CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —President Trump interrupted a NASA press conference today (Aug. 30) to congratulate the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team on a successful launch. Just a few years ago, however, the president tried to cancel this very mission.
In today’s briefing, mission leadership was going through the specifics of Roman’s successful launch and the science the observatory is expected to deliver when NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman got a phone call. It was the president. The room fell silent, though I could hear Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, say, “He’s not kidding.”
“Hello, sir,” Isaacman said. He got up to take the call outside the room but came came back in a few moments later. “The president of the United States would like to address and congratulate everyone on this mission,” he said. “You’re live, Mr. President.”
“I just want to thank everybody and congratulate you,” Trump said on the phone, which Isaacman held up to the microphone and clearly displayed Trump’s name. “Boy, it looked beautiful on television … You are doing a fantastic job, and I’m supplying you all that money.”
The president spoke for more than a minute while Isaacman smiled, holding the phone up to a microphone for everyone to hear, and the crowd of journalists listened intently. The call was mostly congratulatory, but Trump did go on a brief tangent, claiming that he has taken NASA to new heights.
Near the beginning of his first term in 2016, Trump said, he visited NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and saw that “grass was growing through the cracks in the runways, and there were a lot of cracks. And I looked; that place was closed … It was just literally closed. And now, again, like we are with the country itself, we’re the hottest there is. We’re the hottest. You’re the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
(To clarify, KSC was only closed for two days in 2016, and that was because of Hurricane Matthew.)
President Trump’s relationship with the Roman mission is more complicated than today’s congratulatory call might suggest, however. Under the Trump administration, the White House has repeatedly tried to cancel or restrict funding for this mission.
Between 2019 and 2021, for example, the president proposed canceling Roman (then called WFIRST) three separate times in three different budget requests. Congress rejected those proposals and kept the mission funded. But then, in April 2025, reports emerged about initial “passback” budget documents that proposed slashing NASA science funding by about 50%. The proposed cuts were deep enough, experts suggested, that the Roman mission would end if they were passed. That didn’t happen either, of course; Congress ended up passing a $24.4 billion NASA budget for fiscal year 2026, keeping the agency’s funding relatively flat.
As Trump made his call today to a room packed with science journalists, this bit of recent budget history did not go unnoticed.
(Image credit: NASA)
A direct question
“Question for the administrator,” SpaceNews reporter Jeff Foust asked Isaacman today following Trump’s call. “It’s great to hear the president call in and show us excitement about the Roman launch. I know the administration in past years, in its first term, proposed zeroing out Roman and also proposed a serious cut in Roman’s budget just last year. What did you tell the administration, and the president, to change his mind and make him so excited about a mission that he once proposed to cancel?”
Isaacman did not directly address the question, focusing instead on the current climate, which he said is very positive.
“I’m incredibly grateful for his support, the space policy, the resources,” Isaacman responded. “Sounds like from that call, maybe even more resources, which is also a great thing for more missions of science and discovery.”
