⚠️ SNARKY DISCLAIMER

 This is satire. Hot, historically schooled, and loaded with outrage. If you think the Smithsonian is too woke, but hauling off a national treasure to your hometown is patriotic—well, you’re the problem.

So on July 4th, while fireworks lit up DC, Republicans snuck a clause into their "One Big Beautiful Bill" making it basically legal to steal the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian—and ship it to Houston, Texas.

Transparently billed as honoring Texas—because politics always sacrifices the past on the altar of state pride.

Except the Smithsonian already owns the shuttle. NASA transferred full title in 2012.

So this is not a transfer.

This is... a heist.

Senator Durbin didn’t whisper it—he said it on record: “It’s a Texas heist, plain and simple”—because Texas lost the orbiters competition more than a decade ago. 

Now get this:

Congress allocates $85 million for the move. But keep laughing—because the Smithsonian estimates the real cost as high as $325 million due to obsolete transport hardware and fragile artifact risks.

The jet they used? Scrapped.

The crew trained? Retired.

Experts look at this and say: “It’s logistically stupid, culturally damaging, and entirely unnecessary.”

Especially when you consider Discovery took 39 missions, spent more time in orbit than any other vehicle, and now sits in a research museum where it educates millions every year—and Americans didn’t vote to give it away.

Meanwhile, in the same breath:

The Trump administration is gutting Smithsonian funding by 12%, killing dedicated staff for the planned Latino museum, shuffling out Donna Reed—and complaining about “woke ideology.”

Yes, they’re using the Smithsonian’s public trust as a rocket showroom.

State legislators who say public art ruins the nation's memory now legislate away the memory itself.

They’ll fight tooth and nail to ban a painting or a film.

But when it comes to relocating the shuttle—a national artifact?

It’s congressional prerogative.

Final Thought?

Maybe Houston deserves its own shuttle.

Maybe we can erect a Houston Hero Exhibit near Johnson Space Center.

But not by commandeering a national collection piece that already belongs to the American people.

When you allow one state to hijack a national treasure because "they lost before," what stops the next act?

Ohio takes back the Wright Flyer.

New York steals back the Hope Diamond.

Kansas demands its ruby slippers.

This isn’t space pride—not really.

This is pandering disguised as payback, with no respect for history or preservation—just political fumes from a megabill.

But don’t worry. Discovery will be well displayed somewhere... in a building paid for by taxpayers, for an act born of political spite.

If history had airlocks, we’d eject these guys into oblivion.