Mass layoffs of federal workers around the country have made news recently, but government agencies are scrambling to rehire some of those workers. That includes some who were with the National Nuclear Security Administration — and that has some senators calling on the Trump administration to be more transparent about the cuts it’s making to federal agencies.
The Trump administration acknowledges it laid off people who work with the NNSA, but there have been no details as to how many were let go and where they worked. That prompted national security concerns because the agency oversees the country’s nuclear arms and testing, including the Nevada National Security Site, north of Las Vegas.
U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, sent a letter to the Department of Energy asking if there were any firings and/or rehirings at the Nevada site. She has not received a response.
“This is about taxpayer dollars that the American public has an absolute need to know and rightfully so — how their money is being spent,” she said. “This is about transparency in the process and transparency in the executive branch.”
Cortez Masto said President Trump’s newly appointed agency heads will eventually be grilled by Congress for answers about national security concerns. She had strong words about the latest actions.
“Right now this president is hiding,” Cortez Masto said. “He says one thing and does another. He’s a hustler. And he is hiding the true facts because he knows he doesn’t want to be held accountable by the American public.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration oversees the nation’s nuclear stockpile. According to the NNSA’s website, the agency maintains the “safety, reliability and effectiveness” of the nation’s nuclear weapons and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and abroad.
Today, nuclear testing continues in some of the original World War II-era locations such as Los Alamos and the Nevada National Security Site. But many of today’s tests are computer simulations, according to Steve Andreasen, the national security consultant at Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on global nuclear security.
“What we’ve learned through this process of experimentation and the involvement of advanced computing is how to ensure that the weapon will actually work as it was designed to work without using a nuclear explosive test,” he said.
That doesn’t mean the National Nuclear Security Administration is obsolete.
Cortez Masto said the chaos that’s been created is strategic. But at the end of the day, Americans need to recognize what these changes are intended to achieve.
“And this President is trying to achieve tax cuts for billionaires on the backs of middle-class Americans, on the backs of Nevadans,” Cortez-Masto said. “And we can’t lose sight of not only on what are you trying to achieve that is going to harm Nevadans, but what he can do to harm this country, long term.”
The senator said she will give the administration another week to respond and then she would personally call the heads of these agencies.
The Mountain West News Bureau reached out to the Department of Energy, which oversees the National Nuclear Security Administration, but did not receive a response.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
