Energy department forced to rehire fired employees after major DOGE mistake caused security concerns
DOGE mistakes seem to be coming in thick and fast in recent days, with another instance of employees being rehired after 'mistakenly' losing their jobs in mass spending cuts in a key energy department, sparking concerns over national security.
Cuts have been at the heart of everything the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) does since it was created a few months ago, as the Elon Musk-led private agency has indicated unbelievably high goals for reducing waste in federal spending.
Following a government-wide email that threatened the jobs of over 100,000 workers, Musk's team have been tearing through countless key federal departments, cancelling contracts and cutting jobs in areas that they deem to be 'wasteful'.
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DOGE has already reached estimated savings of $105 billion - which experts are already calling into doubt - through cuts to areas like Education, Labor, Social Security and far more, yet recent moves have exposed a number of embarrassing mistakes that have had to be retracted.
Cuts in certain areas have reduced employee counts to just a single person, which is the legal minimum required, yet many departments have seen hundreds of employees asked to come back to jobs that they were initially dismissed from by DOGE.
In addition, key efforts such as Ebola prevention have been 'restored' by DOGE following their supposedly accidental cancellation, but experts indicate that not enough has been done.
Now, as reported by the Independent, Musk and his department face a 'scramble' to convinced fired employees from the National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) to take back their jobs, as national security concerns become widespread.
The initial decision to let go some of America's top nuclear specialists was reportedly a 'massive mistake' that sources have told CNN is a consequence of DOGE workers not understanding the roles that they were getting rid of.
"No one has taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation's national security," a source within the department told CNN, with another indicating: "Congress is freaking out because it appears the [Department of Energy] didn't really realize NNSA oversees the nuclear stockpile."
It's understood that most of the fired employees were probationary, being in the role less than one year (two in some cases), but most if not all of these workers have been asked to return to their jobs.
Justification for the firing of employees was told to be poor performance by political officials at the Department of Energy, causing two non-political HR administrators to resign in protest prior to the rehiring of workers.
"The nuclear deterrent is the backbone of American security and stability - period," illustrated one source when discussing the importance of the NNSA. "For there to be any even very small holes poked even in the maintenance of that deterrent should be extremely frightening to people."
One other source reiterated these fears, insisting that the layoffs are "frighting" as the "NNSA maintains sensors in Ukraine to help track nuclear risks, whether intentional or unintentional."
This, paired with President Trump's antagonistic stance towards Ukrainian President Zelenskyy have caused many to worry about imminent nuclear threats.