Richard Arnold: US Correspondent on DOGE cutting hundreds of nuclear safety workers, scrambling to rehire them

The latest cuts in the US Government have been described as a “total farce”. 

The Trump Administration has reversed the firings of hundreds of employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the department tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.  

The cuts were part of a DOGE purge across the Department of Energy. 

US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking they attempted to walk back the sackings and rehire the workers, but were unable to contact many of them since they’d been cut out of the email network.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stateside, Rich and Oland.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Morning to you a good morning make ow Was this true?

Speaker 1 (00:03):
So they sacked these people, then they go to hire them,
but they can't find them.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
What the hell was going on?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know? The latest government sacking the way Elon Musk
Andar's minions have turned into a total fast funny if
it wasn't really dangerous. The Nuclear Security Administration was given
just a few hours to fire hundreds of their workers
as part of Musk's government efficiency deal. But these Muskites
didn't even know who they were sacking. The managers were

(00:28):
given two hundred characters or less. I guess they had
to prove robots first, too right to explain why their
workers matted. So they drop up a list of essential
workers and pleaded to keep these people on the job.
None of that mattered to Elon Musk and co. Hundreds
of these staffers were sacked and their emails work emails
were cut off, leaving the Hanford nuclear site with only
a skeleton crew. Hanford is where they produced the plutonium

(00:51):
that the United States dropped on Youth and bombs that
were dropped on Japan to end World War Two. They
had nine nuclear reactors operating on at one point, but
it remains an area with the highest radiation dangers. The
NN essay the nuclear security people oversee the fifteen hundred
square kilometer location, which is the most contaminated radioactive site

(01:13):
in the West. In nineteen seventy six, there was an
explosion at one building at Hanford, and the radiation was
so intense they couldn't even start to go in and
try to clean it up for twenty nine years. Do
you think they should be looking after this place? Trump
just fired the people who do this work, through Elon
Musk and his teenagers and twenty somethings. Once they sacked
these folks, they had second thoughts, maybe nuclear security is important,

(01:38):
so they tried to rehire them, but they found they
could not reach them because they'd cut them out of
their email network. They don't know how to get to
these people. Trump also has begun firing folks at the
Pacific Northwest National Lab, which also does nuclear security. The
agency Trump just gutted runs as well the US nuclear
labs and expects US nuclear weapons to make sure they

(02:00):
are secure and that the weapons are not stolen, no
terrors get in. Whatever. Trump and must just sacked several
hundred of those experts as well. Now, since they cut
them off from their work emails, they have no way
to say, oops, we want to unfire you. So all
this was done by Doge or Doggie or whatever that
self named government efficiency team. Trump had Musk and his

(02:21):
kids fired these nuclear experts with no idea what they
actually were about. So that's the problem. But at least
Elon Musk gets, of course, billions upon billions of dollars
to build those rocket ships from Mars since he expects
the planet Earth will be destroyed.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I've been watching the video of the plane and did
one wheel fold up when it landed? Do we know
what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It might have been the only thing that was intact right.
Pictures of the wreckage certainly suggested it was a bit
of a miracle that this flight from Minneapolis to Toronto
got on the ground with no one being killed. Eighty
people were on board. Passenger John Nelson says that plane
hit pretty hard, and then he says it.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Was just incredibly fast. There was a giant firewall down
the side. I could actually feel the heat through the glass,
and then we were going sideways. I'm not even sure
how many times we like tumbled, but we ended upside down.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, we've just had a briefing. Twenty one people have
been injured. Two of these folks have critical injuries and
remain in hospital. Another passenger, Peter Kukov, who was able
to take some video of his departure from the wreckage
of the plane.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
A plane crash.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, people hanging like bat said another meantime, the airport
fire chief said this.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
The runway was dry and there was no cross wind conditions.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Really, that is not what passenger Nelson was saying. He's
what he said.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
The winds were whipping pretty hard and the runways were
snow covered.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, we could all see that the wind was blasting
or there were no cross winds. Only one of those
accounts can be accurate, right, But some are noting that
this is the fifth plane crash since Trump took office. Now,
US air safety investigators had taken action against Elon Musk's SpaceX,
so Musk insisted that the Federal Aviation Administration boss be fired,
and that person resigned on the day Trump was sworn in.

(04:11):
Trump didn't bother to appoint a replacement to run the
air Safety Agency until after the mid air collision near
Washington's Reagan National Airport some days ago, the one that
killed fifty seven people. That soon was followed by another
deadly plane crash in Philadelphia, then another in Alaska, then
yet another plane crash. He would a tug in Chicago,
and a flight caught fire in Houston, and two aircraft
smashed into each other in Washington State. The other day

(04:34):
in a small jet karin off a runway in Arizona.
The US has sent an FAA team off to Toronto
right now to help investigate this latest air disaster. But
the Trump administration just between let me see air crashes
four and five, told hundreds of FAA staffers that they
are being sacked as well, and many expect to be
locked out of their officers this very day. So air safety,

(04:55):
nuclear safety seemingly not a priority.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
So you rather appreciate it. Back to New York, Eric Adams,
also involving Trump, so he's been dodgy. Is all dodginess
for a while. They go to Eric and go, hey,
these charges, don't worry about it, will drop that, to
which his various attorneys go what the hell and they quit.
And so now a judge this morning, a guy called
Dale ho Manhattan District Judge suggests he's not going to

(05:23):
rub a stampless deal because it's highly unusual that the
DJO you go to him. And the reason they want
the charges dropped, it's alleged, is because Eric's gonna help
Trump and co. With the business of the illegal immigrants
in New York City.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
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