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Wright With Jake Tapper: The First Cabinet Meeting, DOE Workforce Cuts and Launching the Nuclear Renaissance

February 26, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:58

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What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined CNN’s Jake Tapper on February 26, 2025, according to the Department of Energy’s recording, hours after the first cabinet meeting of the term. Asked about Elon Musk’s role in the meeting, Wright said Musk and President Trump are working with the whole cabinet to run the government more like a business — more efficient, with better services and delivery — and clarified that what viewers saw was the press portion at the start, after which the actual cabinet meeting proceeded with wide-ranging dialogue around the table, as he described the session.

On DOGE-initiated workforce reductions at the Department of Energy, Wright said the department’s output is not directly related to headcount, noting the Biden administration grew the DOE workforce by 20 percent over four years while energy prices rose, and that his agency carries unique missions including the nuclear weapons stockpile, naval reactors and basic science, so each agency will take its own approach. He described DOGE as like consultants or auditors who gather data and identify trends, with each secretary using the information differently to make their department leaner and higher-output, as he characterized the arrangement.

Wright discussed his visits that week to Los Alamos and Sandia, the two largest national labs, saying Los Alamos was the birthplace of the lab system and headquarters of the Manhattan Project, and that the next Manhattan Project is AI, a race he said the United States must lead and win. He confirmed the administration absolutely wants to launch the American nuclear renaissance in this term. On electricity, he said prices rose over 20 percent in four years with hardly any demand growth, and that the department is working to grow supply at least as fast as demand from AI and reshored manufacturing so prices need not rise further. On reports of the General Services Administration shutting down 8,000 federal EV chargers, Wright said the administration has nothing against electric cars and no plans to block EV growth, but that wealthy buyers should not be subsidized by all Americans, as he stated the policy.

Why it matters

This is Wright’s earliest extended account of how DOGE would interact with a science-and-weapons department, and his auditors-not-deciders description became the framework other secretaries used to explain the same process.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright joins CNN’s Jake Tapper - February 26th, 2025”, 2025-02-26 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-02-26). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.