA ahead of time, but live video of the event was available—unadvertised—on an obscure NASA streaming website. The video has since been removed.

8 percent down

NASA’s employees are feeling the pain after the White House proposed a budget cut of nearly 25 percent in fiscal year 2026, which begins October 1. The budget request would slash NASA’s topline budget by nearly 25 percent, from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation, this would be the smallest NASA budget since 1961, when the first American launched into space.

“The NASA brand is really strong still, and we have a lot of exciting missions ahead of us,” Petro said. “So, I know it’s a hard time that we’re going to be navigating, but again, you have my commitment that I’m here and I will share all of the information that I have when I get it.”

It’s true that NASA employees, along with industry officials and scientists who regularly work with the agency, are navigating through what would most generously be described as a period of great uncertainty. The perception among NASA’s workforce is far darker. “NASA is f—ed,” one current leader in the agency told Ars a few weeks ago, soon after President Trump rescinded his nomination of billionaire businessman and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman to be the agency’s next administrator.

Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, is seen in 2020 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Before the White House released its detailed budget proposal in May, NASA and other federal agencies were already scrambling to respond to the Trump administration’s directives to shrink the size of the government. While NASA escaped the mass layoffs of probationary employees that affected other departments, the space agency offered buyouts and incentives for civil servants to retire early or voluntarily leave their posts.

About 900 NASA employees signed up for the first round of the government’s “deferred resignation” program. Casey Swails, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, said Wednesday that number is now up to 1,500 after NASA announced another chance for employees to take the government’s deferred resignation offer. This represents about 8 percent of NASA’s workforce, and the window for employees to apply runs until July 25.

One takeaway from Wednesday’s town hall is that at least some NASA leaders want to motivate more employees to resign voluntarily. Hughes said a “major reason” for luring workers to leave the agency is to avoid “being in a spot where we have to do the involuntary options.”

Rumors of these more significant layoffs, or reductions in force, have hung over NASA for several months. If that happens, workers may not get the incentives the government is offering today to those who leave the agency on their own. Swails said NASA isn’t currently planning any such layoff, although she left the door open for the situation to change: “We’re doing everything we can to avoid going down that path.”

Ultimately, it will depend on how many employees NASA can get to resign on their own. If it’s not enough, layoffs may still be an option.

Many questions, few answers

Nearly all of the questions employees addressed to NASA leadership Wednesday were submitted anonymously, and in writing: When might Trump nominate someone for NASA administrator to take Isaacman’s place? Will any of NASA’s 10 field centers be closed? What is NASA going to do about Trump’s budget proposal, particularly its impact on science missions?

Their responses to these questions, in order: Probably not any time soon, maybe, and nothing.

The Trump administration selected Petro, an engineer and former Army helicopter pilot, to become acting head of NASA on Inauguration Day in January. Bill Nelson, who served as a Florida senator until 2019, resigned the NASA administrator job when former President Biden left the White House.

Petro was previously director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center since 2021, and before that, she was deputy director of the Florida spaceport for 14 years. She leapfrogged NASA’s top civil servant, associate administrator Jim Free, to become acting administrator in January. Free retired from the agency in February. Before the presidential election last year, Free advocated for the next administration to stay the course with NASA’s Artemis program.

But that’s not what the Trump administration wants to do. The White House seeks to cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, both core elements of the Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon after two more flights. Under the new plan, NASA would procure commercial transportation to ferry crews to the Moon and Mars in a similar way to how the agency buys rides for its astronauts to the International Space Station in low-Earth orbit.

NASA’s Curiosity rover captured images to create this selfie mosaic on the surface of Mars in 2015. If implemented as written, the Trump budget proposal would mark the first time in 30 years that NASA does not have a Mars lander in development. The agency would instead turn to commercial companies to demonstrate they can deliver payloads, and eventually humans, to the red planet.

The Trump administration’s statements on space policy have emphasized the longer-term goal of human missions to Mars. The White House’s plans for what NASA will do at the Moon after the Artemis program’s first landing are still undefined.

Petro has kept a low profile since becoming NASA’s temporary chief executive five months ago. If Trump moved forward with Isaacman’s nomination, he would likely be NASA administrator today. The Senate was a few days away from confirming Isaacman when Trump pulled his nomination, apparently for political reasons. The White House withdrew the nomination the day after Elon Musk, who backed Isaacman to take the top job at NASA, left the Trump administration.

Who’s running NASA?

Now, Petro could serve out the year as NASA’s acting administrator. Petro is well-regarded at Kennedy Space Center, where she was a fixture in the center’s headquarters building for nearly 20 years. But she lacks a political constituency in the Trump administration and isn’t empowered to make major policy decisions. The budget cuts proposed for NASA came from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, not from within the agency itself.

President Trump has the reins on the process to select the next NASA administrator. Trump named Isaacman for the office in December, more than a month before his inauguration, and the earliest any incoming president has nominated a NASA administrator. Musk had close ties to Trump then, and a human mission to Mars got a mention in Trump’s inauguration speech.

But space issues seem to have fallen far down Trump’s list of priorities. Hughes, who got his job at NASA in part due to his political connections, suggested it might be a while before Trump gets around to selecting another NASA administrator nominee.

“I think the best guess would tell you that it’s hard to imagine it happening before the next six months, and could perhaps go longer than that into the eight- or nine-month range, but that’s purely speculation,” Hughes said, foreseeing impediments such as the large number of other pending nominations for posts across the federal government and high-priority negotiations with Congress over the federal budget.

Congress is also expected to go on recess in August, so the earliest a NASA nominee might get a confirmation hearing is this fall. Then, the Senate must vote to confirm the nominee before they can take office.

The timeline of Isaacman’s nomination for NASA administrator is instructive. Trump nominated Isaacman in December, and his confirmation hearing was in April. He was on the cusp of a confirmation vote in early June when Trump withdrew his nomination on May 31.

As NASA awaits a leader with political backing, Petro said the agency is undergoing an overhaul to make it “leaner and more agile.” This is likely to result in office closures, and Hughes indicated NASA might end up shuttering entire field centers.

“To the specific question, will they be closed or consolidated? I don’t think we’re there yet to answer that question, but it is actively a part of the conversation we’re having as we go step-by-step through this,” Hughes said.

What can $4 billion buy you?

While Trump’s budget proposal includes robust funding for human space exploration, it’s a different story for most of the rest of NASA. The agency’s science budget would be cut in half to approximately $3.9 billion. NASA’s technology development division would also be reduced by 50 percent.

If the White House gets its way, NASA would scale back research on the International Space Station and cancel numerous robotic missions in development or already in space. The agency would terminate missions currently exploring Jupiter, on the way to study an asteroid, and approaching interstellar space. It would shut down the largest X-ray space telescope ever built and the only one in its class likely to be operating for the next 10 years.

“There’s a lot of science that can still be done with $4 billion,” Petro said. “How we do science, and how we do partnerships, may change in the future to sort of multiply what we’re doing.”

These partnerships might include asking academic institutions or wealthy benefactors to pitch in money to fund science projects at NASA. The agency might also invite commercial companies to play bigger roles in NASA robotic missions, which are typically owned by the government.

This view of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere from NASA’s Juno spacecraft includes several of the planet’s southern jet streams. Juno is one of the missions currently in space that NASA would shut down under Trump’s budget request. Credit: NASA

One employee asked what NASA could do to secure more funding in the president’s budget request. But that ship has sailed. The options now available to NASA’s leadership are to support the budget proposal, stay silent, or leave. NASA is an executive agency and part of the Trump administration, and the White House’s budget request is NASA’s, too.

“It’s not our job to advocate, but let’s try to look at this in a positive way,” Petro said. “We’ve still got a lot of money. Let’s see how much mission we can do.”

Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to appropriate funding for NASA and other parts of the government. Lawmakers haven’t signaled where they might land on NASA’s budget, but Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is influential on space-related matters, released the text of a proposed bill a few weeks ago that would restore funding for the International Space Station and forego cancellation of the Space Launch System rocket, among other things. But Cruz did not have much to say about adding more money for NASA’s science programs.

NASA’s senior leaders acknowledged on Wednesday that the pain of the agency’s downsizing will extend far beyond its walls.

“Eighty-five percent of our budget goes out the door to contractors,” Petro said. “So, with a reduced budget, absolutely, our contractors will also be impacted. In fact, they’re probably the bigger driver that will be impacted.”

It’s clearly a turbulent time for America’s space agency, and NASA employees have another month to decide if they want to be part of it.

“I know there’s a lot to consider,” Swails said. “There’s a lot that people are thinking about. I would encourage you to talk it out. Tap into your support systems. Talk to your spouse, your partner, your friend, your financial advisor, whomever you consider those trusted advisors for you.”

This sounds like hollow advice, but it seems like it’s all NASA’s workers can do. The Trump administration isn’t waiting for Congress to finalize the budget for 2026. The downsizing is here.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

During a town hall Wednesday, NASA officials on stage looked like hostages Read More »

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Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it.

department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, Policy / /

Trump wants $45M to continue DOGE’s work. Critics warn costs already too high.

Federal workers and protestors spoke out against US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs earlier this year. Credit: Pacific Press / Contributor | LightRocket

Critics are increasingly branding Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a failure, including lawmakers fiercely debating how much funding to allot next year to the controversial agency.

On Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats sparred over DOGE’s future at a DOGE subcommittee hearing, according to NextGov, a news site for federal IT workers. On one side, Republicans sought to “lock in” and codify the “DOGE process” for supposedly reducing waste and fraud in government, and on the other, Democrats argued that DOGE has “done the opposite” of its intended mission and harmed Americans in the process.

DOGE has “led to poor services, a brain drain on our federal government, and it’s going to cost taxpayers money long term,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) argued.

For now, DOGE remains a temporary government agency that could sunset as soon as July 4, 2026. Under Musk’s leadership, it was supposed to save the US government a trillion dollars. But so far, DOGE only reports saving about $180 billion—and doubt has been cast on DOGE’s math ever since reports revealed that nearly 40 percent of the savings listed on the DOGE site were “bogus,” Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institute, wrote in a report detailing DOGE’s exposed failures.

The “DOGE process” that Republicans want to codify, Kamarck explained, typically begins with rushed mass layoffs. That’s soon followed by offers for buyouts or deferred resignations, before the government eventually realizes it’s lost critical expertise and starts scrambling to rehire workers or rescind buyout offers after “it becomes apparent” that a heavily gutted agency “is in danger of malfunctioning.”

Kamarck warned that DOGE appeared to be using the firings of federal workers to test the “unitary executive” theory, “popular among conservatives,” that argues that “the president has more power than Congress.” Consider how DOGE works to shut down agencies funded by Congress without seeking lawmakers’ approval by simply removing critical workers key to operations, Kamarck suggested, like DOGE did early on at the National Science Foundation.

Democrats’ witness at the DOGE hearing—Emily DiVito of the economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative—suggested that extensive customer service problems at the Social Security Administration was just one powerful example of DOGE’s negative impacts affecting Americans today.

Some experts expect the damage of DOGE’s first few months could ripple across Trump’s entire term. “The rapid rehirings are a warning sign” that the government “has lost more capacities and expertise that could prove critical—and difficult to replace—in the months and years ahead,” experts told CNN.

By codifying the DOGE process, as Republicans wish to do, the government would seemingly only perpetuate this pattern, which could continue to be disastrous for Americans relying on government programs.

“There are time bombs all over the place in the federal government because of this,” Kamarck told CNN. “They’ve wreaked havoc across nearly every agency.”

DOGE spikes costs for Americans, nonprofit warns

Citizens for Ethics, a nonpartisan nonprofit striving to end government secrecy, estimated this week that DOGE cuts at just a few agencies “could result in a loss of over $10 billion in US-based economic activity.”

The shuttering of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alone—which Musk allegedly stands to personally benefit from—likely robbed American taxpayers of even more. The nonprofit noted that agency clawed back “over $26 billion in funds” from irresponsible businesses between 2011 and 2021 before its work was blocked.

Additionally, DOGE cuts at the Internal Revenue Service—which could “end or close audits of wealthy individuals and corporations” due to a lack of staffing—could cost the US an estimated $500 billion in dodged taxes, the nonprofit said. Partly due to conflicts like these, Kamarck suggested that when it finally comes time to assess DOGE’s success, the answer to both “did federal spending or the federal deficit shrink?” will “almost surely be no.”

As society attempts to predict the full extent of DOGE’s potential harms, The Wall Street Journal spoke to university students who suggested that regulatory clarity could possibly straighten out DOGE’s efforts now that Musk is no longer pushing for mass firings. At the DOGE hearing, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) suggested the only way to ensure DOGE hits its trillion-dollar goal is to “make sure these cuts aren’t just temporary” and pass laws “to streamline agencies, eliminate redundant programs and give the president the authority to fire bureaucrats who don’t do their jobs.”

But one finance student, Troy Monte, suggested to WSJ that DOGE has already cost the Trump administration “stability, expertise, and public trust,” opining, “the cost of DOGE won’t be measured in dollars, but in damage.”

Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told CNN that when DOGE borrowed the tech industry tactic of moving fast and breaking things, then scrambling to fix what breaks, it exposed “the mosaic of incompetence and a failure on the part of this administration to understand the critical value that the breadth of government expertise provides.”

“This is not about a single incident,” Stier said. “It’s about a pattern that has implications for our government’s ability to meet not just the challenges of today but the critical challenges of tomorrow.”

DOGE’s future appears less certain without Musk

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) had hoped to subpoena Musk at the DOGE hearing to testify on DOGE’s agenda, but Republicans blocked her efforts, NextGov reported.

At the hearing, she alleged that “all of this talk about lowering costs and reducing waste is absolute BS. Their agenda is about one thing: making the federal government so weak that they can exploit it for their personal gain.”

Just yesterday, The Washington Post editorial board published an op-ed already declaring DOGE a failure. Former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia told NPR that he expects DOGE will “fizzle out” purely because DOGE failed to uncover as much fraud as Musk and Trump had alleged was spiking government costs.

Beyond obvious criticism (loudly voiced at myriad DOGE protests), it’s easy to understand why this pessimistic view is catching on, since even from a cursory glance at DOGE’s website, the agency’s momentum appears to be slowing since Musk’s abrupt departure in late May. The DOGE site’s estimated savings are supposed to be updated weekly—and one day aspire to be updated in real-time—but the numbers apparently haven’t changed a cent since a few days after Musk shed his “special government employee” label. The site notes the last update was on June 3.

In addition to Musk, several notable Musk appointees have also left DOGE. Most recently, Wired reported that one of Musk’s first appointees—19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine—is gone, quitting just weeks after receiving full-time employee status granted around the same time that Musk left. Lavingia told Wired that he’d heard “a lot” of people Musk hired have been terminated since his exit.

Rather than rely on a specific engineer spearheading DOGE initiatives across government, like Coristine appeared positioned to become in Musk’s absence, Trump cabinet members or individual agency heads may have more say over DOGE cuts in the future, Kamarck and Politico’s E&E News reported.

“The result so far is that post-Musk, DOGE is morphing into an agency-by-agency effort—no longer run by a central executive branch office, but by DOGE recruits who have been embedded in the agencies and by political appointees, such as cabinet secretaries, who are committed to the same objectives,” Kamarck wrote.

Whether Trump’s appointees can manage DOGE without Musk’s help or his appointees remains to be seen, as DOGE continues to seek new hires. While Musk’s appointed DOGE staff was heavily criticized from day one, Kamarck noted that at least Musk’s appointees appeared “to have a great deal of IT talent, something the federal government has been lacking since the beginning of the information age.”

Trump can extend the timeline for when DOGE sunsets, NextGov noted, and DOGE still has $22 million left over from this year to keep pursuing its goals, as lawmakers debate whether $45 million in funding is warranted.

Despite Trump and Musk’s very public recent fallout, White House spokesperson Kush Desai has said that Trump remains committed to fulfilling DOGE’s mission, but NPR noted his statement curiously didn’t mention DOGE by name.

“President Trump pledged to make our bloated government more efficient by slashing waste, fraud, and abuse. The administration is committed to delivering on this mandate while rectifying any oversights to minimize disruptions to critical government services,” Desai said.

Currently, there are several court-ordered reviews looking into exactly which government systems DOGE accessed, which could reveal more than what’s currently known about how much success—or failure—DOGE has had. Those reviews could expose how much training DOGE workers had before they were granted security clearances to access sensitive information, potentially spawning more backlash as DOGE’s work lurches forward.

Kamarck suggested that DOGE was “doomed to face early failures” because its “efforts were enacted on dubious legal grounds”—a fact that still seems to threaten the agency’s “permanence.” But if the next incoming president conducts an evaluation in 2029 and finds that DOGE’s efforts have not meaningfully reduced the size or spending of government, DOGE could possibly disappear. Former staffers hope that even more rehiring may resume if it does, E&E reported.

In the meantime, Americans relying on government programs must contend with the risk that they could lose assistance in the moments they need it most as long as the Musk-created “DOGE process” continues to be followed.

“Which one of these malfunctions will blow up first is anyone’s guess, but FEMA’s lack of preparedness for hurricane season is a good candidate,” Kamarck said.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Is DOGE doomed to fail? Some experts are ready to call it. Read More »

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Senate passes GENIUS Act—criticized as gifting Trump ample opportunity to grift

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“Why—beyond the obvious benefit of gaining favor, directly or indirectly, with the Trump administration—did you select USD1, a newly launched, untested cryptocurrency with no track record?” the senators asked.

Responding, World Liberty Financial’s lawyers claimed MGX was simply investing in “legitimate financial innovation,” CBS News reported, noting a Trump family-affiliated entity owns a 60 percent stake in the company.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the MGX deal, ABC News reported. However, Warren fears the GENIUS Act will provide “even more opportunities to reward buyers of Trump’s coins with favors like tariff exemptions, pardons, and government appointments” if it becomes law.

Although House supporters of the bill have reportedly promised to push the bill through, so Trump can sign it into law by July, the GENIUS Act is likely to face hurdles. And resistance may come from not just Democrats with ongoing concerns about Trump’s and future presidents’ potential conflicts of interest—but also from Republicans who think passing the bill is pointless without additional market regulations to drive more stablecoin adoption.

Dems: Opportunities for Trump grifts are “mind-boggling”

Although 18 Democrats helped the GENIUS Act pass in the Senate, most Democrats opposed the law over concerns of Trump’s feared conflicts of interest, PBS News reported.

Merkley remains one of the staunchest opponents to the GENIUS Act. In a statement, he alleged that the Senate passing the bill was essentially “rubberstamping Trump’s crypto corruption.”

According to Merkley, he and other Democrats pushed to remove the exemption from the GENIUS Act before the Senate vote—hoping to add “strong anti-corruption measures.” But Senate Republicans “repeatedly blocked” his efforts to hold votes on anti-corruption measures. Instead, they “rammed through this fatally flawed legislation without considering any amendments on the Senate floor—despite promises of an open amendment process and debate before the American people,” Merkley said.

Ultimately, it passed with the exemption intact, which Merkley considered “profoundly corrupt,” promising, “I will keep fighting to ban Trump-style crypto corruption to prevent the sale of government policy by elected federal officials in Congress and the White House.”

Senate passes GENIUS Act—criticized as gifting Trump ample opportunity to grift Read More »

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Trump suggests he needs China to sign off on TikTok sale, delays deal again

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For many Americans, losing TikTok would be disruptive. TikTok has warned that US businesses could lose $1 billion in one month if TikTok shuts down. As these businesses wait in limbo for a resolution to the situation, it’s getting harder to take the alleged national security threat seriously, as clinching the deal appears to lack urgency.

On Wednesday, the White House continued to warn that Americans are not safe using TikTok, though, despite leaving Americans vulnerable for an extended period that could now stretch to eight months.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt only explained that “President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark” and would sign an executive order “to keep TikTok up and running” through mid-September. Leavitt confirmed that the Trump administration would focus on finishing the deal in this three-month period, “making sure the sale closes so that Americans can keep using TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” Reuters reported.

US-China tensions continue, despite truce

Trump’s negotiations with China have been shaky, but a truce was reestablished last week that could potentially pave the way for a TikTok deal.

Initially, Trump had planned to use the TikTok deal as a bargaining chip, but the tit-for-tat retaliations between the US and China all spring reportedly left China hesitant to agree to any deal. Perhaps sensing the power shift in negotiations, Trump offered to reduce China’s highest tariffs to complete the deal in March. But by April, analysts opined that Trump was still “desperate” to close, while China saw no advantage in letting go of TikTok any time soon.

Despite the current truce, tensions between the US and China continue, as China has begun setting its own deadlines to maintain leverage in the trade war. According to The Wall Street Journal, China put a six-month limit “on the sales of rare earths to US carmakers and manufacturers, giving Beijing leverage if the trade conflict flares up again.”

Trump suggests he needs China to sign off on TikTok sale, delays deal again Read More »

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“Have we no shame?”: Trump’s NIH grant cuts appallingly illegal, judge rules

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“Where’s the support for that?” Young asked. “I see no evidence of that.”

Meanwhile, a lawyer representing one of the plaintiffs suing to block the grants, Kenneth Parreno, seemingly successfully argued that canceling grants related to race or transgender health were part of “a slapdash, harried effort to rubber stamp an ideological purge.” At the trial, Young noted that much of the information about the grant cancellations was only available due to the independent efforts of academics behind a project called Grant Watch, which was launched to crowdsource the monumental task of tracking the cuts.

According to Young, he felt “hesitant to draw this conclusion” but ultimately had “an unflinching obligation to draw it.”

Rebuking the cuts and ordering hundreds of grants restored, Young said “it is palpably clear that these directives and the set of terminated grants here also are designed to frustrate, to stop, research that may bear on the health—we’re talking about health here, the health of Americans, of our LGBTQ community. That’s appalling.

“You are bearing down on people of color because of their color,” Young said. “The Constitution will not permit that… Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

Young also signaled that he may restore even more grants, noting that the DOJ “made virtually no effort to push back on claims that the cuts were discriminatory,” Politico reported.

White House attacks judge

Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, told NYT that in spite of the ruling, the agency “stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas.” He claimed HHS is exploring a potential appeal, which seems likely given the White House’s immediate attacks on Young’s ruling. Politico noted that Trump considers his executive orders to be “unreviewable by the courts” due to his supposedly “broad latitude to set priorities and pause funding for programs that no longer align.”

“Have we no shame?”: Trump’s NIH grant cuts appallingly illegal, judge rules Read More »

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Trump Mobile launches, hyping $499 US-made phone amid Apple threats

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Donald Trump’s image will soon be used to sell smartphones, the Trump Organization confirmed after unveiling a new wireless service, Trump Mobile, on Monday.

According to the press release, Trump Mobile’s “flagship” wireless plan will be “The 47 Plan,” which references Trump’s current term as the United States’ 47th president.

The Trump Organization says the plan offers an “unbeatable value”—costing $47.45 per month—and “transformational” cellular service. But the price seems to be on par with other major carriers’ “best phone plans,” according to a recent CNET roundup, and the service simply plugs into the 5G network through “all three major carriers,” the press release noted.

The main selling point, then, appears to be the Trump name, with the Trump Mobile website saying it’s “the only mobile service aligned with your values and built on reliability, freedom, and American pride.” CNBC noted that the Trump Organization’s “foray into telecommunications mainly comprises a licensing agreement” rather than representing some bold new offering in the market.

The Trump Mobile agreement is seemingly no different from other deals for Trump-branded products that raked in more than $8 million for the president last year, including watches, perfumes, a Bible, a memecoin, and a guitar. And it’s just as likely to be criticized as those deals, The Hill reported, by “those who see Trump’s family as excessively monetizing his time in office.”

Trump-branded smartphone will be made in the USA

Next on the product list is a Trump-branded “T1 Phone,” which would come just as Trump lobs criticism at Apple and threatens the tech giant with tariffs for failing to build its iPhones in the US. The Trump Organization’s press release seemed to take a shot at Apple, describing Trump’s competing product as “a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States for customers who expect the best from their mobile carrier.”

A product image of the Donald Trump-branded T1 Phone. Credit: via Trump Mobile

The T1 Phone is due out later this fall—it’s unclear exactly when, as the press release says August, but the website says September—but it can be preordered now for $499. That’s less than the cost of an iPhone 16, which costs $799 today but could cost at least 25 percent more if Apple pivots manufacturing to the US, analysts have suggested. There may be some issues, however, as 404 Media reported that its attempt to preorder the phone triggered a page load failure and charged its credit card the wrong amount.

Trump Mobile launches, hyping $499 US-made phone amid Apple threats Read More »

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5 things in Trump’s budget that won’t make NASA great again

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If signed into law as written, the White House’s proposal to slash nearly 25 percent from NASA’s budget would have some dire consequences.

It would cut the agency’s budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation, this would be the smallest NASA budget since 1961, when the first American launched into space.

The proposed funding plan would halve NASA’s funding for robotic science missions and technology development next year, scale back research on the International Space Station, turn off spacecraft already exploring the Solar System, and cancel NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft after two more missions in favor of procuring lower-cost commercial transportation to the Moon and Mars.

The SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft have been targets for proponents of commercial spaceflight for several years. They are single-use, and their costs are exorbitant, with Moon missions on SLS and Orion projected to cost more than $4 billion per flight. That price raises questions about whether these vehicles will ever be able to support a lunar space station or Moon base where astronauts can routinely rotate in and out on long-term expeditions, like researchers do in Antarctica today.

Reusable rockets and spaceships offer a better long-term solution, but they won’t be ready to ferry people to the Moon for a while longer. The Trump administration proposes flying SLS and Orion two more times on NASA’s Artemis II and Artemis III missions, then retiring the vehicles. Artemis II’s rocket is currently being assembled at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for liftoff next year, carrying a crew of four around the far side of the Moon. Artemis III would follow with the first attempt to land humans on the Moon since 1972.

The cuts are far from law

Every part of Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 remains tentative. Lawmakers in each house of Congress will write their own budget bills, which must go to the White House for Trump’s signature. A Senate bill released last week includes language that would claw back funding for SLS and Orion to support the Artemis IV and Artemis V missions.

5 things in Trump’s budget that won’t make NASA great again Read More »