Administrator (15th, confirmed Dec 2025), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA's Jared Isaacman, NCAA's Charlie Baker, more | Face the Nation Full Broadcast - June 28, 2026
This week on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Ed O'Keefe speaks to NCAA President Charlie Baker. Meanwhile, Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Carlos Gimenez discuss immigration and their American stories.
"Face the Nation" is America's premier Sunday morning public affairs program. The broadcast is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television, having debuted Nov. 7, 1954, on CBS. Every Sunday, "Face the Nation" moderator and CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan welcomes leaders, newsmakers, and experts to a lively round table discussion of...
About Jared Isaacman
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has been publicly outlining the agency's plans for a sustained lunar presence, including the construction of a moon base. In multiple interviews and briefings in mid-2026, Isaacman stated that the Artemis III mission is "still very much on track," with a wet dress rehearsal planned for the end of 2026 and a launch in 2027, followed by a crewed lunar landing on Artemis IV in 2028. He described the moon base as a phased effort, with an estimated $20 billion investment over seven years, and said the agency is drawing on a "playbook that worked very well for NASA during the 1960s" by conducting many smaller missions to build capability. Isaacman also discussed a planned 2028 launch of "SR1 Freedom," which he described as the first interplanetary nuclear-powered spaceship, calling it a "70% solution" that would extend humanity's reach into deep space. Isaacman has repeatedly characterized the current period as a renewed space race, stating that China is "capable of doing what the Soviets were not" and will land its taikonauts on the moon. He attributed the agency's accelerated timeline to a national space policy signed by President Trump and a $10 billion-plus investment from the Working Family Tax Cut Act. Following a Blue Origin rocket explosion on the launchpad, Isaacman said NASA was providing subject matter experts and helping with the anomaly investigation, adding that "no one got hurt" and that the company would "learn, fix their engine, rebuild their pad, and get back to launching rockets." He also described SpaceX's Starship as "almost a light switch moment for humanity" and said the company is "hands down our greatest commercial space company."
Transcript (115 segments)
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Ed O'Keefe0:01
I'm Ed O'Keefe in Washington, and this week on Face the Nation, as America celebrates its 250th birthday, we'll try to put politics aside and focus on some of the things that make this nation so unique. Despite record-breaking temperatures sweeping across much of the country, Americans came out over the weekend to honor 250 years of independence. Fireworks, parades, flyovers, and red, white, and blue were all on display as we saluted a country that, despite being one of the younger nations of the world, has one of the longest continuing governments.
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Donald Trump0:37
There is no place we cannot go. There is no goal we cannot reach, and there is nothing that Americans cannot do, and we're proving that right now.
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Ed O'Keefe0:49
We'll take a look at one thing that is proving difficult to fix, immigration. Two members of Congress who immigrated here and became US citizens, Florida Republican Carlos Gimenez and New York Democrat Adriano Espaillat, tell us their stories and why immigrants are so important to America's future. Plus, space. As America reboots its quest to lead the world in space exploration, we'll reflect on our history and take a look at what's ahead with NASA administrator Jared Isaacman. And sports. Americans are driven by competition and winning, and few things unite us as much as the love of the game. We'll talk about changes in college sports, the proving ground for young American athletes, with the head of the NCAA, former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker. All this and more, just ahead on Face the Nation. Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation. Margaret is off. I'm Ed O'Keefe. Neither rain nor lightning nor 100° plus heat could shut down the festivities in the nation's capital Saturday night, but all three forces combined prompted officials to evacuate thousands from the National Mall for hours until the worst of the bad weather had passed. Crowds took shelter in nearby museums and government agency buildings, but they returned to watch President Trump's speech in what was considered the world's largest fireworks display ever, which lasted until well after midnight.
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Unknown2:32
I hereby declare on oath
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Ed O'Keefe2:35
We're reminded that we're a nation built by immigrants. So, why is it so hard to fix our immigration system? Well, late last week we spoke with two members of Congress who both came to the US as young children. Here's our conversation with Florida Republican Carlos Gimenez and New York Democrat Adriano Espaillat. Congressman Gimenez, you were almost 7 years old when your family fled from Cuba at the start of the Castro regime. What do you remember about those early days in Florida?
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Carlos Gimenez3:04
Well, I remember that we all went to one house. My uncle and aunt were kind enough to take us in. There were about 21 people in that house. And I remember vividly my first day going to school. The day before I went to, you know, they took me to a parochial school. And then the nun saying that tomorrow was my first day of school. That was my first word in English. Until then I only spoke Spanish. And so, that I vividly remember. And then the early days there, it's like a blur obviously, you know, but yeah, it was completely different than my experiences had been in Cuba.
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Ed O'Keefe3:49
And Congressman Espaillat, as I understand it you were about nine when you came to the United States from the Dominican Republic. I imagine New York City was a bit different back then.
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Adriano Espaillat3:59
Of course, the weather was cold, obviously. I remember the cold weather. We lived with our grandparents who had a four and a half bedroom apartment in Washington Heights. And we got there in December. And of course, we went to school. Remember sitting in the back of the classroom and for a year or more not knowing really a word of English, but surely and slowly we acclimated and here we are.
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Ed O'Keefe4:31
Do either of you remember your parents ever explaining why they wanted to become Americans?
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Carlos Gimenez4:39
My grandmother was the first one to become a US citizen. And she was so proud of it. And I remember that she spoke about it, about how great this nation is and how it gave us a new opportunity of moving forward, but she was really proud of becoming an American citizen and I think it translated down to all of us.
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Adriano Espaillat4:57
My parents were seeking freedom not only for themselves, but for us, his children. My sister and I, to give us the opportunity to live in a land of freedom. I recall one day I asked him, 'Hey, why is it that we came to the United States a little bit older?' And he told me a story about how I had come home and I'd asked him a question and to him it felt like we were being indoctrinated into communism and he decided right then and there that we had to leave.
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Ed O'Keefe5:33
Both of you represent areas where there are many people under temporary protected status, but the Supreme Court in recent days ruled that about 356 thousand or so people from Haiti and Syria are going to lose their TPS. And that decision, of course, follows the Trump administration's decision to cancel their temporary legal protection. This issue is perhaps most acute in South Florida given the Haitian community, Congressman Gimenez. I'm curious, what should the secretary do? What should the administration do now with these hundreds of thousands of people?
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Carlos Gimenez5:58
In the case of Haiti, without a doubt, you know, Haiti is a failed state, and I think that deporting Haitians that are under TPS right now back to Haiti would be a huge mistake. I mean, that's the reason why TPS was established to begin with. Just like with Venezuelans, if Venezuelans lose their TPS status, which they have to, we should reinstate that because of the devastation caused by these earthquakes that happened last week. And so, you know, TPS should not be abused. TPS is what it says, temporary protective status. And if you're here for a number of years, you should change your status from TPS to something else. But by the same token, it is meant to safeguard those that are fleeing countries which are either failed states, and there would be at risk of going back to them, or countries that really can't handle them right now, as the case of Venezuela.
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Ed O'Keefe6:56
What might be the easiest, fastest, bipartisan fix Congress could make to deal with immigration?
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Adriano Espaillat7:03
I believe very strongly that it should be bipartisan. And of course, there are three particular items that I think are easy to fix. Dreamers is one of them. These are young people that came here when they were 1, 2 years old. Many of them don't speak the language of their homeland or have no connections whatsoever with the country where they were born. Yet, they're Americans but for one thing, a green card. It's a fixed number of them. Most people agree that they should be let in. They should be allowed to stay here. So, regularizing them is one. Farm workers, many of whom are not going to the fields to work because they're afraid they're going to be arrested and deported. We need them. And then keeping families together is important because a family that's divided, that's fractured, is a weak family and many weak families make up a weak nation.
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Ed O'Keefe7:55
Congressman Gimenez, any of those on your list?
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Carlos Gimenez7:58
Look, I agree with a lot of what the congressman has said. The problem of immigration got exacerbated because we had open borders during the Biden years. And you had millions and millions of people coming into the United States and it really drove the issue of immigration home. And I thought we were getting closer to some kind of a solution until that happened. The borders are now closed and I've always said that once you secure the borders, then we can have an honest debate about the people that are here, the immigrants that are here, those that are undocumented. And I think that we can reach a solution. And those that have been here for years, that have been working, are part of the community, are part of the economy, we need to find a way to normalize them. Doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to be citizens at the end of the day, but to normalize them so that they can come out of the shadows, pay taxes, and then live their life without having fear of somebody coming up and taking them away after 20-something years and separating from their children that they've had during that time. And so, we have to find a solution. I think that the solution could be bipartisan, but it also seems, you know, when the Democrats were in control, it didn't happen. When we were in control, it didn't happen. It's got to happen.
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Ed O'Keefe9:19
What is your message to someone, perhaps Congressman Gimenez, that is on the outside looking in, who might want to become who might want to come to the United States and build a better life? What would be your message to them?
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Carlos Gimenez9:32
My message is to do it the right way. And then you will be welcome with open arms. There's a lot of skills that we need here still in the United States even though we want to make sure that Americans get those jobs, but sometimes you do need skills from outside and by the way, it's not a bad thing to get new ideas, new perspectives coming into the United States from all around the world because that's what makes America the greatest country in the world.
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Ed O'Keefe9:59
And Congressman Espaillat?
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Adriano Espaillat10:03
This nation as we celebrate the 250th anniversary still has promise and I think immigration has been a central part of our ability to move forward as a nation. So I ask those who want to come to our nation that they bring your ideas, bring your innovativeness, bring your talent, bring your energy, the energy that has displayed itself throughout decades and throughout our history. There's been no period in American history that has not been pushed by immigration forward. Even in our most difficult times, it is the influx of new ideas and new energy that makes our country different and of course this is a great experiment and everybody wants to come to America. Do it the right way, there are channels through which you can do it. We will continue to welcome people from all over the world. This is a nation that still has a lot to offer. It's still relatively a very young nation and one that I think has a lot of promise towards the future. I'm happy that my parents, my grandparents were both factory workers brought us here to America. What a great promise, what a great nation.
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Ed O'Keefe11:24
Face the Nation will be back in 1 minute with a look at a bright part of our past and our future, space. Stay with us.
One of the most unifying events so far this year was April's successful launch of Artemis 2, a mission that had many of us mesmerized for days and introduced a new generation of Americans to one of the bright spots when it comes to American ingenuity. Here's senior national correspondent Mark Strassmann.
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Mark Strassmann11:54
It just went sci-fi. This has, it just looks unreal. America's pioneering spirit, undeniable, unrelenting. It fueled Artemis 2's moonshot back in April. It has defined our country for 250 years, from sailing ship to spaceship. What have you been most struck by?
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Unknown12:15
We have seen and felt things that we have never felt before.
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Mark Strassmann12:17
We felt it with Alan Shepard, the first American in space, John Glenn, the first American in orbit.
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Unknown12:19
Oh, that view is tremendous.
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Mark Strassmann12:23
And throughout NASA's early programs, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo.
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John F. Kennedy12:30
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
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Mark Strassmann12:38
Earth stood still and felt it in 1969, watching in awe two Americans become history's first moonwalkers.
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Unknown12:42
Engine stop. We copy you down, Eagle. What? Okay, we're going to be busy for a minute. Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed. Roger, Tranquility. We copy on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
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Mark Strassmann13:07
Retired astronaut Charlie Duke was the voice in Houston's mission control, talking to Apollo 11's crew.
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Charlie Duke13:14
It really to me brought the US together and was very significant.
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Mark Strassmann13:21
Especially given the turmoil
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Charlie Duke13:22
Yeah.
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Mark Strassmann13:23
of that decade.
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Charlie Duke13:23
Right.
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Mark Strassmann13:24
America's first space shuttle.
Over the decades, America invited along international partners to help explore the cosmos, from the space shuttle to the International Space Station, from Hubble and other universe-probing satellites to robotic explorers on Mars.
Along the way, moments when the human cost was unthinkable. Challenger in 1986,
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Unknown13:48
Obviously a major malfunction.
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Mark Strassmann13:50
Columbia in 2003, moments that paused our space exploration, but did not stop it.
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Unknown13:57
Ignition. Lift off.
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Mark Strassmann13:59
In today's commercial era of space, companies often lead the way rather than countries. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing.
And after a 9-year gap, we're again launching American astronauts from US soil. Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, back in 2018.
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Jim Bridenstine14:16
Some of this is American pride. Prestige. I like to use the word prestige. Great nations should be able to launch their own astronauts into space.
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Unknown14:27
Booster ignition.
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Mark Strassmann14:28
Launching them to the moon and back. Now bound for the moon. Yes, space is hard, but America's space story would feel familiar to her original settlers. Determination leading to discovery.
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Unknown14:41
It is absolutely spectacular, surreal. There's no adjectives. I'm going to need to invent some new ones to describe what we are looking at out this window.
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Ed O'Keefe14:52
Our Mike Stuchbery reporting. Thanks to him for that. We turn now to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who's back on the ground after his 4th of July flyover. Yes, he was one of those piloting one of those jets right there. I think you're going to stand and face the nation history as the first to ever pilot a flyover and then show up for the show. So, we appreciate it. Thanks for being here.
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Jared Isaacman15:11
I was grateful to participate in such a historic event as was yesterday and to be here today and talk about such an amazing subject.
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Ed O'Keefe15:18
Yeah, and that's part of why we wanted you here because I think we've reflected on the last few months about how Artemis especially really seemed to bring the country and to some extent the world back together. To focus on this common journey back into the great beyond. Why in your view is it so important that America maintain a presence in space?
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Jared Isaacman15:37
Well, I've been lucky to be in space twice and have that perspective and an appreciation for just the scale of it all. Best way to describe it like we are understanding our progress on what I think is the greatest adventure in human history is literally just dipping your toe in the grandest ocean of all. I mean, just an appreciation. We are lucky that we have been gifted a moon that's 4 and a half days away as a proving ground to continue to venture out and we've just begun it all. All that we stand to learn from a scientific perspective, economic potential. I'll tell you there will be a lunar economy someday. We'll be mining asteroids at some point. So, it's not just scientific. There's economic. There is a massive inspirational component to it. I mean, we talk about the world pausing and watching those Artemis 2 astronauts, right? But how many children were watching? Your children, grandchildren that were watching that now want to grow up and contribute to this great endeavor as engineers and scientists and astronauts. It means certainly a price worth paying, but it is only truly just the beginning. We barely understand our solar system, let alone all the other stars in the Milky Way galaxy or all the other galaxies out there.
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Ed O'Keefe16:43
I want to ask you about a few things facing NASA right now. First off, in the last few days, you've launched a bit of a repair mission with private companies to work on what's called the Swift telescope that tracks gamma rays and has been falling lower and lower closer to the Earth's atmosphere for years. How is that mission progressing now about 3 days into it?
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Jared Isaacman17:01
Well, we're still getting data from it. It is an extremely fascinating mission. It is a rescue mission for a scientific instrument that's up there. So, you know, in the past space was extremely expensive. You'd have to spend a very long time building your instruments, lots of layers of redundancy, which just adds more cost and more delays. And now we can take advantage of the healthiest commercial launch market in the history of America's space program. Lots of different providers that can do things inexpensively, and we can experiment. So, we have a telescope or scientific instrument that's in some degree of distress right now, and for a very low cost, we can experiment with industry to launch a mission, to rendezvous with it, dock, boost it, and give it a new lease on life. Now, it's very early in the mission, as you said, it's only been a couple days. We're still establishing comms with it. And it's also very experimental, so I wouldn't have expected it to come out of the gate and be perfect. But we'll learn more in the days ahead. And if it works, this gives us options for Hubble and other scientific instruments.
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Ed O'Keefe17:56
And it's about a $30 million price tag, which for NASA is affordable or certainly lower cost than many of the other projects.
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Jared Isaacman18:04
I mean, you think about something like James Webb, it wouldn't be applicable because it's based out at a Lagrange point. But that was an extremely expensive, multi-multi-billion-dollar, almost a multi-decade mission. Now, instead of replacing it with another multi-billion-dollar mission, if you could launch something for $30 million to go up and enhance it, give it a new lease on life, that's money well spent. Now, again, you wouldn't do it with James Webb, but this is a good example of a mission where you could test out the capability. And who knows the value it'll have in years ahead.
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Ed O'Keefe18:30
In the last century, Russia was our biggest space competitor. In this one, arguably, it's China. And you've warned repeatedly that we may now be in a race with them that measures not in years, but in months. And so, it's against that warning, I ask you a few questions now about Artemis 3. You're preparing to take off the next Artemis mission next year. You have had it, however, some setbacks. Are you still confident it's going to go off as scheduled?
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Jared Isaacman18:54
Well, I would just say first, it's not arguably, we are very much in a space race right now, and the Chinese are moving at incredible speeds, and they are certainly capable of doing what the Soviets were not during the first space race. Chinese will land their taikonauts on the moon. There's no question. The question is, will the United States return before them? And will we do so in a different way this time? Will we build the base, establish that enduring presence? I think the answer is yes. President Trump gave us national space policy my first day on the job. He gave us a $10 billion plus up investment, a historic investment in the working family tax cut act. That's what allowed us to add the Artemis 3 mission next year. So, we are going back. It will be an unbelievable display. Last night's fireworks show, unbelievable display. I'm telling you in a very short space of time on Artemis 3, you're going to see the three most powerful rockets in the world, NASA's SLS, SpaceX's Starship, Blue Origin's New Glenn. And then you're going to have the landers come together in Earth orbit, test out their capabilities very ala Apollo 9, give us the confidence in our landers for Artemis 4 in 2028. This is an achievable plan, put astronauts back on the surface of the moon. And in parallel, we're launching missions near constantly on a near monthly cadence in 2027 to build the moon base so we have that enduring presence, that proving ground for Mars.
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Ed O'Keefe20:05
So, the goal is to get Artemis 4 to the moon by 2028. The Chinese are thinking about 2030. Any delay potentially puts us too close to their 2030 goal.
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Jared Isaacman20:14
Well, they said before 2030. I want to clarify. That's why I say this is months, not years right now. They are thinking in 2029. We're saying end of 2028 is when we're targeting the landing. That is months, not years. But we have an achievable plan. We have a national space policy. We have bipartisan support from Congress. We have the best and brightest from around the nation that did this before and we'll do it again.
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Ed O'Keefe20:33
One of the issues in getting ready for these next missions, of course, is what happened with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket a few months ago. It exploded at the end of May. The CEO has acknowledged they don't know the cause yet. They're still trying to figure it out, but they still hope to fly and be able to relaunch later this year. Have you gotten any updates on what happened with that explosion? And is it important to know what happened for sure before they attempt any other launches?
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Jared Isaacman20:57
Well, NASA's been playing a role in this from the beginning. So, we were I was on site with the team the next morning after that setback. I was there with Jeff Bezos and their CEO Dave Limp on the matter. We've helped provide subject matter experts to Blue Origin. We're helping with anomaly investigation on the rocket. We're helping with pad rebuild. Most importantly, we're helping continue to move the lander along. We can't slow down. They have course they're going to get their arms around the anomaly. They've honed in already on a potential engine issue. They're going to solve that. Right? You go back to the late 1950s, early 1960s, you can see YouTube videos of NASA rockets having issue all the time. It's how we learn. No one got hurt in this. So they're going to learn. They're going to fix their engine. They're going to rebuild their pad. They're going to get back to launching rockets. NASA's there to help. And like I said, it's the healthiest launch market in the history of America's space program. We have lots of providers that can contribute. We got to keep the lander progressing and ensure we have the right outcome, which is a successful Artemis 3 mission. And then we land on Artemis 4.
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Ed O'Keefe21:52
In our remaining seconds, you mentioned moon bases. By 2029, you want to have humans living on the moon for extended periods of time, right?
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Jared Isaacman21:59
Well, I would say if starting in 2027, we want to start building the base. In 2028, when the NASA astronauts get to the surface of the moon, there's going to be a buggy there, a lunar terrain vehicle. There's going to be a start of infrastructure. 2029, you're going to have more infrastructure. But I would say early 2030s, the moon is going to be like the International Space Station. You're going to have crews that are there on pretty extended periods of time as we learn in that environment and prepare for Mars.
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Ed O'Keefe22:21
Lots of money required, lots of work to be done. But we appreciate you being here, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. Happy 4th of July. Appreciate it. Thank you. And we'll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.
Welcome back to Face the Nation. Tomorrow, the US National Soccer team takes the field against Belgium in the round of 16 in the World Cup. And along with many die-hard Knicks fans, I'm still feeling the thrill of last month's NBA Championship. And then there were those amazing Olympic gold medal wins of both women and men's US hockey teams. I could go on. But to take a look at some of the big changes in college sports, including new rules allowing athletes to earn money and schools to directly share revenue. We spoke with the president of the NCAA, former Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker, and asked him about those changes.
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Charlie Baker23:14
I think it's a good thing. Is it messy? Yes. Could it have been less messy? Maybe. But when you go through something like this on this kind of scale where you're talking about a billion dollars potentially going out to student athletes every year, it's going to be challenging and as a result it has been.
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Ed O'Keefe23:34
You're supportive of the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act because it establishes national standards on the name, image, and likeness program for student athletes, because it limits player transfers and makes other changes that are designed to be equitable, at least in the legislation, across college athletics. But you know several of the largest athletic conferences take issue with this legislation. So as Washington continues debating it, why do you think it's necessary? Why do you think it's worth passing?
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Charlie Baker24:04
If you were to say to me, is the eligibility system that we currently have working? I mean, if everybody would comply with it and stay out of the courts, maybe, but they don't. There is no agent regulation, which is a huge problem. You talk to any student athlete about that and any school about it, they'll tell you that. This provides some regulatory structure around agents. It also deals with all the state preemption issues. What we're really trying to achieve is some sort of national framework so that you can have national championships and national competitions in which for all intents and purposes, everybody's playing by the same set of rules. Now, I understand some of the concerns that the Big Ten and the SEC in particular have raised with the bill. We have some concerns with the bill, too. But to simply walk away from something that deals with a number of the most significant challenges that face college sports, at that point in time, in my view, would be a mistake.
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Ed O'Keefe24:59
By allowing the NIL and allowing schools to directly share revenue, you are seeing different Division I programs in other sports other than football and basketball, which are the biggest, get cut. Things like volleyball, track and field, a lot of the Olympic sports, and there's been a lot of concern about that. What does this legislation do? What's the NCAA doing to ensure that while all the money's going into football, basketball, lacrosse maybe to some extent, volleyball, women's volleyball to some extent, but all those other sports, what are you doing to protect those and ensure that athletes who want to participate in those will still be able to do so?
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Charlie Baker25:36
The idea that sports are being cut only tells half the story because at the same time certain sports may be being cut, other sports are being introduced. If you look at the number of kids who are playing sports right now in Division I, and you look at the number that are playing in Division II and Division III, they're basically at pretty close to all-time highs. No one ever writes about or talks about or promotes the sports that get added. They only talk about, which I understand having come out of politics myself, about the sports that get cut. We track all this stuff every quarter with respect to adds and subtracts with regard to sports that are being made available and sports that are being reduced. But I think the idea that somehow there's a crisis here, I don't buy it, first of all. And secondly, I think the legislation does deal with this in a variety of ways. I happen to think there are better ways to deal with it, and it's an important issue, and we're going to continue to talk to folks in the Senate about that. But I think this notion that somehow paying or providing revenue sharing to kids in high-revenue sports, of which frankly there's really only two, football and some basketball programs, people need to remember that football and men's basketball for the most part supports all the other programs that schools make available. Especially in Division I, and that is not an insignificant issue when you think about this. I believe that at the end of the day the best way to deal with it is treat the sports that generate significant amounts of revenue appropriately, right? And make sure there is this opportunity to share revenue.
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Ed O'Keefe27:15
In recent days the US Supreme Court decided to let states determine whether or not to allow transgender athletes to participate in sports. Last year the NCAA changed its policy to align with the president's executive order threatened to revoke federal funding for schools that permitted transgender athletes. The NCAA changed its policy in part saying it provides a clear national standard. In light of the high court's ruling, do you foresee the NCAA having to tweak its transgender athletes policy?
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Charlie Baker27:43
I don't think so. I mean generally speaking we try to establish policies for most of our programs that can hopefully have a national standard to it. I had said to folks, Democrats and Republicans in Washington after I got this job that we needed some sort of clarity around what the national standard for this would be. And we adopted and comply with the standard that was put forth by the Trump administration. I think what happens at the state level is a different question. Although I do think our national standard is going to be what we expect our schools to use with respect to eligibility issues for college sports.
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Ed O'Keefe28:20
There are a lot of people who look at this and think, you know, I went to this university. It can't compete with some of these bigger ones. Are we essentially in an era now where only the biggest brands and the deepest pockets in college sports can expect to win basketball and football championships?
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Charlie Baker28:40
Well, I think football is a little different than some of the other sports. I think in football given the scale of what it takes to create a competitive program, which was true even before the NIL era. That's probably a reasonable assumption. I think in most other sports, there's still plenty of room for competition. I mean, if you look at baseball, for example, Troy and Alabama made it to the College World Series. If you look at ice hockey, Denver won the national championship. There are plenty of sports where there's still a lot of competition. What's particularly interesting, I think, on the women's side is the scale and significance of how much success the major programs and the power conference schools have had in growing and winning in women's sports. The investments that they've made there have made an enormous difference in their ability to outcompete just about everybody else.
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Ed O'Keefe29:41
There are leaders of the Southeastern Conference, for example, I'm thinking of the head coach and the president of the University of Georgia, who've talked openly about the SEC breaking away from the NCAA if this legislation that's being considered isn't considered favorable to the conference. And once the TV contracts come up, why don't they just go their own separate way? What would you say to those in the SEC or other leagues that say, 'Yeah, let's just go out on our own.'
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Charlie Baker30:08
Well, they'll have a hard time running national championships if they do that because everybody won't have the same rules. I actually like and respect a lot of the people at Georgia in particular and at Ole Miss and at LSU and at a whole bunch of those schools who I deal with on a pretty regular basis. I think the possibility of trying to figure out some way to determine what really has to be a national standard to have national championships and what you probably could do at a conference level because it doesn't necessarily affect our ability to run national championships on a level playing field could be one way to think about it.
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Ed O'Keefe30:46
We'll be right back.
On Wednesday, Margaret sat down with former CDC chief medical officer Deborah Houry, who left the agency in protest after then CDC director Susan Monores was fired late last summer. Houry has provided a Senate committee with hundreds of emails documenting the challenges at the agency during this Trump administration. Here's her story of what happened just after President Trump took office.
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Deborah Houry31:13
We started getting executive orders where we took down hundreds of websites and I thought this is highly unusual. You know, science doesn't change based on who is in office. And so when these things were happening, I knew this is different than before. I also didn't brief the secretary, which was very different than prior administrations.
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Ed O'Keefe31:36
So the websites you're talking about being taken down, this was because of the executive order to remove references to gender ideology.
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Deborah Houry31:43
Yes, and that included the term gender. And gender was in many of our data sets. Gender of animals, you know, we had transgender guidance around mpox. All of that we were told to take down.
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Ed O'Keefe31:59
So it included the CDC and FDA pulling down how physicians should treat STDs. That seems important information.
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Deborah Houry32:08
It's very important information, but it referred to transgender and you couldn't just do a word replace and so we highlighted things like this that, you know, and again as a doctor, it was very concerning to me that if you've got patients and doctors that need specific clinical guidance to not be able to provide that information.
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Ed O'Keefe32:27
You also documented a scramble on the inside to get some of the sites back up and this happened to be just the day after the secretary had finished his confirmation hearings. Why?
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Deborah Houry32:39
We were told that there was a concern it could hurt the secretary's confirmation that if vaccine-related information was missing from the website that it could reflect poorly on him.
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Ed O'Keefe32:49
Specifically information about vaccines.
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Deborah Houry32:51
Yes. Because there was a concern that the secretary had expressed anti-vaccine sentiments and that if CDC, as he was coming on board, didn't have information on vaccines on the website that it had to do with his hearing and his directions.
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Ed O'Keefe33:07
So all of these have been taken down because you're trying to comply with what the president wanted. But then realizing it might hurt votes to confirm the secretary, you had to scramble and put some of them back up.
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Deborah Houry33:19
That's our understanding and to be very clear, when we took the websites down, we flagged that many of these websites contained information such as that. I don't think they understood the volume or the impact till media and others started noticing all the websites that were gone.
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Ed O'Keefe33:36
Mhm.
You know, during the secretary's confirmation hearing, he said all decisions would be free of political influence and guided by science.
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Deborah Houry33:47
Yes.
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Ed O'Keefe33:48
But you received an email from his chief of staff telling you of the quote absolute need for political review of major decisions at the CDC. How different is that from typical management?
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Deborah Houry34:01
That has never happened before. Usually, you know, certainly there would be political review of high-level decisions, but not every decision. And scientists' careers would be at the table. I can tell you through my 8 months when I was the transition lead and only career in the office of the director, I was not part of most of the conversations with the political appointees at HHS.
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Ed O'Keefe34:24
And did most of those political appointees have medical degrees?
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Deborah Houry34:27
I don't think any in HHS at that time had medical degrees. We had one person at CDC who is a political appointee who had a medical degree. He didn't come for the first few months and then the office of the director, we had no one with a medical background or even a public health background.
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Ed O'Keefe34:43
So, the decisions being made were by individuals who had no medical background.
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Deborah Houry34:49
No medical background and not only no medical background, no science background and for many of them no background in government and I want to be clear. It's certainly okay to have different perspectives, you know, and different expertise. But then you want to make sure that the scientists and experts are also being heard and part of those decisions and we weren't.
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Ed O'Keefe35:08
Mhm.
Back in 2024-2025, this was a really intense flu season, the worst in more than 15 years. Nearly 300 kids died. At that time, HHS had this awareness campaign called wild to mild. And it encouraged everyone, it said 6 months and older to get a flu shot. So, one day after Secretary Kennedy is sworn in, there are then a flurry of emails saying this is a direct request, that was the language used, from the secretary to pull down all of those ads. Why?
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Deborah Houry35:45
I first thought there's a misunderstanding where children are dying. It's an active flu season, it's not like flu is over and we'd already paid for these ads. So, it didn't make any sense and so I brought it to our political leaders and brought it back to our communication staff and asked them to please relay back to the department. Surely this isn't what you want.
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Ed O'Keefe36:09
Mhm.
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Deborah Houry36:09
And then we got a note back, it's a direct request from the secretary.
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Ed O'Keefe36:13
A growing number of states, 29 plus DC, have announced they're no longer following CDC recommendations as a benchmark for childhood vaccines. They said this is too much. Do you think that public health and faith in public health can be restored?
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Deborah Houry36:31
I think the secretary has caused a lot of irreparable harm. And when you look at many of the polls out there, the trust in public health, specifically CDC, has decreased dramatically over 20 points in many polls. That's really difficult to recover from. And when states are removing links to the CDC website and following other medical organizations, I don't know how you build back that trust overnight.
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Ed O'Keefe36:57
Autism and finding out more about it is a real focus for the secretary. Before, when he was running for president himself, he put this at the top of his agenda as well. A lot of families are looking to him with a lot of hope. Do you trust what is being conducted in terms of research into autism?
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Deborah Houry37:19
Absolutely not. And that's unfortunate, because autism is a significant issue in our country and worldwide. But there's not a single answer to it. You know, we know that 40 to 60% is linked to some sort of genetic ideology. There's environmental factors. There's probably infectious disease factors. So, you need to really have a robust field of study around autism. Versus again, looking at a single question. And what we saw was back in February and March, we were asked to look at autism. And we proposed several different ideas, including a large study looking at autism and working with NIH. And what came back to us was, 'No, we want to look at the vaccine safety data link data for autism.'
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Ed O'Keefe38:08
They were
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Deborah Houry38:09
So, narrowing in on vaccines and autism versus what we had proposed. And even more concerning is when my staff reached out to NIH scientists who did autism work, they weren't aware that the NIH acting director and some of the other NIH politicals had reached out to us about looking at vaccine and autism and CDC data. How is that possible? I guess there wasn't communication between the NIH politicals and the NIH experts on autism and after that there was no more communication between our scientists and autism and the NIH scientists on autism around that topic. The Kennedy aids did not trust the professionals within the CDC and the NIH. Is that fair? I'd say that's fair.
In your emails, there's one from the director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and she said they're looking in how to respond to questions about vaccine safety and autism and that's when you said not until we're asked and don't go so narrow. Whatever happened to that? Was there ever a CDC study launched? No. Well, not on what I had proposed. What I proposed back to that center director was that autism was an important thing to study and we should be looking broader and working with NIH. What came back instead was that NIH the acting director as well as a contractor, John Powers, who's now a NIH Institute acting director, were going to look at the vaccine safety data with a lens towards autism.
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Ed O'Keefe39:43
Back in April, the secretary held a press conference on what he called the autism epidemic and he claimed that the media has an ideology of epidemic denial, that we are not asking enough questions about why there is an uptick. You wrote in one of your documents here that there was a bit of concern that you heard after the secretary spoke. What concerns were you hearing? Even, you know, President Trump's first Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, put out on social media about how the secretary really focused on profound autism and not really looking at the whole spectrum of autism and
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Deborah Houry40:20
Not looking at highly functional individuals as well.
Yeah, and just really demeaning, you know, in my mind anybody with autism versus recognizing the struggle that individuals and families have and how we could support them. And he, you know, really kind of misrepresented the data like conflating information on states when a lot of it had to do with detection. And if we had been able to brief him, like I had suggested, you know, since it was a CDC paper, we could have walked through that with him like what the statistical analysis meant, what some of these findings meant, but we weren't given that opportunity and there was backlash from many in the autism community including groups like Autism Speaks because of how the secretary spoke about autism and again autism is impacting so many families in our nation. We need to look at it seriously and not with a conspiracy lens like the secretary is doing.