Trump’s NASA Jettisons DEI Comic Book, ‘Environmental Justice’ Programs

During the first year of the Biden administration, NASA produced a comic book about how a “first woman and the first person of color will walk on the Moon.” 

The agency followed that by publishing an additional graphic novel about the fictional character, Callie Rodriguez, and adding a “diverse crew” to join her, according to a NASA press release that quoted then-NASA Administrator Bill Nelson saying, “Diversity is at the core of NASA’s missions and the reason we continue breaking the boundaries of what’s possible. ‘First Woman’ embodies the rich history of countless women who broke barriers and continue to lead NASA to the stars.”

According to NASA, the full comic book project with printing and all the accompanying immersive online content cost about $1 million. The comic project was canceled after the Trump administration came into office earlier this year, as it was considered a project focused on “environmental justice.”

The comic book project was among several examples of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”-focused expenses and climate-related projects that seemingly had little to do with the goal of space exploration. 

“Under the Biden-Harris administration, NASA’s focus was deviated to the woke agenda of the Left—from promoting climate change over spaceflight to peddling discriminatory DEI ideology,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens told The Daily Signal. “Just take a look at the letter from former NASA Administrator Nelson in last year’s budget request—it’s riddled with references to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” 

President Donald Trump has appointed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the interim NASA administrator. 

“Under the leadership of Secretary Duffy and President Trump, the agency is now focused on its original and primary purpose: pushing the boundaries of human space exploration to get Americans farther into the unknown than ever before, keeping America First on the final frontier,” Stevens added.

This contrasts with the previous administration. NASA’s fiscal year 2025 budget request, submitted in May 2024, said the agency “demonstrates NASA’s commitment to advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) throughout the workforce with a request of $22.4 million.”

The Trump administration has closed several NASA offices, including the Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility branch in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations, said the change back to the agency’s core mission is welcomed. 

“We need to be developers in space, and of NASA’s core mission instead of getting distracted by all these sideshows,” Sessions told The Daily Signal. Sessions is also co-chairman of the House DOGE Caucus, which aligns its work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE. 

In May 2024, NASA also issued a $1.1 million grant for “environmental justice” to The George Washington University, and most was paid out before it was cancelled earlier this year by the Trump administration, according to the Department of Government Efficiency. 

The DOGE website lists the grant among its most recently cancelled, on July 16, and says the cancellation saves taxpayers $366,992. 

The DOGE website says the grant was initially for $1,174,329, and of the federal website USASpending.gov says the total funding was $807,337. 

The grant description says it was for “assessing environmental justice air quality and health co-benefits of transport interventions in U.S. urban areas.” 

Later on in the description, the grant’s objective is explained: “Investigations in Earth orbit, as well as to or even beyond objects in the Solar System, and through ground-based research activities that directly support these space missions.” 

The grant description continues: “SMD [science mission directorate] also supports basic and applied research and technology in order to understand naturally occurring space and Earth phenomena, human-induced changes in the Earth system, and to develop Earth and space science-related technologies.”

A spokesperson for George Washington University Media Relations did not respond to email and phone messages from The Daily Signal on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

In another cost-cutting measure, NASA also deleted 26 separate websites, at a savings of about $500,000 per year, according to DOGE. As of Wednesday, the number is at 27, according to NASA. These include kids.climate.nasa.gov, environmentaltest.gsfc.nasa.gov, and sunearthday.nasa.gov.

(This story is part of continuing coverage of government waste that includes findings by the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency.)

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