Transport Secretary Sean Dafi will now also be overseeing NASA as its newest interim administrator. The announcement of the new leadership came to the post of late night on his social media site, Truth social by President Donald Trump.
“The scene is doing a tremendous job in handling our country’s transport affairs, including creating a state -of -the -art air traffic control system, while rebuilding our roads and bridges at the same time, skilled and beautiful, again,” wrote by Trump. “He would ever be a magnificent leader of the more important space agency, even if only for a short time.”
Dafi was a reality show personality known for appearances in MTV, “Road Rules: All Stars” and “The Real World: Boston” before making its turn in politics, first as a district attorney in 2002, aslland county in 2002, a district attorney in Visconsin and then from 2010 to 2019 as a member of Congress.
Trump declared Dafi as his pick on November 18, 2024 for the post of Transport Secretary. The Senate confirmed its nomination in 77-22 votes on 28-22 January 2025, a few days after the second Trump administration began.
“Honored to accept this mission,” Dafi wrote on X after Trump’s post. “Time to capture space. Let’s launch.”
It was over five weeks on Wednesday night after the nomination of businessman Jerid Isaqman for the position of NASA’s administrator on Wednesday night. Isaqman, the founder of Shift 4 and the commander of two commercial astronaut missions, was dropped from the Senate Commerce Committee in 19-9 votes in April and was moving towards a full Senate vote on nomination.
At the time when Trump pulled the nomination of Isaacman on 31 May, he said, “I will soon announce a new nominee, who will align the mission, and the US will be put in space first.” Since then, the President made some comments on his decision, including a long truth social post on 6 July, attacking his biggest political donor in the 2024 election, Alone Musk.
He and Musk, who led Trump’s government’s efficiency department, had a very public decline, which included several jabs coming from both sides.
Trump wrote in his July 6 post, “Apart from this, Elon asked that one of his close friends run NASA and while I felt that his friend was very good, I wondered knowing that he was a blue blood democrat, who had never contributed to Republican before.”
“Elon was probably too. I also felt that it was unfair that a very close friend of Elon, who was in a space business, used to run NASA, when NASA is such a large part of Elon’s corporate life.”
Isaacman pushed back the next day, stating in a post on X that he was a self-known “correct liberal”, which gave both political parties “10x more for Republican”. He also said that he revealed his political contribution before submitting nomination to the Senate and said that his relationship with Kasturi was only professional.
Since Trump’s second term began, Janet Petro, director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, has served as an interim NASA Administrator. Prior to Wednesday’s announcement, there was no indication that Petro would not continue to lead NASA until a new nominee was selected. He served in the role of 171 days.
This change comes at an important time for the agency as the proposed financial year 2026 budget from the White House will reduce NASA’s overall budget, with a reduction of about 50 percent in the science budget.
Nevertheless, giving several jobs to high level officers is not new to Trump’s office in the second term. More than half a dozen people are now winning two or more major federal positions:
- Todd Blaunch
- Sub -attorney general
- Congress acting librarian
- Daniel Driskall
- Secretary of army
- Acting Director, Liquor Bureau, Tobacco, Fire -Fire and Explosives
- Scene Dafi
- Transport secretary
- Acting nasal administrator
- Jamisan Greer
- American trade representative
- Acting Director, US Ethics Office
- Executive Special Advocate, Special Counsel’s American Office
- Richard granal
- Special American messenger
- Chairman, Kennedy Center
- Marco Rubio
- Secretary of State
- White House National Security Advisor
- Acting archives of the United States
- Acting Administrator for American Agency for International Development
- Russell watt
- Director, US management and budget office
- Acting Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bear
Trump did not indicate in his latest declaration when he intends to nominate a permanent NASA administrator. During Trump’s first term, Robert Lightfoot held an interim position for 458 days until Jim Brigenstine rebelled in April 2018.
