Trump Furloughs Top Nuclear Weapons Staff (What Could Go Wrong?)

The government’s nuclear watchdog agency is poised to be understaffed, as Politico reports the Trump administration has placed about 80 percent of its personnel on furlough amid the ongoing government shutdown.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semiautonomous agency within the Department of Energy that maintains the U.S. nuclear stockpile, responds to nuclear emergencies domestically and abroad, and works to prevent nuclear proliferation globally. The NNSA’s staff of fewer than 2,000 workers oversees about 60,000 contractors.

On Monday morning, the administration sent out furlough notices to about 1,400 employees, Politico reports, leaving just 375 staff members on the job for the time being. This is an unprecedented action in the agency’s 25-year history.

Last week, when the then-impending cuts were first reported, Energy Secretary Chris Wright called the workers “critical to modernizing our nuclear arsenal.”

This is just the latest controversial NNSA staffing news to come out of the second Trump administration. The agency previously faced scrutiny for terminating hundreds of workers at the behest of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, before scrambling to rehire some of them as Wright confessed he’d “made mistakes” and moved “a little too quickly.”

Republican Representative Chip Roy took some time on Monday to remind Americans that his party still has no regard for the separation of church and state, something the Founding Fathers they love to praise cared deeply about.

“The truth is, the Marxists, the radicals, and the Islamists the Democratic Party promoted this weekend, they cannot handle the truth,” Roy said, referring to the widespread No Kings protests on Saturday. “And the truth is that there is a king, and that king is Jesus. And the president has been willing to say it. His administration has been willing to say it. And Charlie Kirk was willing to say it, and he got killed for it.”

Roy sounds like a crazed individual who has not read much of the Bible or the U.S. Constitution. And he seriously misrepresents the makeup of the No Kings protests in the process, sticking to the party script of it being a haven for antifa-loving Communists rather than a very peaceful gathering of Americans closer to the political middle of this country.

We are not a theocracy; Jesus Christ is not the king of America. There is an entire clause in the First Amendment aimed at curtailing the very speech Roy put forth on Monday. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Roy and his fellow Republicans may be too deep in their religious psychosis to take heed.

President Donald Trump flailed Monday while walking back his support for Ukraine.

During a press conference, Trump was asked about a comment he made last month suggesting that Ukraine could “win” the war against Russia and claim all of the territory seized by Russia. At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the position as a “big shift” from his American ally. 

But on Monday, it seemed that the U.S. president had shifted back.

“Well, they could. They could still win it. I don’t think they will. But they could still win it. I never said they would win it, I said they could—anything can happen, you know, war is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen, a lot of good things happen,” Trump replied.  

So basically, it’s anyone’s game. It seems clear that Trump’s nonstatements, which are able to flip-flop despite not expressing any real position, demonstrate just how little grip the president actually has on the situation in Ukraine. 

Trump even lashed out at one journalist when she asked what was really stopping him from actually helping Ukraine. 

“You’re the most powerful man on earth, why don’t you just enable Ukraine to finish this war tomorrow?” the reporter asked. 

“Well, if you knew anything about what you were talking about—” Trump started. 

“I do,” she replied. 

“You do? I don’t think you do, really. I don’t think you do because it’s a little bit more complicated than that,” Trump said. 

Last week, Zelenskiy left the White House disappointed after Trump reneged on an offer to supply Tomahawk missiles to the embattled country, following a lengthy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump reportedly had a fit during the meeting, cursing at Zelenskiy and throwing his maps of the battlefield.

“Peace in the Middle East” may be almost over.

Even Donald Trump recognized the fragility of the ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Palestine Monday, mentioning during a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that his administration was currently grappling with a “little situation” in the region.

“We have a little situation, relatively, with Hamas, and that will be taken care of very quickly if they don’t straighten it out themselves,” Trump told reporters Monday. “Because they’re in violation of their agreement.”

Israel violated the ceasefire deal over the weekend when it launched a wave of airstrikes at the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of people, including children. The bodies of 57 Palestinians had been brought to hospitals across the region over the last 24 hours, reported Al Jazeera.

Israel claimed that its attack was precipitated by Hamas’s own violation of the peace deal. The Israeli military announced, early Sunday Eastern time, that “terrorists” in the Rafah area had fired guns and an anti-tank missile at IDF forces.

Hamas responded that it was not responsible for the attacks and that it was committed to the terms of the peace deal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nonetheless directed that “strong action” be taken against “terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip.”

Netanyahu met with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner Monday to discuss the situation. Vice President JD Vance, who may travel to Israel later this week, suggested Sunday that the ceasefire arrangement had not been seriously tested.

“There’s going to be fits and starts,” Vance told reporters Sunday.

By Monday around noon Eastern time, the Israeli military had launched an artillery attack in Deir El Balah, according to Al Jazeera.

Last month, a United Nations commission formally determined that Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip is a genocide.

Over nearly 24 months of fighting, Israel has cut off access to water, electricity, medical services, and food in the region, all under the banner of rooting out Hamas soldiers, forcing millions of people into mass suffering to satisfy their war. For decades, Israel has trimmed away and confiscated Palestinian land, claiming it for its own illegal settlements—a feat that wouldn’t have been possible without the financial support of the United States.

As an estimated seven million people across 2,700 municipalities peacefully demonstrated against the Trump administration at No Kings events Saturday, reports of violence have thus far been scant—except for some instances in which apparent MAGA agitators targeted the pro-democracy protesters.

One notable incident came out of Jackson Township, Ohio, where a No Kings participant’s leg was injured in a hit-and-run. Witnesses told local outlets that a man driving a white pickup truck deliberately veered onto grass where protesters were seated, hitting a 53-year-old woman, before speeding off.

“It was definitely on purpose,” said one witness in The Canton Repository. “He went up on the curb. She took a direct hit. It could have been a lot worse. She put her fist in the air and said ‘I’m all right,’ but I think she might have broken her leg.”

“He drove up the curb trying to scare us, and we all jumped back,” another witness told an independent local reporter. “Unfortunately, a woman standing close to me was hit.”

The protest continued, and local authorities are reportedly investigating the incident.

In Kent, Ohio—a 40-minute drive from Jackson Township—an alleged Trump supporter was arrested by local police after reportedly shoving a woman.

The man was initially seized by a local city councilman, Jeff Clapper, and a group of other No Kings protesters who had witnessed the incident and heard the man was in possession of a firearm.

On social media, a Kent resident, who captured a photo of the man being held down, called him “a belligerent Trump agitator.” Clapper told the Akron Beacon Journal that he heard the individual was a Trump supporter but emphasized that politics had “no bearing” on his actions, which were simply a reaction to seeing somebody “push a woman.”

At a No Kings event in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a man in a Jeep adorned with Trump flags reportedly brandished a firearm at protesters. He was subsequently taken into custody by local police.*

So, while Republican lawmakers spent the days leading up to No Kings fearmongering about the protesters themselves, early reports show that MAGA troublemakers were responsible for rare instances of violence on the mass day of protest.

* This story originally misstated the state Wilkes-Barre is located in.