Jared Isaacman

I admit immediately that I have no inside information to back up the speculation that will follow. Instead, it is based entirely on my fifty years of experience observing the political machinations that take place inside the DC swamp.

In the past week there have been a slew of stories all aimed at pressuring Congress to quickly confirm Jared Isaacman (, jet pilot, businessman, and commercial astronaut), Trump’s pick to be NASA’s next administrator. For example, two days ago NASA’s last Republican-appointed administrator Jim Bridenstine publicly called for Isaacman’s confirmation by the Senate.

“I think Jared Isaacman is going to be an amazing NASA administrator,” he said. “I think he’s got all the tools to be what could be the most consequential NASA administrator given the era in which we live in now.” That era, he said, involves greater reliance on commercial space capabilities. “He’s going to be able to take that and do things that have never been able to be done before.”

This week there was also an article in Space News, touting Isaacman’s desire to increase funding to NASA’s planetary defense program, expressed by him in February when it looked like asteroid 2024 YR4 had a good chance of hitting the Earth in 2032.

Furthermore, a group of seven Republican senators this week also joined the chorus, sending a letter [pdf] to Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), the chair and ranking members respectively of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, extolling Isaacman in glowing terms and calling for his quick confirmation.

So with all this enthusiastic support bubbling out everywhere, why do I suspect Isaacman might actually be in trouble?

This last effort above appears prompted by the delay in scheduling Isaacman’s confirmation hearing before the Senate. Unlike almost all of Trump’s other picks, which were quickly vetted and confirmed, Isaacman’s remains in a strange limbo. For some unexplained reason, the Trump administration has not yet submitted the formal paperwork to the Senate that would allow it to schedule that hearing.

Why? I think a news story in mid-January provides a possible explanation. It revealed that Isaacman has been a heavy Democratic Party donor since 2010, contributing $300,000 to that party’s candidates. Worse, it appears his companies until very very recently have been proudly supportive of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

[T]he payment processing company Shift4 that Isaacman founded has touted its DEI efforts in a publicly available fact sheet obtained by the Washington Examiner. Draken, a defense company Isaacman founded, has helped sponsor DEI-related events and recently deleted a page from its website called “Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI).” Another since-deleted page on Draken’s website referenced a “gender pay gap report” that appeared to be related to Draken’s workforce.

That Isaacman’s companies have deleted these webpages suggests he recognizes this support could cause him a problem. That the companies pushed those racist policies at all however raises questions about his judgment. And from a political point of view, his financial support to Democrats will certainly make many Republicans question his reliability going forward.

These facts suggest to me that within both the Trump administration and among Republican in the Senate there are now second thoughts about Isaacman. Trump’s experience in his first administration, with federal appointees constantly sabotaging his efforts behind his back, has made him very determined to only bring people into his second administration he is certain to trust. Isaacman’s long support for the Democratic Party as well as DEI could be the reason the administration is delaying his confirmation.

The spat of news stories this week touting Isaacman could be the Washington swamp’s effort to counter these second thoughts. Or it could be Isaacman has — like Musk and others — truly changed his political views and his supporters are trying to highlight that fact.

Either way, something strange appears to be happening in the background for this nomination. Either my speculations are junk and will vanish quickly, or we might find Isaacman soon withdrawing his nomination. Stay tuned.