'Absolutely no knowledge': Arms expert slams DOGE as Trump reverses nuclear weapons layoffs

Editor's note: This headline has been updated.

Last Thursday, as many as 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were laid off, drawing condemnation from those concerned with national security. Some workers even lost access to their email before they saw the email that they were fired. But on Friday, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings for nearly all of the staff.

“This letter serves as formal notification that the termination decision issued to you on Feb. 13, 2025 has been rescinded, effective immediately,” said the memo, the Associated Press (AP) reported Sunday.

The Department of Energy said that the NNSA workers who were fired "held primarily administrative and clerical roles. But three officials told the AP otherwise. Some of the workers were in charge of building warheads, an extremely sensitive job with the highest levels of clearance. Others managed radioactive waste sites, including a Superfund site where work on the Manhattan Project took place. The almost-layoffs took place as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (which is not yet an official federal agency authorized by Congress) looks to cut thousands of employees, including about 2,000 at the Department of Energy, which oversees the nuclear stockpile.

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Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, told the Associated Press that DOGE did not seem to be aware of what they had done.

“The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” he said. “They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”

U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the firings were “utterly callous and dangerous.”

Deputy division director Rob Plonski wrote on LinkedIn that these cuts were a bad idea.

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“This is a pivotal moment. We must decide whether we are truly committed to leading on the world stage or if we are content with undermining the very systems that secure our nation’s future," he wrote, adding, “Cutting the federal workforce responsible for these functions may be seen as reckless at best and adversarily opportunistic at worst.”

It’s unlikely that all of the fired workers will come back.

“The NNSA staff who had been reinstated could not all be reached after they were fired, and some were reconsidering whether to return to work, given the uncertainty created by DOGE,” wrote the AP's Tara Copp and Anthony Izaguirre.

Click here to read the AP's full report.

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