MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk say, they want to cut anything they label as excessive government spending. That includes sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. Well, now we are learning those cuts include even people working in defense and national security. NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and our science and security correspondent Geoff Brumfiel are both in the studio with me. Hi, you two.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hello.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: Geoff, I'm going to let you kick us off. You have been tracking cuts, big cuts, at the agency responsible for the nation's nuclear weapons. Tell me what you have learned.
BRUMFIEL: That's right. Yesterday, I learned about some deep cuts at a little-known organization called the National Nuclear Security Administration. This is a civilian agency responsible for maintaining America's arsenal of nuclear weapons, combating nuclear terrorism and responding to nuclear accidents, among other duties. They were not granted a national security exemption despite having national and security in their title. And yesterday, they fired the majority of 300 recent hires they'd made. That's out of a federal staff of around 1,800 people, and it's thrown this very important part of the government into basically complete chaos.
KELLY: To state the obvious, using the words complete chaos to describe the agency responsible for America's nuclear weapons sounds bad. What is going on?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah. Well, senior managers spent last week at the agency frantically trying to explain to the White House what each of these 300 people did. They have jobs like making sure a huge nuclear weapons storage site in Texas has an adequate emergency response plan if there's, say, a wildfire, which there was recently, or preventing terrorists from getting hold of dangerous nuclear materials.
Then on Thursday, they were told they had to fire pretty much everyone, so people were let go verbally. Some got official dismissal letters late at night. And the thing is, as soon as they got the termination letter, their access to work email was shut down. So many employees may not even have a copy of the letter. I spoke to people today who still have laptops and phones from the government and don't know where to return them or don't even really know if they're still working for the government or not.
KELLY: So where does this go?
BRUMFIEL: I've just learned that the NNSA has paused these firings, and it's a little unclear what this means because the employees were each - were clearly terminated yesterday. But it seems that there is some sort of an effort to come to grips and try and maybe fix what's going on.
KELLY: So that is what's going on at one part of the Energy Department. Tom Bowman, what about your beat? What's happening over at the Defense Department?
BOWMAN: Well, Mary Louise, DOGE officials, I'm told, started showing up at the Pentagon today and will work well into next week. And there's a memo circulating that's calling for 8% cuts at the Defense Department. Now, we're not sure if that's going to start at the Office of Secretary Defense, which includes thousands of employees, or if that 8% is also for all the armed services, and that could include not only personnel but weapon systems and so forth. We're also hearing that the Navy could be in a position for more funding because Trump officials want to build more ships to keep up with China.
KELLY: We know where the new boss, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is on all this?
BOWMAN: What we do know is that Hegseth has said the Pentagon has too many senior officers, too much bureaucracy. He points out that during World War II, you had a handful of four-star generals, and now there are 44. And of course, he has also taken aim at what he calls a woke military, focusing, he says, on diversity, equity, inclusion, rather than war fighting. He talked about that at his first town hall meeting at the Pentagon last week. Let's listen.
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PETE HEGSETH: Why do you get rid of something like DEI? Because from our perspective, it's been - it served a purpose of dividing the force as opposed to uniting the force.
BOWMAN: Now, there's uncertainty at the Pentagon and some fear because there's no sense of either the personnel or budget cuts coming in, of course. What if you're a senior officer carrying out the Biden policies involving DEI? Does that mean you get replaced? Already, the Trump administration fired the top officer at the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, citing leadership failures but also what they say was excessive focus on DEI.
KELLY: Tom Bowman, just for context, you've covered the Pentagon for - what? - like, decades.
BOWMAN: Eh, 27 years.
KELLY: Has this - how does this compare to other previous downsizings?
BOWMAN: Well, almost every administration wants to tackle the Pentagon, either, you know, through cuts or streamlining or new ideas. I spoke with Dov Zakeim. He was a Pentagon controller under George W. Bush. He agreed that personnel has grown rapidly since 2007 when there were two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars, of course, are over. His concern is that you cut the most promising programs and keep what's called legacy items - so the promising ones could be drones and so forth, like hypersonic missiles, cyber, and keeping what he calls legacy items, like armored vehicles and aircraft. The concern is, will you make those cuts in the right places?
KELLY: Geoff Brumfiel, about 30 seconds left, but you cover Elon Musk, in particular SpaceX. How does that fit in with any of what you're tracking?
BRUMFIEL: Yeah, I will say that this all bears the hallmark of Musk. Whether it's rocket engines or software engineers at Twitter, this guy likes to cut way back and then add back in later if he needs to. The problem with these kinds of jobs and this kind of equipment is you can't just cut it and then rehire it quickly if there's an emergency. This is national security stuff. It's very niche, lot of expertise involved.
KELLY: Lot of expertise on display here from NPR's Geoff Brumfiel and Tom Bowman. Thank you both.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
BRUMFIEL: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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