Trump’s tax bill would send an iconic Smithsonian spacecraft to Texas The Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum could lose the iconic Discovery space shuttle to Houston if a pair of Texas senators get their way. President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration billpassed the Senate on Tuesday with language effectivelyordering the shuttle’s move to Texas.It would set aside $85 million to transport Discovery and construct a home for it at Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for NASA’s Johnson Space Center — which itself oversaw more than 100 shuttle launches over three decades. But the Smithsonian, which has housed the shuttle at its Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia since 2012, estimated that the true cost would be north of $300 million. That includes the cost of the transfer, thenew facility to house it, prep for an alternative museum display at the Smithsonian and other related costs. The House approved the bill on Thursday afternoon, and Trump is expected to sign it into law. More than a dozen years ago, NASA chose the final resting places of Discovery and its three siblings after the agency ended the space shuttle program. Notably, none of the four winning sites were in Texas — a decision that was decried as a “snub” by 16 members of Texas’s congressional delegation at the time and continues to rankle the state’s Senate Republicans, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, who backed the new provision. Cornyn said in a statement thathe looks “forward to welcoming Discovery to Houston and righting this egregious wrong.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/07/03/space-shuttle-texas-smithsonian-congress/
IMHO most who voted for big ugly bill have contempt for poor people who get Medicaid and SNAP. What's wrong with them? They must lack intelligence, work ethic, ambition or they wouldn't be poor. Rich successful people like Congresspeople and Senators themselves deserve government benefits, lazy poor people don't. Same with AID. Those countries have been poor for generations. Why should they get handout? They lack the American spirit that made this country great (conveniently ignoring the fact this country was built by slaves on land stolen from indigenous people). Those who really have work ethic, ambition, initiative are immigrants. Yet these same Republicans positively salivate at poor Brown people dragged away in chains. Like WWE, it's entertainment.
