A spokesman at the Department of Energy, of which the NNSA is a semiautonomous branch, said on Friday that nearly 400 workers would remain at the agency, which is responsible for overseeing the US nuclear weapons stockpile. President Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, said “enough is enough” in a post on X on Friday, as he announced the planned furlough of NNSA workers.

“Starting next week, we’re going to have to furlough thousands of workers that are critical to modernizing our nuclear arsenal because of [Chuck] Schumer’s disastrous Shutdown,” Wright said in his post, referring to the US Senate’s Democratic party leader. On Thursday, Democrats in the Senate voted against advancing a Republican bill to extend funding to federal agencies for a 10th time, and continuing the government shutdown that has now lasted for 17 days.

Republicans have blamed Democrats for the deadlock, as they continue to block the funding legislation to force Republicans to negotiate on healthcare subsidies. Federal employees categorised as “essential” continue to work without pay during government shutdowns until they can be reimbursed when it ends. Approximately 750,000 of the US government’s more than two million federal employees have been furloughed so far, along with tens of thousands of federal contractors. (Aljazeera)