The new Trump administration has worked to reduce the federal employee headcount with jaw-dropping speed, but the well-intended haste has started to produce some unintended consequences -- starting with Uncle Sam's nuclear arsenal.
First, a quick review of that broader campaign: After offering nearly everyone in the federal workforce the option to resign immediately with pay and benefits continuing until September, Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired a layoff bazooka that targeted some 200,000 "probationary" federal employees across several departments.
While that status may sound like it's associated with employees who did something wrong, it generally applies to any federal "worker" who's in the first one or two years of their current position, regardless of whether they've been a federal employee for years before taking the current role. The bottom line of "probationary" status is that, during the time period, these employees generally can be fired without any privilege of appealing their terminations.
Among those on the receiving end of the probationary-employee bazooka shot were hundreds employed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). On Thursday, they found themselves suddenly out of work. For some, ominous indicators preceded receipt of official termination -- unable to access email or finding their badges didn't open their office doors on Friday. According to anonymous sources who spoke to AP, upwards of 350 probationary NNSA employees were fired.
Though the agency supervises production of new nuclear warheads and maintains existing ones, the NNSA isn't part of the Department of Defense, but rather the Department of Energy, where a total of about 2,000 probationary employees were targeted. About 30% of NNSA's share of the terminations hit the DoE's Pantex Plant, which is responsible for "assembly, disassembly, testing, and evaluation of nuclear weapons in support of the NNSA stockpile stewardship program." The agency is overseeing a multi-year modernization program encompassing seven types of warheads, as part of a nuclear weapon overhaul program that has a disturbing price tag of $1.7 trillion.
Apparently realizing its ax had slashed through an unintended target, the Trump administration raced to negate the terminations. On Friday night, acting NNSA director Teresa Robbins fired off a memo rescinding the terminations for hundreds of fired probationary employees -- minus 28 who were excluded from the reprieve. The memo obtained by AP read:
“This letter serves as formal notification that the termination decision issued to you on Feb. 13, 2025 has been rescinded, effective immediately."
At least initially, the NNSA was having trouble tracking down some fired-and-unfired employees. "We do not have a good way to get in touch with those personnel,” NNSA officials wrote in an email sent to other employees, seeking their help in getting the word out via their "personal contact emails."
Critics leapt on the debacle. “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told AP. "They don’t seem to realize that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”
At least one of the probationary NNSA employees caught up in the fiasco plans to return -- but to look for a new job anyway. "I will be honest, I intend to keep looking for work,” the employee told NBC News. “I will go back, but as soon as I find another role, I’ll be leaving.”
That may be a smart move. While the blunt "probationary employee" weapon seemingly did some unintended damage at NNSA, we suspect the organization is ripe for a more deliberate effort to slash overhead, as it has more than 57,000 employees.
