"Musk, who has been engaged in a high-profile feud with US President Donald Trump, on Thursday threatened to decommission the Dragon before later saying the spacecraft would stay in operation."
Interesting timing.
They say “the only US alternative”, which is true, but it’s not the only alternative - nasa paid for seats on Soyuz for many years, and I’m sure they could go back to doing the same. Perhaps China would be willing to sell seats on their launches. Maybe India will be in a position to offer human launches to the U.S. fairly soon - should be up and running by 2027, and they seem to hit their objectives most of the time.
Cooperation with roscosmos seems to have been largely unimpeded by Russia’s political and military actions over the years, so these all seem like realistic possibilities.
Yes, it will be a shame if the U.S. has no launch capability of their own, but short term partisan political thinking is much more important to the electorate than long term national strategic interest.
It seems likely that the Pentagon will soon force SpaceX to merge into another contractor, most likely Boeing or Boeing's largest rival, Lockheed-Martin.
Well ... Boeing got themselves into the perfect storm. They need this flight to work right, after the catastrophic first attempt. But the longer they wait to get things right, the more eyebrows will be raised. They need a good flight, now.
But they do not determine the schedule - it's determined by NASA, which has about a thousand problems of itself right now, and cannot afford to screw up either.
I do not envy anyone in that chain of delivery right now.