February 14. Trump firings cause chaos at agency responsible for America's nuclear weapons
The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy that oversees the U.S. stockpile of thousands of nuclear weapons. Officials were given hours to fire hundreds of employees.
Officials were given hours to fire hundreds of employees, and workers were shut out of email as termination notices arrived. The terminations were part of a broader group of dismissals at the Department of Energy, where reportedly more than a thousand federal workers were terminated.
civilian agency that conducts a wide variety of nuclear security missions, including servicing the nation's nuclear weapons when they're not on missiles and bombers, and making extensive safety and security upgrades of the warheads.
Some workers were responsible for making sure emergency response plans were in place at sites like a giant facility in Texas, where thousands of dismantled warheads are stored. Others worked to prevent terrorists and rogue nations from acquiring weapons-grade plutonium or uranium. Many had "Q" clearances, the highest level security clearance at the Department of Energy.
In the final days leading up to the firings, managers drew up lists of essential workers and pleaded to keep them.
Multiple current and former employees at the agency told NPR that scores of people were notified verbally they were fired. Many had to clear out their desks on the spot. "It broke my heart," says one employee who was among those who left the agency's Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The NNSA termination letter did not appear to make any specific reference to the highly-classified nuclear mission conducted by the agency.
But others at the agency who were told they were terminated never received written notification.
Nuclear security is highly specialized, high-pressure work, but it's not particularly well paid, one employee told NPR. Given what's unfolded over the past 24 hours, "why would anybody want to take these jobs?" they asked.
Despite having the words "National" and "Security" in its title, it was not getting an exemption for national security, managers at the agency were told last Friday, according to an employee at NNSA
Just days before, officials in leadership had scrambled to write descriptions for the roughly 300 probationary employees at the agency who had joined the federal workforce less than two years ago.
Managers were given just 200 characters to explain why the jobs these workers did mattered.
"Per OPM [Office of Personnel Management] instructions, DOE finds that your further employment would not be in the public interest,"
