Suck it up, buttercups.
Nevada Democrats took aim at Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Thursday for secretly trucking weapons-grade plutonium cross-country to Nevada last year, vowing to introduce legislation to block the Trump administration from making any future trips.
“Not only did Secretary Perry and the agencies under his direction act in bad faith by totally ignoring the will of our Governor, their decision also completely disregards the health and safety of Nevadans,” said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.
She was joined by Sen. Jacky Rosen and Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada in admonishing the agency as behaving illegally and unethically.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency in charge of nuclear safety, said it had no involvement in the Energy Department shipments.
Cortez Masto said she will be demanding answers at a meeting she quickly arranged with high-level officials from the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is in charge of the nuclear arsenal.
The senator also will be introducing legislation to block any future shipments, she said in a statement.
Cortez Masto said Perry had lied to a federal court by withholding information that the federal government had shipped plutonium from a nuclear weapons facility in South Carolina to a facility outside of Las Vegas.
“It’s unconscionable that the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) went into federal court in Nevada and failed to disclose that they shipped weapons grade plutonium into our backyards,” the senator said.
The Energy Department revealed on Wednesday to a federal judge in Reno that it had shipped the weapons-grade nuclear fuel. It explained that it could not reveal the activity earlier because it would endanger national security.