{"id":414115,"date":"2026-08-22T21:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/414115\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:40:08","slug":"trump-is-coming-to-houston-to-honor-astronauts-at-johnson-space-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/414115\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump is coming to Houston to honor astronauts at Johnson Space Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

When President Donald Trump returns to Houston<\/a> this week, he won’t just be stumping for cash for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

The president is set to present the trio of\u00a0astronauts<\/a> \u2014 Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch \u2014 with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.\u00a0Trump will be joined at the 10 a.m. ceremony by NASA Administrator\u00a0Jared Isaacman<\/a>, the agency said in a release.<\/p>\n

The medal is reserved for astronauts who have made “exceptionally meritorious efforts and contributions to the welfare of the nation and of mankind,” according to NASA. Thirty astronauts have received the award, including Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, and the crews who died on the ill-fated Challenger and Columbia space shuttle missions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April, the Artemis II crew became the first astronauts in more than 50 years to leave low-Earth orbit, embarking on a 10-day journey around the moon, where they set a record for the farthest distance<\/a> humans have traveled from Earth.<\/p>\n

Trump called the astronauts during their mission, after they had returned from the far side of the moon. At the time, he praised them as “modern day pioneers.” The president also hosted the group in the Oval Office later that month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Returning to the moon has been an ambition of Trump’s since his first term, when the Artemis program was created to establish a more permanent lunar presence. NASA hopes to land astronauts on the moon with the Artemis IV mission, sometime in early 2028.<\/p>\n

His fundraising for the\u00a0RNC comes as the GOP is fighting to retain congressional majorities in November’s midterm elections, including in a hotly contested Senate race<\/a> in Texas.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the RNC has far outpaced the DNC in collecting cash, with $130 million on hand compared to $16 million for the Democrats, according to the most recent FEC filings. But in Texas, state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate, has built a formidable war chest, with over $22 million at the start of July, compared to $1.8 million for his Republican opponent, state Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton<\/p>\n

Trump’s trip to Houston will be only his third to the state in his second term, after he visited 18 times in his first. Last summer, he\u00a0toured Kerrville <\/a>after the Hill Country floods, and in February he traveled to Corpus Christi<\/a> to tout low gas prices hours before the start of the war with Iran.<\/p>\n

This story includes previous reporting from staff writer Jeremy Wallace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When President Donald Trump returns to Houston this week, he won’t just be stumping for cash for Republicans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-414115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}