DOGE’s DUMBEST Firing Yet

Summary

Bulwark Takes: DOGE’s DUMBEST Firing Yet – A Comprehensive Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: Bulwark Takes
• Host/Author: The Bulwark
• Episode Title: DOGE’s DUMBEST Firing Yet
• Release Date: February 21, 2025

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Introduction: Setting the Stage

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, host Sam Stein and guest Andrew Egger delve into the controversial and perplexing personnel cuts made by the administration, colloquially referred to as "Doge," at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The discussion centers around the recent mass firings at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a critical facility for nuclear safety and research.

Sam Stein opens the conversation with a humorous anecdote about Andrew's live reporting from CPAC, setting an engaging tone for the episode.

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Reporting from CPAC: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes

Andrew Egger provides insight into his experience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), highlighting the bustling environment and the challenges faced by the Bulwark team in covering multiple stories simultaneously.

"We're a small outfit here at the Bulwark. You finish up one story, you go harrying off to the next one." [00:41]

Andrew mentions observing notable figures like Hans von Spakovsky from the Heritage Foundation, illustrating the high-profile nature of CPAC and the diverse array of attendees.

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The Controversial Cuts at NNSA

Sam Stein transitions the discussion to the central issue: the recent, seemingly indiscriminate cuts implemented by the administration at the NNSA, specifically targeting Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"Before we do that, tell us what's CPAC like?" [00:00]

Andrew Egger recounts how Doge has been systematically reducing personnel across various agencies, focusing heavily on the NNSA—a vital component of the Department of Energy responsible for nuclear safety and the maintenance of the national nuclear stockpile.

"Doge has been going around cutting basically everything, minus a few key agencies that they're supposedly getting to and then trying to figure out if they fucked up." [01:19]

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Breaking Down the Impact: Los Alamos National Laboratory

The discussion delves deeper into the ramifications of the cuts at Los Alamos, emphasizing the critical nature of the roles affected.

Andrew Egger explains that the positions eliminated were not merely administrative but included pivotal roles essential for nuclear safety and operational oversight.

"Their whole role at these nuclear manufacturer sites like Los Alamos in New Mexico, administrative. These are sites that are essentially all of the on the ground stuff is done not by government employees at all. It's done by independent contractors." [02:12]

He highlights the abruptness and lack of foresight in the administration's approach, noting that even highly specialized and mission-critical staff were not spared.

"It's just these guys who are going around like slashing and burning. And he [James Todd] was one of the guys who got slashed and burned." [04:29]

James Todd, the acting chief of Defense Nuclear Safety at NNSA, was notably locked out of his systems during the purge, underscoring the severity and indiscriminate nature of the firings.

"This is the top authority for everything related to nuclear safety at that agency." [04:10]

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Chaos and Uncertainty: The Aftermath of the Purges

The episode explores the immediate fallout from the workforce reductions, highlighting the chaos and lack of communication within the agency.

Andrew Egger describes a "fog of war" scenario, where employees were unaware of who had been affected, leading to widespread panic and uncertainty.

"There was a lot of fear and anxiety among the workforce right now that such kind of more detailed force reduction could still be coming down the pipe." [09:37]

He emphasizes that the cuts targeted not just low-level administrative staff but also individuals holding critical roles in areas like emergency preparedness, radiation protection, and security management.

"These are people who just like, kind of were kind of like in a horror movie, just sort of snatched up by the beast at the end of last week." [06:07]

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Repercussions for Nuclear Safety and Future Operations

The discussion shifts to the long-term implications of these cuts on nuclear safety and the operational integrity of facilities like Los Alamos.

Andrew Egger points out the precarious situation where highly specialized technical staff are being eliminated without viable replacements, threatening the agency's ability to maintain safety standards and operational efficiency.

"You can't bring anybody in, and then, you know, it's just all awful forever." [12:35]

He underscores the lack of preparation and understanding demonstrated by the administration, which failed to recognize the complexity and specialization required for nuclear safety roles.

"There's no indication that any research or homework or outreach was done in advance to figure out who would be the best people if you had to cut." [09:37]

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Conclusion: A Cautionary Tale of Mismanagement

In wrapping up, Sam Stein injects humor while reflecting on the gravity of the situation.

"And you break things and you have a little nuclear. That's just what you ask." [11:14]

The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of hasty and ill-informed personnel decisions within critical government agencies. It highlights the essential need for careful planning and understanding of specialized roles to ensure national security and safety are not compromised.

Andrew Egger leaves listeners with a sense of unease about the future, hinting at possible further cuts and the ongoing uncertainty faced by the remaining staff.

"It's like. That's exciting. That's the. That's the whole thing." [12:37]

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Final Thoughts

For those seeking an in-depth analysis, the full article titled Inside Doge's Dumbest Cut Yet is available on The Bulwark’s website. Listeners are encouraged to subscribe to Morning Shots for comprehensive coverage and updates.

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This episode of Bulwark Takes sheds light on a critical and alarming development within the Department of Energy, emphasizing the potential risks posed by uninformed administrative decisions. Through detailed discussion and firsthand reporting, Sam Stein and Andrew Egger provide listeners with a thorough understanding of the implications surrounding Doge's latest firing spree at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Transcript

[Sam Stein]

Hey, guys. Me. Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark, here with Andrew Egger, who is live on the CPAC floor. There's like a 55 to 65% chances Internet goes out, and then there's a 30% chance that the J6 choir starts singing right behind him. So if that happens, that's great. And if the 5% chance is that we get this done correctly, so be it. In the meantime, subscribe to the feed. Andrew, first off, before we get to your story, which is what we're here to talk about, about this inexplicably dumb Doge cuts at Los Alamos, which, if you're worried about nuclear safety, not the best cuts to make. Before we do that, tell us what's CPAC like?

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, so, so, you know, we're, we're a small outfit here at the Bulwark. You finish up one story, you go harrying off to the next one. And then, you know, while you're there, you try to do the video content for the last story for the YouTube page. I haven't even been in yet. I've just, I'm kind of outside of the exhibitor hall where all of the MAGA lifestyle brands, you know, hawk their wares and raise, raise awareness. And I've seen a lot of, you know, interesting people walk by. Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation. You know how it is at cpac, the heavy hitters, guys like that. But yeah, you know, we're gonna, we're do a day at CPAC and see how it is. We were supposed to do it yesterday, but then this story happened.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the story. First of all, I think the context here is important, which is Doge has been going around cutting basically everything, minus a few key agencies that they're supposedly getting to and then trying to figure out if they fucked up. And oftentimes they have, and they've had to bring people back on board who they cut. We knew prior to today that they had done the same at this nuclear safety agency. What's the name of the agency?

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, it's the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a subset of the Department of Energy. And they basically handle, you know, a lot of the nuclear safety management of our current nuclear stockpile, as well as a lot of them. Well, they're involved with a lot of the manufacture of new nuclear components both to refurbish the nuclear already have and to build new ones.

[Sam Stein]

All right, so we knew that they made these cuts and we knew that they had frantically Tried to rehire a lot of these people and their portrayal of this, this is the Doge folks, their portrayal. This was. Oh, you know, the people we cut were not critical, but we, you know, so nothing was. We were never in too much danger. There's primarily administrative people, but that wasn't the case, according to your reporter. Tell us what the actual story.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, so this is, I mean, this is kind of a remarkable thing because this whole story kind of blew up last week, right, where everyone just realized that there were these, there had been these cuts at this extremely critical sub agency of the Department of Agency, semi autonomous agency within the Department of Energy. And it was so obvious so quickly that this had been a problem that, you know, the administration quickly backtracked and quickly, at the beginning of this week, sent, you know, rehire notices to a lot of these people, to nearly all of them, almost all of them, and nearly all of the ones who got those notices have come back on. And so kind of the narrative has been, wow, that sure was a screw up. But at least, you know, says the Department of Energy, it was really just kind of a handful of sort of clerical and administrative employees. And, you know, it's just kind of a thing that happened in the past and we're all kind of back to normal now. But I've been talking to, you know, a number of current and former officials at NSSA for the last couple of days, and the picture that they give is very different. First of all, they find it kind of like a bad joke, this idea that these are kind of low functioning, or not low functioning, but low level, kind of clerical, pencil pushing employees. It's kind of true in the sense that their whole role at these nuclear manufacturer sites like Los Alamos in New Mexico, administrative. These are sites that are essentially all of the on the ground stuff is done not by government employees at all. It's done by independent contractors. But they are, they are the eyes and ears of the federal government at those sites to direct the work and to you know, ensure that it's, it's always in accordance with all federal, you know, safety standards, all just kind of operational standards and just, you know, make sure they're doing what the Department of Defense wants them to be doing, essentially with Department of Energy wants them to be doing as well. And so when these cuts came through, as they have at many agencies, they essentially hit everybody who was probationary. And in fact, it was a little bit, you know, more, we don't need to get into it, but a little bit more chaotic even than that there were some people who weren't even like really probationary according to the sense that it's actually legal to fire them. They were, they were kind of thought of as probationary. They got on lists for different reasons. But the most striking of all of these people, and just to kind of give you a sense of it, is that the acting chief of Defense Nuclear safety at the entire agency is a guy named James Todd. He was one of the people who found himself locked out of his systems at the end of last week when all these purges went through. Now it's a little unclear and just let me say that again, this is the top authority at the entire National Nuclear Security Administration, the top authority for everything related to nuclear safety at that agency. So this is kind of an important guy. Right? It's a little unclear because there's so much fog of war with all this, whether he was ever like, quote unquote, supposed to be one of these guys who was fired. And you get into like, what does supposed to be even mean? Like, none of it's really supposed to be happening. There's no, no real sense that any of it's legal. It's just these guys who are going around like slashing and burning. And he was one of the guys who got slashed and burned. Right. He was one of the guys who got locked out of the system, who was then kind of very hurriedly brought back at the beginning of this week. He's not somebody who talked to me for the story, but I think like that he was, you know, one of the people involved is really, really a striking thing.

[Sam Stein]

What kind of panic did it send throughout the agency when they saw that James Todd and others at relatively similar levels had been locked?

[Andrew Egger]

Well, what's crazy is, I mean, I mentioned the word fog, like the term fog of war a minute ago. A lot of people didn't even really know who all had been locked out because there were no like, kind of, you know, agency wide, you know, announcements about all who all had and had not gotten the dissents. People kind of knew who the probationary employees were. Right? Right. The ones who, you know, were the, were the legitimate probationary employees, the new people who had been there for less than a year. But so they kind of had a sense going in who was likely to get the act. But there was, there was never any kind of, you know, site wide notice or agency wide notice. And, and you know, when the people would get the ax, they'd immediately be locked out of systems and then they couldn't communicate. Right. And it's, and it became, you know, it was, it was hard to know who all was who. But, but, but I mean, even, even, even among kind of the quote unquote, normal probationary employees, there's still like a bunch of people who are like incredibly mission critical staff at these different field offices. And I zoomed in on the field office at Los Alamos. The site's emergency preparedness manager was a probationary employee guy who maintains plans to minimize the effects of a nuclear accident on site. Their radiation protection manager was a probationary employee, the security manager, the fire, the fire protection engineer, two of their facility representatives who are kind of like on site supervisors of the contractors and kind of eyes and ears for the agency, like on the floor there. And these are all people who just like, kind of were kind of like in a horror movie, just sort of snatched up by the, by the beast at the end of last week.

[Sam Stein]

By the Doge.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. And with very little warning. Because I should also say this, that, that, you know, their kind of understanding as early as the beginning of last week, their, their assumption, I should say, was that they were not going to be affected by these cuts because a lot of, a lot of it's all been very foggy. I keep saying this because this is true across the federal government, but, but.

[Sam Stein]

One, keep saying that.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, but, but one big, one big thing in all this is that in theory, like immigration enforcement, law enforcement, national security officials are not subject to a lot of this stuff, at least according to the initial executive order. So they kind of all thought, well, you know, we're unbelievably important nuclear safety workers. We'll probably be fine.

[Sam Stein]

So let's talk about that for a second, because Los Alamos National Laboratory is the development site for the first ever nuclear bomb. Obviously it still conducts research today. They have storage of nuclear plutonium pits, as I understand it. So it's a serious place.

[Andrew Egger]

Obviously they actually manufacture those plutonium pits on site at that laboratory, and they're the only laboratory that does it.

[Sam Stein]

Got you. So I guess my, my, it's not question like if you. This is the type of thing where if you sort of knew about the subject matter a bit more or if you knew how government operated in this field a bit more, if you had taken some time rather than a couple weeks to just sort of go through the probationary employees and slash them all away, you might have been like, ooh, that's not a good idea. Like, we can't just, you know, find people to like, fill in here because this is a highly technical, highly specialized line of work that also happens to be in the middle of fucking nowhere New Mexico. But that wasn't what happened. There's no indication that any research or homework or outreach was done in advance to figure out who would be the best people if you had to cut, to cut from this agency. At least that's my read of it. Is that your read of it?

[Andrew Egger]

Absolutely. Especially as this thing that happened last week. Now they are. There's a lot of kind of fear and anxiety among the workforce right now that such kind of more detailed force reduction could still be coming down the pipe where they do try to go with a little bit more of a scalpel. The problem is that this, we're talking about field offices here. And again, I just zoomed in on the one at Los Alamos. But, but field offices that are already working kind of significantly below capacity. I mean like this is, this is an office that, that has a 95 or, sorry, 97 is the number of employees that are authorized by Congress and funded to be working there. The going into this year, the number they actually had working there was 85. Because it like, like you mentioned, it's just hard to hire like insanely qualified postdoc postdoctoral officials to move out to the middle of nowhere in New Mexico and commute an hour through the desert to get to this highly classified facility that you can't bring your smartphone into. And you know what I mean, it's a tough sell to get people there in the first place. And what they've been doing as they've been going through these agencies is not only a hiring freeze on all new civilian staff or staff positions, but also when they've gone through and had people take the buyouts or gone through with these DOGE purges, they've just eliminated all of the positions as the person goes out the door. And it's like, it's like this insane Kafka esque thing where like you, I mean like the top guy there, like imagine if that, if that stayed there. What, you're just not going to have like a head of safety for nuclear stuff at the Nuclear Safety Agency anymore.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Andrew Egger]

So it's, I mean you move fast.

[Sam Stein]

And you break things and you have a little nuclear. That's just what you ask.

[Andrew Egger]

So that's what I mean, see what happens. It's really kind of hard to even communicate just how sort of crestfallen and unsettled and bemused all of these, all of these employees are who, you know, they have now been restored to their jobs, but they don't know that future cuts aren't coming. They are, like, kind of newly incentivized to maybe just get out the door themselves. You know, there have been people who have made comments to other outlets that, okay, well, you know, I wasn't planning on retiring, but now maybe that is going to be the best move for me and my career in the future. And I think the other thing that's so important to emphasize, this is a thing that these employees talked a lot about was just. It's not. I mean, like, you're talking about some of the most kind of, like, highly specialized technical work like that you could picture anywhere. They don't. There are no, like, kind of classes that you can take in college to kind of, like, prepare you to hit the ground running when they hire you to handle nuclear waste or to do nuclear security. I mean, one guy. One guy. I said, hold on. You go ahead.

[Sam Stein]

Hold on. Speak for yourself. This is my side pursuit. I have the. I have the capacity to fill in if they need.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, you got to watch out.

[Sam Stein]

Look, we got to run. You got to run.

[Andrew Egger]

One other thing was one of these guys said, if you try to. If you try to, you know, teach yourself about some of this stuff, you know, prior to coming to the agency, that's how you get yourself on the list, you know, so. So it's like. So the worry is brain trained, right? The worry is that you're kicking these people out. They're the only person who knows how to do it. You can't bring anybody in, and then, you know, it's just all awful forever. So that's. That's exciting. That's the. That's the whole thing. And now I'll let you go, Sam. I know you have places to be.

[Sam Stein]

Well, we'll have that. We'll have that to look forward to for sure. All right, Andrew, go back to your crappy WI fi and your CPAC experience. Eager to see what you have. For folks who want to read the full piece, it's up on the site, but also you should subscribe, frankly, to Morning Shots. It's called Inside Doge's Dumbest Cut Yet. Andrew, thanks a bunch, man. Really appreciate it.