In government, the practice is generally known as “dual-hatting,” which refers to one official taking on the responsibilities of more than one job. Donald Trump has embraced the tactic with a bit too much enthusiasm lately — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, has been tasked with four jobs — and the president added to his list this week. NBC News reported:
Trump … appointed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the interim administrator of NASA, making Duffy the latest administration official to serve in multiple roles. Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the appointment that Duffy may serve only ‘for a short period of time.’
About a month ago, billionaire Jared Isaacman was poised to be easily confirmed as the new NASA administrator, but the president abruptly pulled his nomination at the last minute after concluding that Isaacman wasn’t enough of a far-right partisan. Trump said he’d announce a new nominee soon after, but that hasn’t yet happened.
Instead, the White House wants the transportation secretary — a former Fox News host who’s spent much of his tenure trying to avoid blame for recent failures — to handle both jobs, at least for now.
Whether the administration has struggled to find qualified people willing to lead NASA, or whether qualified people have turned down overtures to work for Trump, is unclear.
What’s more, one of the key elements of this president’s approach to dual-hatting is that his use of the tactic signals an implicit contempt: When Trump taps one person to do two (or more) jobs, it tends to mean that he doesn’t see much value in the underlying positions.
With this in mind, there are growing concerns, not only about NASA’s leadership, but about the future of the space agency itself.
Politico reported this week, for example, that “at least 2,145 senior-ranking NASA employees are set to leave under a push to shed staff,” and many of those leaving the agency “serve in NASA’s core mission sets.”
This potentially massive personnel loss dovetails with the new White House budget, which would cut NASA’s science budget nearly in half. Politico’s report added that the proposed spending cuts, if approved by the Republican Congress, “would force the agency to operate with the smallest budget and staff since the early 1960s” — before the first moon landing. Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, which advocates for research and exploration in space, recently said the White House’s budget plan represents an “extinction-level event” for one of the world’s leading science agencies. Nearly six months ago, in his second inaugural address, the president declared, “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” Maybe Trump changed his mind about his space ambitions, or maybe he envisions a privatized system. Either way, it’s hard not to wonder whether NASA and the United States’ space program will survive the Republican’s second term.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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