For Donald Trump, demolishing much of the White House for the sake of his gaudy, gold-plated ballroom is a “main priority” that should not be interrupted during the government shutdown. Nuclear safety not so much, if at all.

Via CNN, on October 19:

The federal agency responsible for overseeing and modernizing the US nuclear stockpile will furlough the vast majority of its staff Monday as the government shutdown drags on, according to the Department of Energy.

About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, will receive furlough notices Monday, while fewer than 400 employees will remain on the job to safeguard the stockpile, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN.

It seems that furloughing, alone, makes the safeguarding more complicated. More via CNN:

“To stop in the middle of disassembling or building a nuclear weapon, there are several steps you must take to ensure everything is safe enough to leave and lock up,” the second source explained. “And then when you come back, you have to do all of that in reverse to restart. It takes time, it’s not like flipping a light switch.”

In a scathing letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, on Thursday, 27 Democratic House members have demanded that the workers be reinstated, have accused the department of firing them for political purposes and have demanded more information about the whole situation. They also noted that the NNSA never furloughed employees under the three prior shutdowns Trump presided over. “It begs the question why this step was necessary now and why more NNSA employees were not deemed essential, given the gravity of their duties,” they wrote.

The Democrats also suggested this is part of a dangerous national security slide Trump is taking us down.

In addition, this decision has far-reaching foreign policy consequences. With arms control and nuclear nonproliferation regimes slowly eroding as a result of the President’s lack of global leadership, our adversaries are keenly focused on this development. It is very likely that your decision to furlough 1,400 NNSA workers is being seen in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang as evidence of an unstable U.S. nuclear deterrent, presenting a unique and sobering threat to our national security.

As far as the Marie Antoinette Trump administration is concerned, we can all eat or breathe radiation!