'Whoops!' Trump mocked after report he 'accidentally fired people in charge of nukes'
David McAfee
February 16, 2025
Donald Trump (ALLISON ROBBERT/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)
Donald Trump is being ridiculed after an Associated Press report that the President "has reversed the firings of all but 28 of the nuclear weapons workers that" Elon Musk's team "blindly cut."
Tara Copp, Pentagon Correspondent at Associated Press, which is currently embroiled in its own dispute with Trump over White House access and the Gulf of Mexico, dropped the report Sunday.
"One of the hardest hit plants was Pantex -- near Amarillo, Texas -- where 30 percent of the cuts took place," Copp wrote on X. "The nuclear weapons role of those workers and the feds who oversee it is one of the most sensitive missions in the US."
Columnist and political analyst Molly Jong-Fast said, "Accidentally firing the people in charge of the nukes! Whoops!"
The writer then added, "Probably fine thou!"
Defend Our Constitution, a self-described Army veteran, said, "Trump and Musk are making America weaker not stronger."
"I never seen an incompetent team in the Oval Office like this. It’s embarrassing to be an American in front of the whole world," they added.
Political humorist Jesus Freakin Congress said, "The Trump administration fired 300-400 nuclear employees since they didn’t know what their job was… and now they are scrambling to get them to come back."
"So, if anyone was questioning if our enemies are infiltrating our government from the inside, the answer is yes… since they would be jumping on this if not," the user added.
Trump administration tries to bring back sacked nuclear weapons workers
The Trump administration has halted the sackings of hundreds of US federal employees who worked on America’s nuclear weapons programmes.
The U-turn has left workers confused and led experts to warn that blind cost-cutting by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will put American communities at risk.
US officials said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to email before they learned they had been dismissed. Some tried to enter their offices on Friday morning, only to find they were locked out.
One of the hardest hit offices was the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, which saw about 30% of the cuts.
Those employees work on reassembling warheads, one of the most sensitive jobs across the nuclear weapons enterprise, with the highest levels of clearance.
The hundreds let go at NNSA were part of a DOGE purge across the Department of Energy that targeted about 2,000 employees.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, referencing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, said: “The DOGE people are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for.
“They don’t seem to realise that it’s actually the department of nuclear weapons more than it is the Department of Energy.”
By late on Friday night, the agency’s acting director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings for all but 28 of those hundreds of fired staff members.
“This letter serves as formal notification that the termination decision issued to you on February 13 2025 has been rescinded, effective immediately,” said the memo, which was obtained by the AP.
The accounts from the three officials contradict an official statement from the Department of Energy, which said fewer than 50 National Nuclear Security Administration staffers were let go, calling them “probationary employees” who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles”.
But that was not the case. The firings prompted one NNSA senior staffer to post a warning and call to action.
Deputy division director Rob Plonski posted to LinkedIn: “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.
“Cutting the federal workforce responsible for these functions may be seen as reckless at best and adversarily opportunistic at worst.”
While some of the Energy Department employees who were fired dealt with energy efficiency and the effects of climate change, issues not seen as priorities by the Trump administration, many others dealt with nuclear issues, even if they did not directly work on weapons programmes.
This included managing massive radioactive waste sites and ensuring the material there does not further contaminate nearby communities.
That incudes the Savannah River National Laboratory in Jackson, South Carolina; the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington state, where workers secure 177 high-level waste tanks from the site’s previous work producing plutonium for the atomic bomb; and the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, a Superfund contamination site where much of the early work on the Manhattan Project was done, among others.
US representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and US senator Patty Murray of Washington, both Democrats, called the firings last week “utterly callous and dangerous”.
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.
Many federal employees who had worked on the nation’s nuclear programmes had spent their entire careers there, and there was a wave of retirements in recent years that cost the agency years of institutional knowledge.
It is now in the midst of a major 750 billion dollar (£595 billion) nuclear weapons modernisation effort – including new land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, new stealth bombers and new submarine-launched warheads. In response, the labs have aggressively hired over the past few years. In 2023, 60% of the workforce had been there five years or less.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the firings could disrupt the day-to-day workings of the agency and create a sense of instability over the nuclear program both at home and abroad.
He said: “I think the signal to US adversaries is pretty clear: throw a monkey wrench in the whole national security apparatus and cause disarray.
who accepted buyout offer fired by mistake: Report
'Some employees who responded to the buyout offer ahead of the deadline last week may have received termination notices by mistake,' official says
Muhammed Enes Çallı
ISTANBUL
The White House said some government employees who accepted the buyout offer were fired by mistake, according to a report on Monday.
"President Donald Trump's administration acknowledged on Sunday night that some federal government employees who took the 'Fork in the Road' buyout offer were also, subsequently, fired or let go — and that this was an error," ABC News reported.
"An Office of Personnel Management official told ABC News that some employees who responded to the buyout offer ahead of the deadline last week may have received termination notices by mistake but, for those personnel, the buyouts agreements would be honored," it added.
Nick Detter told ABC News that he is one of the workers affected.
Detter, a natural resource specialist with the US Department of Agriculture, said he was fired on Thursday, despite having already accepted the administration's buyout offer, which should have ensured he was paid through September.
Despite the OPM's explanation, Detter claims he has not received any direct guidance. He added that his supervisors in Kansas, where he is based, told him they had no information.
"I frankly find it pretty insulting and chaotic and disorganized," Detter told ABC News.
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