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Let Pluto Rest In Dwarf Planet Peace
April 30, 2026
Posted 3 hours ago by
Donald Trump has a hang-up about Pluto. As far back as 2019, his appointed NASA administrator was making noise about reclassifying it as a planet, a status it lost when in 2006 the International Astronomical Union created a new system of nomenclature for all those weird and wacky bodies hurtling around the sun. Pluto, long a staple of the Big Nine and a famous childhood acrostic, was now a mere dwarf planet.
Trump's back on his weird horse again, making noise about declaring Pluto a full-blown planet via executive order. This is not a thing that an executive order can do. This week, though, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told a Senate committee hearing that he is “very much in the camp of 'make Pluto a planet again.' This is also not a thing NASA can do. The IAU does it. Isaacman knows this, and reached for a barely plausible mechanism: He referenced research papers that NASA is currently working on, and said we would love to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this discussion. I do not think Isaacman actually cares about Pluto's status. I think he is remarkably shameless about kissing Trump's ass in order to let NASA receive sufficient funding to get on with its actual work. He's very good at that particular bit of key-jangling.
Defector
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