Extreme Commanders

Nuclear weapons woes: Understaffed nuke agency hit by DOGE and safety worries

In 2021, after a pair of plutonium-handling gloves had broken for the third time at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, contaminating three workers, and after the second accidental flood, investigators from the National Nuclear Security Administration found a common thread in a plague of safety incidents: the contractor running the New Mexico lab lacked “sufficient staff.”

So did the NNSA.

The agency, whose fewer than 1,900 federal employees oversee the more than 60,000 contractors who build and maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal, has struggled to fill crucial safety roles. Only 21% of the agency’s facility representative positions – the government’s eyes and ears in contractor-run buildings – at Los Alamos were filled with qualified personnel as of May 2022.

Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has thrown the NNSA into chaos, threatening hard-won staffing progress amid a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade. Desperately needed nuclear experts are wary of joining thanks to chaotic job cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, experts say.

The disruption of NNSA’s chronically understaffed safety workforce is “a recipe for disaster,” said Joyce Connery, former head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

Los Alamos is not the only facility with staffing shortages in crucial safety roles.

As of May 2022, less than one-third of facility representative roles at NNSA’s Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas were held by fully qualified employees, according to a USA TODAY review of nuclear safety records.

At Pantex, where technicians assemble and disassemble nuclear weapons, only a quarter of safety system oversight positions had fully qualified hires, and only 57% of those safety positions had qualified employees at Y-12.

Nuclear weapons workers don’t grow on trees, nor do the federal experts who oversee them. Many of the jobs require advanced degrees, and new hires often need years of on-the-job training. Security clearance requirements limit the most sensitive jobs to U.S. citizens.

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So maybe Congress will wake up and start exerting their authority in opposition to Trump once he starts arresting them. But, maybe by then it will be too late:

Trump Justice Dept. considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions

Federal prosecutors across the country may soon be able to indict members of Congress without approval from lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, according to three people familiar with a proposal attorneys in the section learned about last week.

Under the proposal, investigators and prosecutors would also not be required to consult with the section’s attorneys during key steps of probes into public officials, altering a long-standing provision in the Justice Department’s manual that outlines how investigations of elected officials should be conducted.

If adopted, the changes would remove a layer of review intended to ensure that cases against public officials are legally sound and not politically motivated. Career prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section guided and signed off on the criminal investigations into alleged corruption by New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) and then-Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey).

A Justice Department spokesman confirmed the proposal and said that no final decisions have been made. The three people familiar with the proposal spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals.

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Grandpa's on the Adderall again.

Here he goes again..taking credit for other President's actions.

Supreme Court Lets Trump Lift Deportation Protections for Venezuelans

The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration, for now, remove protections from nearly 350,000 Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the United States without risk of deportation under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.

The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would deny the administration’s request.

The justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to move ahead with deportations. The justices also clarified, however, that they would preserve the ability of individual immigrants to bring legal challenges in some instances, including if the government tried to cancel their work permits.

In a separate case, the justices on Friday criticized the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day’s warning to a different group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas it had been trying to deport under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law.

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This is why I was laughing my ass off on the Nee "ES" site when TheGreatBuzz implied that there was reasoning behind Biden and company taking so long to prosecute Trump. No, there was no reason. They were just scared of MAGA backlash and starting a civil war. Screw it, arrest him after 1/6 and prosecute him. Don't wait 2 years and then nominate a special counsel who did nothing and let the time run out on the clock.

Seriously.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/joe-biden- ... -scapegoat

Biden has been eviscerated by the media the last few days and rightfully so. His refusal to prosecute Trump or show any seriousness towards what happened on 1/6 will forever mar his legacy. He essentially set up Trump's second term.

Thanks, Joe.

Signed - bitter "moderate" democrat

China wrote: Mon May 19, 2025 1:23 am

So maybe Congress will wake up and start exerting their authority in opposition to Trump once he starts arresting them. But, maybe by then it will be too late:

Trump Justice Dept. considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions

Federal prosecutors across the country may soon be able to indict members of Congress without approval from lawyers in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, according to three people familiar with a proposal attorneys in the section learned about last week.

Under the proposal, investigators and prosecutors would also not be required to consult with the section’s attorneys during key steps of probes into public officials, altering a long-standing provision in the Justice Department’s manual that outlines how investigations of elected officials should be conducted.

If adopted, the changes would remove a layer of review intended to ensure that cases against public officials are legally sound and not politically motivated. Career prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section guided and signed off on the criminal investigations into alleged corruption by New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) and then-Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey).

A Justice Department spokesman confirmed the proposal and said that no final decisions have been made. The three people familiar with the proposal spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear reprisals.

Click on the link for the full article

They are too scared, we are going to have to stop him

Hmmm...I guess it's also Bidens fault that Trump's DOJ is paying a J6'ers family $5 mil because her dumbass invaded the Capitol and got shot and killed?

Or..maybe just this country is rotten and still sexist and racist to a point where qualified women (black or white and somewhere in between) can't get elected over known sexual predator conmen?