As Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue their government dismantling project unabated, workers at an agency that manages the United States' nuclear stockpile are feeling the burn.
In an interview with NPR, an employee with that agency — the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — said that roughly 300 of the group's 1,800-person staff are expected to be fired amid directives from Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
A semi-autonomous organization within the Department of Energy (DOE) — an agency that one of Musk's DOGE boys recently gained access to — the NNSA is tasked with preventing nuclear proliferation around the world and maintaining and updating America's nuclear arsenal.
Though the group applied for a national security exemption to the job cut order, which is also sweeping across several other agencies and targeting newer workers who are still within their probationary periods, that request was not granted, NPR reports.
According to a DOE official — who, like the NNSA employee, NPR didn't name to protect their identity — the Office of Personnel Management suggested that superiors should tell the axed workers that they were being fired for "performance reasons." The Energy Department chose not to use that excuse, the DOE worker said, because many of those on the chopping block had performed well during their time at the agency.
After news of those firings went public, CBS reporter Jennifer Jacobs pointed out that the mass firings were enacted just before Russia flew an exploding drone into the shell of the Chornobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine.
While it's unclear what role the NNSA would have played in mitigating or warning about that Russian escalation, one thing's for sure: with Musk's DOGE flunkies sticking their grubby little fingers in such important agencies, there's no telling what will happen next.
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