DOE National Labs Describe Impacts from Trump Orders

The Department of Energy’s national labs have suspended certain research activities and disbanded their diversity, equity, and inclusion offices in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders, lab directors testified at a House Science Committee hearing on Wednesday. The directors also fielded questions about contact with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), foreign nationals’ access to the labs, and the need for infrastructure upgrades.

Energy Subcommittee Chair Randy Weber (R-TX) asked each of the four directors whether their labs have been impacted by Trump’s spending freeze, excluding work funded by agencies other than DOE. Argonne National Lab Director Paul Kearns said $37 million in research activities have been suspended, affecting about 140 staff. Lawrence Livermore National Lab Director Kimberly Budil said a $7 million grid resiliency project at her lab was defunded. She noted that the project was funded under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was targeted in Trump’s executive order on “unleashing American energy.”

Los Alamos National Lab Director Thom Mason said $200,000 of current funding was affected, while Idaho National Lab Director John Wagner said he does not expect his lab to be affected.

Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) asked for details on how Trump’s order disbanding DEI initiatives has impacted the labs. The directors reported that they have closed offices related to DEI and directed the affected employees to other activities.

Budil described her lab’s DEI office as a small team that “spent most of their time really working on workforce engagement and building that sense of community and team that’s so critical to doing big-team science the way we do.” She added, “And so we have restructured our program and directed them to other activities. ... Bringing together a broad range of ideas, of backgrounds, of experiences, is really how we drive excellence in our laboratories. So we’re very strongly focused on continuing that focus on excellence.”

In response to a question from Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR), the four lab directors testified that their labs have not directed university partners to change or stop their research activities in response to Trump’s executive orders.

Salinas also asked whether the labs have been contacted by DOGE, referencing reports that the organization has gained access to DOE IT systems. In the last week, committee Democrats have sent letters to DOE, NOAA, and NASA asking whether DOGE has gained access to the departments’ proprietary data.

The lab directors said they have not been contacted. Mason added that lab directors take direction from DOE in sharing access to internal systems or proprietary data, and they have contractual obligations to meet security requirements before doing so.

“If the orders were removed from our contract or waived, then that might provide a mechanism. But as of the moment, all the security orders are still in place,” Mason said.

Research security

Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) raised concerns that the U.S. is falling behind in R&D, referencing last week’s full committee hearing in which witnesses testified that China leads the world in 37 of 44 critical technologies. Harrigan stated that some of China’s lead can be attributed to intellectual property theft and asked each of the lab directors how many of their employees and visiting researchers are Chinese citizens.

Mason and Budil noted they are coming into compliance with a law enacted last year that generally prohibits citizens of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from accessing non-public areas of DOE’s three national security labs: Los Alamos, Livermore, and Sandia.

Mason said there are currently about 100 people working at Los Alamos that are citizens of the specified countries and that the number is “coming down” ahead of the April 15 implementation deadline. The law allows the prohibition to be waived in certain cases and does not apply to people who are also U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Budil said Lawrence Livermore has about 60 Chinese citizens who are not yet legal permanent residents of the U.S.

Wagner said Idaho has 50 foreign nationals from China, and Kearns said Argonne has almost 1,000 foreign nationals including a few hundred Chinese citizens. Idaho and Argonne are not subject to the prohibition, though a separate provision of the new law updates DOE’s process for screening foreign national visitors across all 17 of its national labs.

Harrigan also asked whether the labs have seen any confirmed cases of espionage. Mason said Los Alamos has seen instances of espionage since its establishment during World War II. However, those instances generally related to classified information, which is denied to all foreign nationals, Mason added. The other directors said there have been no confirmed cases of espionage at their labs in recent history.

Infrastructure modernization

Witnesses asked the committee to prioritize investment in modern scientific infrastructure. Mason said many of the facilities at Los Alamos that are essential for national security are “outdated and in urgent need of recapitalization.” He pointed to the lab’s Neutron Science Center, which supports research that informs reliability studies of nuclear weapons and produces medical isotopes. DOE has provided CD-0 or “mission need” approval for the project, enabling conceptual design work to proceed in preparation for requesting funds for construction from Congress.

Mason also added that the lab’s research complex for explosives faces “structural deficiencies that hinder critical research.”

Budil said the National Ignition Facility at her lab “urgently needs refurbishment.” She noted that sustainment projects are currently underway and the enhanced yield capability project to increase NIF’s laser energy recently received CD-0 approval.

NIF has advanced fusion simulation tools and is the only facility where the physics of the igniting target for inertial confinement fusion can be studied, which makes private fusion companies critically dependent on Lawrence Livermore’s research teams, Budil said.

“All of the fusion companies, magnetic and inertial alike, are counting on the infrastructure at the national laboratories to really fill critical technical gaps for their schemes going forward,” she said.

Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) noted that China is building a fusion facility that is even bigger than NIF and asked what the U.S. should do to stay ahead in fusion.

Budil noted that the U.S. fusion energy research community has proposed a set of new facilities designed to answer key outstanding questions but also stressed that existing facilities should not be neglected.

“I fear that the time scale to develop new facilities means that we need to invest more in existing facilities to really try to fill these gaps,” she said.