{"id":24906,"date":"2025-11-05T01:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T01:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/24906\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T01:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T01:12:11","slug":"lehigh-valley-billionaire-jared-isaacman-is-trumps-pick-for-nasa-again-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/24906\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley billionaire Jared Isaacman is Trump’s pick for NASA, again"},"content":{"rendered":"

By AAMER MADHANI Associated Press<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate Northampton County resident Jared Isaacman<\/a> to serve as his NASA administrator, months after withdrawing the Lehigh Valley resident and tech billionaire\u2019s nomination because of concerns about his political leanings.<\/p>\n

Trump announced in late May<\/a> that he had decided to withdraw Isaacman after a \u201cthorough review\u201d of his \u201cprior associations.\u201d Weeks after the withdrawal, Trump went further in expressing his concerns about Isaacman\u2019s Republican credentials.<\/p>\n

At the time, Trump acknowledged that he thought Isaacman \u201cwas very good,\u201d but had become \u201csurprised to learn\u201d that Isaacman was a \u201d blue blooded Democrat, who had never contributed to a Republican before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacman had the endorsement of Trump\u2019s former DOGE adviser and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. The president and Musk had a very public falling out earlier this year but are now on better terms.<\/p>\n

Last week, Trump told reporters<\/a> he and Musk have spoken \u201con and off\u201d since sitting together at conservative activist Charlie Kirk\u2019s funeral last month in Arizona and that their relationship is \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump made no mention of his previous decision to nominate and then withdraw Isaacman in his Tuesday evening announcement of the re-nomination on his Truth Social platform. And the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump\u2019s decision to reverse course.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis evening, I am pleased to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of NASA,\u201d Trump posted. \u201cJared\u2019s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been serving as interim NASA administrator. The president on Tuesday praised Duffy for doing an \u201cincredible job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isaacman, CEO and founder of Upper Saucon Township-based credit card-processing company Shift4, has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since buying his first chartered flight with SpaceX.<\/p>\n

He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk. SpaceX has extensive contracts with NASA.<\/p>\n

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved Isaacman\u2019s nomination in late April and a vote by the full Senate had been expected when Trump announced he was yanking the nomination.<\/p>\n

In his own social media post Tuesday, Isaacman thanked Trump for the nomination and the \u201cspace-loving community.\u201d He made no mention of the earlier turmoil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By AAMER MADHANI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he has decided to nominate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,60,433,182,139,434,28,29,1015],"class_list":["post-24906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-business","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-top-stories-mer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}