Nearly 400 employees will remain at the Department of Energy, which is in charge of managing the US nuclear weapons stockpile, according to a spokesman at the agency, which is a semi-autonomous branch.
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Chris Wright, the energy secretary for president Trump, made the announcement of the planned furlough for NNSA employees in a post on X on Friday.
Due to Chuck Schumer’s disastrous Shutdown, Wright wrote in his post, “We’re going to have to furlough thousands of workers who are critical to modernizing our nuclear arsenal,” referring to the head of the Democratic party in the US Senate.
Democrats in the Senate voted against continuing the government shutdown that has now lasted for 17 days on Thursday, opposing a Republican bill that would allow federal agencies to receive funding for a tenth time.
Due to Schumer’s disastrous Shutdown, we will have to furlough thousands of workers starting next week because they are essential to modernizing our nuclear arsenal.
Enough is sufficient! https: //t. ko/jssorvkz
Democrats continue to stifle funding legislation that would force Republicans to negotiate regarding healthcare subsidies, which is blamed on them for the impasse.
Federal employees who are “essential” continue to be paid until their pay is paid off during government shutdowns.
There have been furloughs for 750, 000 federal employees, along with tens of thousands of federal contractors, for the US government’s more than 2 million federal employees.
The federal staff of the NNSA oversees about 60 000 contractors, who maintain and test nukes at US national laboratories and other locations.
The UN reports that the agency also works to secure dangerous nuclear materials in other countries, including Ukraine, where the risk of a nuclear disaster is rising as a result of Russia’s invasion.
Daryl Kimball, a nonpartisan organization that promotes arms control and is the executive director of the Arms Control Association, criticized the potential NNSA staffing cuts next week.
I’m sure they can find the funds to keep the workers on the job, Kimball said, if the Trump administration truly believes the NNSA’s functions are significant because many of them are crucial to nuclear facility safety and security.
They might also want to reconsider their position regarding the government shutdown, he continued.
Energy Secretary Wright warned that the shutdown will slow down the US’s nuclear weapons program when he spoke to the Bloomberg news organization on Friday.
It will not help that we’re just getting momentum there, he said, not to mention the fact that everyone is unpaid and not coming to work.
Wright will meet with Wright at the Nevada National Nuclear Security Site on Monday to discuss the shutdown’s effects, according to the Energy Department.
As part of Elon Musk’s short-lived efforts to reduce government spending through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hundreds of NNSA employees were among the hundreds of Energy Department employees who received termination letters earlier this year.
Source: Aljazeera
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