Trump’s NASA Official Not Too Worried as SpaceX Rocket Dents the Moon

One of Elon Musk’s wayward rockets seems to have crashed into the moon, but the Trump administration isn’t worried about it.

Part of a SpaceX rocket crashed into the moon Wednesday morning, reportedly with the impact of three tons of TNT. The crash sent up a big cloud of dust and left a new crater on the moon’s surface, The Independent reports. Images of the impact may take days to appear from ground telescopes and satellites orbiting the moon. The SpaceX rocket is from a Falcon 9 spacecraft that was carrying a lunar lander to the Moon last January.

When asked about the explosion on Fox News, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was dismissive, crediting SpaceX with recovering 600 of its rockets in other cases, and said this explosion wasn’t a big deal in terms of space trash.

“It’s very infrequent to have things like the Falcon 9 second stage crash into the moon,” Isaacman said. “It’s not a big deal right now, the moon has clearly seen better days.”

Isaacman then pivoted into how once reusable rockets are ready, they would be landing on the moon to help “contribute to the city block you’re trying to build on the surface.”

Isaacman has a close business relationship with Musk, having financed SpaceX missions in the past, and wants to carry out Musk and President Trump’s dreams of building a base on the moon. If there were major problems with spacecraft crashing into the moon, he’s not likely to hurt his own position, or make Musk look bad, by telling the public in a news interview.

Space debris is a growing problem from increased rocket launches, and could become a major issue if any important satellites are damaged. If more of Musk’s SpaceX rockets veer out of control, his moon base plans could hit a major snag.

President Trump on Wednesday filed an emergency motion to stop the British Broadcasting Corporation from gaining broad access to intimate details about his finances.

The emergency stay is the latest development in how Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, triggered by a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance,” is backfiring. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett allowed the BBC to move forward with gaining access to the financial information of at least 400 business entities owned by Trump’s family trust. Lett set a Thursday deadline for the BBC to get hold of his financial records.

Now Trump is scrambling to stop what he started from blowing up in his face.

“The BBC’s motive could not be more transparent—to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit, as well as the benefit of President Trump’s other political opponents,” the deposition read. “The moment those records reach the BBC, the injury is complete and irreversible.” His lawyers also accused the BBC of having “clearly political motivations.”

Trump’s legal team is asking Lett to allow Trump to go back and change the language of the suit, so that his lucrative business dealings as president are not subject to public scrutiny.

The BBC has yet to respond.

It seems obvious that Trump bit off more than even he can chew here. If his plea to change the discovery parameters fails, we may see him drop the lawsuit entirely.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a chilling message to U.S. attorneys across the country at a press conference Wednesday.

A reporter asked Blanche if he stood by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the four cases of vandalism over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and what kind of message it would send if President Trump fired Pirro because she determined there wasn’t enough evidence to charge those people.

“Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a United States attorney, it turns out he’s allowed to do that, because he’s the president of the United States,” Blanche replied. “And by the way, if the president wanted—if President Trump wanted to fire anybody, right, and within his administration, I mean, he understands he has the power to do that. So when he makes a decision about whether to fire a U.S. attorney or anybody else, that’s his.”

That’s not a ringing endorsement of Pirro, and it shows that Blanche, like Trump, doesn’t believe in federal prosecutors’ independence. If a U.S. attorney is given an order by Trump, they must fall in line regardless of the evidence, Blanche effectively said.

Pirro is either on the verge of being fired, or is on very thin ice after she refused to prosecute the Reflecting Pool vandalism cases. She reportedly got into a shouting match with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Trump in the White House Tuesday over the matter, and the president still insists that the pool was vandalized, citing nonexistent witnesses and video evidence. Every other U.S. attorney around the country is watching what happens to Pirro, because the message from Trump and Blanche is to follow orders, whether they make legal sense or not. Otherwise, you’re fired.

Temporary Protected Status has officially ended for Haitians, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of being deported—even though the United States still designates Haiti with a level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes of Washington, D.C. reversed her initial decision and ruled that TPS was “no longer in effect” for Haitians, following a Supreme Court ruling in June.

The final step puts more than 300,000 Haitians in this country at risk of deportation. Meanwhile, the U.S. tells its citizens not to travel to Haiti due to “the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care”—the same reasons thousands of Haitians were afforded TPS in the first place.

Haitians have been a constant target of racist animosity from the Trump administration, most notably from Trump himself, who claimed on the campaign trail that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

“The way this group has been specifically targeted is symbolic of the administration’s efforts to criminalize immigrants of color,” Advocates for Basic Legal Equality senior attorney Katie Kersh told The Washington Post.

Aside from being forced back into a dangerous and unstable environment, about 200,000 potential deportees have jobs here, mostly in health care and warehouse jobs—leaving local economies in limbo, as business owners have already begun searching elsewhere for employees.

“This is an embarrassment for the United States of America,” Senator Chris Murphy said on Monday. “There is no safe place to return for TPS holders from places like Haiti and Yemen and Venezuela and Syria. In fact, in those places I just mentioned, the situation is not stabilizing, getting better, it is getting worse.”

Abdul El-Sayed’s win in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary is already drawing bigoted attacks from the right.

President Trump called El-Sayed a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel” Wednesday morning, saying that his victory was “Great News for the Republican Party,” in a post on Truth Social. Vice President JD Vance followed Trump’s lead and attacked El-Sayed in passing in a press conference.

“We don’t want the next administration, whoever, you know, God forbid you’re going to have President El-Sayed in three years. We don’t want him to undo all the incredible work that we’ve been doing when we’ve been taking out the fraudsters and saving the American people money,” Vance said.

El-Sayed’s Republican opponent this November, Representative Mike Rogers, released a statement alluding to El-Sayed’s Muslim faith.

“I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11,” Rogers said in his statement.

AIPAC, which spent nearly $32 million supporting El-Sayed’s primary opponent, Representative Haley Stevens, signaled Wednesday that it would support Rogers in November, saying in a statement, “Our members remain determined to ensure that voters reject Dr. El-Sayed and his radical anti-Israel agenda in November.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee Wednesday morning called El-Sayed “the Most Radical Candidate in America,” and referred to him by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, a departure from its previous press releases.

“El-Sayed is the most radical Democrat Senate nominee ever. His support of terrorist organizations, socialist policies, and the defunding of law enforcement makes him dangerous and ultimately disqualified from serving,” NRSC chair and Senator Tim Scott said in the press release. “Michigan has had two Democrat Senators for decades, so we cannot take anything for granted, but we will do everything we can to make sure El-Sayed never steps foot in the U.S. Senate.”

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso piled on, calling El-Sayed dangerous, scary, and an extremist on the Senate floor Wednesday.

The NRSC has already released an attack ad against El-Sayed full of dog whistles, alleging that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood and believes America deserved 9/11.

At a press conference on Wednesday, El-Sayed brushed off the blatantly Islamophobic attacks, saying, “That’s the only play they got.

“They’re gonna point at me, they’re gonna point at my name, like, ‘Wow, he’s different.’ That’s the best you got? You can’t actually talk about what you want to do? My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries,” El-Sayed said. “So, [Rogers] can point to my name all he wants, but I’ll also tell you this: I’ve been an Abdul in Michigan my whole life. This is like the best place in the world to be Abdul, you know why? Because Michiganders are, they’re big-hearted.”