The Rachel Maddow Show
'Have you considered resigning?': Maddow calls out Trump staffers who fired nuclear safety personnel
Tue, 18 Feb 2025
Rachel Maddow follows the reporting on Donald Trump's reckless firing of federal employees who work in the nuclear industry, cleaning up nuclear waste, managing a nuclear power plant, and ensuring the safety of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the ridiculous situation of instantly regretting firing nuclear safety personnel but being unable to get in touch with them to rescind the dismissal.
Chapter 1: What protests occurred on President's Day?
Really happy to have you here. Great to have you with us. Today, of course, was President's Day. And today we saw protests all over the country once again in Washington, D.C. Yes, as you see in the upper left-hand corner of your screen here, but also in state capitals all across the country. You see there Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Denver, Colorado.
And look at that, Columbia, South Carolina, big turnout. The same coalition, same group that organized protests at 50 state capitals a couple of weeks ago organized these as well today. Big turnout, lots of places. And, you know, it wasn't just at state capitals. We saw pretty big turnout at a lot of town halls, city halls, any location basically that has anything to do with government.
You can see some of the images here from outside City Hall in Orlando, Florida and San Francisco. Also big protests in Seattle and in Philly. We're going to be looking in detail at some of those big protests today all over the country. That's coming up in just a few minutes. You will want to see that for sure. We're also going to be talking with a U.S.
senator who joined the protest at his state capitol today. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen is going to be joining us live here this hour in just a few minutes. So there's a lot to show you, a lot to talk about in terms of how that all went down today. A big national day of protest against the Trump administration. We'll get to all of that.
But we are going to start tonight here, here on Nuclear Street.
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Chapter 2: Why is the Hanford nuclear site significant?
Nuclear Street, Proton Lane, Bombing Range Road. The Atomic Body Shop, Atomic Plumbing, Atomic Health Center, Atomic Bowling, even an Atomic Supermarket. Atomic, Atomic, Atomic. Where are we anyway? A Captain Marvel comic book? No, we're in the state of Washington, Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick, the tri-city area around the Hanford nuclear site.
That's where they produced the plutonium that America dropped on Nagasaki, the high school, home of the bombers. Inside the front entrance, believe it or not, a bomb inlaid into the floor. And on the football helmets, mushroom clouds.
That's from the Today Show in 1983, a profile on the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state. A Hanford nuclear site, Richland, Washington, was opened as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. And when that very cheery, slightly eerie Today Show story on it ran 40 years later, Hanford at that point in 1983 was still chugging along, still open.
The last of Hanford's nine nuclear reactors was not shut down until 1987. That shutdown was in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in 1986. That 1986 disaster had a way of focusing the world's attention on the threat of mass radioactive contamination. And again, Hanford shut down its last nuclear reactor the following year.
But you don't just shut down a nuclear site like that and walk away. Hanford has continued to be a site not only of national security importance, but also of frequent news coverage, much less cheery news coverage over the years, but all about that same site.
The first official calculations of radiation exposure around Hanford in the late 1940s took many by surprise. The levels announced today by a government-appointed study group were high. Radiation is measured in rads, one rad equal to about a dozen chest X-rays. The new study calculates that more than 13,000 people got doses of at least 33 rads, the same as 400 chest X-rays.
And a small number of infants may have gotten doses up to 2,900 rads to their thyroids, mostly from drinking the milk of cattle grazing on radioactive grasses. The government limits nuclear power workers to less than one rad exposure a year, limits weapons workers to five rads.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union exposed many to 1,500 rads, but that's still only half as much as the 2,900 rad exposures around Hanford. UCLA radiation specialist Dr. Robert Gale, who treated Chernobyl victims, worries about Hanford.
So one may expect now or in the future to see thyroid abnormalities and very likely thyroid cancers.
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Chapter 3: What are the consequences of Trump's nuclear-related staff cuts?
Trying to run Hanford with a skeleton crew is a recipe for disaster that could have irreversible impacts. Cutting the people who do cleanup work, security engineers, they're cutting at Hanford. In the Pacific Northwest, there is still a working commercial nuclear reactor that feeds the largest electricity supplier in that part of the country, which is the Bonneville Power Administration.
Trump, in addition to firing the cleanup crews at Hanford, also just fired hundreds of people, more than 600 employees who keep the lights on at Bonneville, too. Mass layoffs at Bonneville Power Administration raise concerns about reliability of power grid. They're firing electricians there, engineers, line workers, cybersecurity experts.
Again, that's the power grid, the biggest electricity supplier in the Pacific Northwest, including some of their electricity being supplied by a big commercial nuclear plant. Is that what you voted for? Cutting the people who maintain the power grid? Cutting the security engineers? who managed the cleanup at one of the worst sites of nuclear contamination in the world, which is in our country.
Trump has also now started firings at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which does, among other things, nuclear security. You know, we also have a whole National Nuclear Security Administration. Or at least we did. Now we don't have a whole one because of what Trump has decided to do to them. I mentioned that footage from last week from Chernobyl.
When that Russian drone smashed into the reactor shield at the Chernobyl nuclear site last week, one of the reasons we knew that was very bad but it wasn't a radioactivity catastrophe is because our own government, one of our own agencies in the federal government, the National Nuclear Security Administration, maintains sensors.
at the Chernobyl nuclear site to monitor in case anything goes wrong there. So when that Russian drone attack hit the Chernobyl reactor sarcophagus, one of the ways we were able to be sure that that didn't result in a catastrophic release of radioactivity is because we've got expert nuclear monitoring at that site.
That is maintained by the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the federal government. Here at home, the National Nuclear Security Administration maintains and refurbishes and ensures the safe and secure storage and transportation and maintenance of our nation's thousands of nuclear weapons. NNSA runs the National Nuclear Labs.
They develop nuclear propulsion systems for our nuclear submarines. They are the people in charge of making sure that terrorists don't get their hands on a nuclear weapon. or that nuclear weapons technology doesn't get stolen and sold on the black market. They are also in charge of making our new nuclear weapons and inspecting those weapons, and Trump is firing them. Firing hundreds of them.
The agency only has like 1,900, 2,000 people. Thursday night, they sent out termination notices to more than 300 of them. Termination notices reportedly to hundreds of staff of the small, expert, professional, very important National Nuclear Security Administration. Isn't there anything about the name of that agency that might suggest to you that maybe this isn't the best place to make cuts?
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Chapter 4: How does the Trump administration's firing decisions impact national security?
Members of Congress who have to be in Washington because Congress is in session, but they want to connect with their constituents back home. They want to take questions. They want to tell people what they think is going on. People have been calling into telephone town halls with their members of Congress in massive numbers, like kind of shockingly massive numbers.
This, for example, was Congressman Richie Neal of Massachusetts last week from his very messy desk in Washington. More than 8000 people from his western Massachusetts district dialed into his town hall. This was Congressman Joe Courtney of Connecticut. More than 10,000 people from his district dialed into his town hall. This was another one from Virginia Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan.
She also got 10,000 people from her district to call into a town hall. In Maryland, Congressman Jamie Raskin's district, 13,000 people joined. Look at this one. This is Congresswoman Valerie Foushee. She's a relatively new member of Congress from North Carolina. She just started her second term. She held a telephone town hall last week for her North Carolina district.
More than 19,000 people called it. Over 19,000. This is becoming a defining feature of what it is to live free. alongside whatever's going on with this administration, people from every state, red states, blue state, every chance they get an opportunity, people are showing up in person, making time in their day to at least join a telephone town hall.
People who by and large are quite upset about what the White House is doing. People want to know what they can do. And today, this first President's Day of Donald Trump's second term in office, it was another big day of in-person protests. Protesters turned out at state capitals all across the country today. Look at this. Atlanta, Georgia, in the upper left-hand corner.
Sacramento, California, upper right-hand corner. That's Austin, Texas, in the lower left. In the lower right, that's Indianapolis. In Boston, Massachusetts today, we had tons of protesters. Look at this. On the Boston Common, they then marched to the government center. And beyond state capitals, these protests were all over. City Hall in Burlington, Vermont today. Look at that.
People climbed up on the snow banks to get some more height, get a better vista. There were protests in Tucson, Arizona and Ellsworth, Maine, Portland, Oregon, Hartford, Connecticut. People turned up in Chicago, Illinois today, in Winter Haven, Florida. There was a huge protest today in New York City, in Union Square. Look at that. Lower left-hand side there. New York, New York.
Also a big turnout in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the high temperature today was four degrees. This gentleman getting right to the point in St. Paul, freezing my bleep off for democracy. This was the statehouse in Annapolis, Maryland today. Hundreds of Maryland residents showing up to protest the White House, including Maryland U.S.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, who was there in person today to rally with his constituents. Senator Chris Van Hollen joins us live here next. Stay with us.
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Chapter 5: What are the broader implications of these mass firings?
They've asked for a $4 trillion rise in the debt ceiling, so clearly they're not planning on shrinking down the government's fiscal responsibility to such a great degree that those tax cuts will be paid for. I mean, when we're looking at the kind of stuff they're cutting,
Hundreds of people cut at the FAA in between the fourth and fifth plane crashes that have happened since Trump has been back in office and he's only been there a month. We're looking at them cutting security engineers from nuclear cleanup sites.
We're looking at them cutting people who oversee some of the most important, sensitive and subject matter specific sort of non-transferable jobs that you could possibly imagine in terms of the U.S. government. I feel like, and I think some of what you're seeing from your constituents, if I can read those signs is right, is that they're not just, they're not trying to save money.
They're trying to destroy the U.S. government. They're trying to make the U.S. government stop functioning in ways that hurt people and that hurt this country. And that to me doesn't seem like it's driven by fiscal concerns.
I think there's several things going on. I mean, I definitely think that they want to attack the organs of government and those important services to the American people because they don't like government.
I do think they want to create the impression, Rachel, that they're making these huge, quote, efficiency gains and they're going to save all this money and therefore they're going to pay for their tax cuts. The great lie is, as you say, this has nothing to do with government efficiency, right? If you wanted to make the government more efficient, you wouldn't start by firing
all the inspector generals whose job it is to look out for waste, fraud and abuse. Doing that actually clears the way for the kind of corruption that Elon Musk would like to bring to the government. I think what they're trying to do is get the federal government to serve the already powerful and the already wealthy like Elon Musk.
That's why they want to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that goes after scam artists and fraudsters and returns billions of dollars to American consumers who got cheated. They want to privatize the National Weather Service at NOAA. They want to sell it off to the highest bidder.
They want to collect all this very sensitive personal information, social security numbers, bank accounts. So I agree that a lot of what they're doing is to destroy government, but also to so weaken it that it can then serve their purposes. And I think they want to create the impression that in the process they're saving money to pay for their tax cuts. All of it is a big lie.
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