President Donald Trump signed several executive orders (EOs) on nuclear energy proliferation and an order removing political considerations from public-sector science, as conservatives claimed the latter was scandalized in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump also signed restoring ‘gold standard science’ as the cornerstone of federal research. 

A senior White House official said on Friday there has been a decline in ‘disruptive research’ and investments in biomedical research, along with ‘serious cases’ of fraud and misconduct and the inability to reproduce scientific methods for the purpose of restoring public trust.

The official also blamed policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and ‘woke DEI initiatives’ for endangering the public’s trust in government scientists.

Now-retired NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was repeatedly denounced for flip-flopping and obfuscating during his time engineering the federal response to COVID-19, leading many particularly on the right to disregard and dismiss the legitimacy of federal health authorities outright.

That order cites the fact the Biden administration included political edits from teachers unions in school-reopening guidance, instead of leading with any scientific evidence.

The order will enforce ‘gold standard science,’ defined as reproducible, transparent and falsifiable – as well as being subject to peer review and making sure that scientists are not discouraged from discovering outcomes that run counter to a narrative.

In terms of nuclear energy, one order will reform nuclear R&D at the Energy Department, accelerate reactor testing at national labs and establish a pilot program for new construction.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright previously told Fox News Digital that revitalizing and highlighting the work of U.S. national labs is paramount to his agenda.

In a move that appears to support Wright’s push for nuclear power, Trump will sign an order aimed at advancing new reactor construction on public lands.

A senior White House official cited the importance of that type of reliable power-source for critical defense facilities and AI data centers.

Another order being signed Friday will overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to require it to rule on reactor license applications within 18 months.

Only two new nuclear reactors have begun construction and entered into commercial operation since the Carter administration.

A typically risk-averse culture that requires, for example, nuclear facilities to emit as little radiation as possible, including below naturally-occurring levels, which critics said has hindered the NRC from licensing new reactors as technology begets safer and cheaper means of production.

The orders will also seek to raise nuclear energy capacity from 100 gigawatts (GW) to 400 GW within 25 years.

Another order will establish a vision to mine and enrich uranium within the U.S., decreasing another avenue of foreign reliance – and ‘reinvigorate’ the nuclear fuel cycle.

‘That means America will start mining and enriching uranium and expanding domestic uranium conversion and enrichment capacity,’ a senior White House official said.

Trump is expected to leverage the Defense Production Act – which last helped secure COVID-19 paraphernalia like masks and ventilators – to seek agreements with domestic nuclear energy companies for the procurement of enriched uranium, as well as finding ways to manage spent nuke fuel. 

Nuclear energy, the White House said in the order, ‘is necessary to power the next generation technologies that secure our global industrial, digital, and economic dominance, achieve energy independence, and protect our national security.’

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are spearheading plans to overhaul the National Security Council and shift its main functions to other agencies like the State and Defense departments. 

The move is the latest effort to slim down a federal agency and comes weeks after Trump announced former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz would depart his post at the White House overseeing the agency. 

Trump announced the same day that Waltz was nominated to serve as United Nations ambassador. 

The plans to upend the agency would include whittling down the size of the National Security Council, which the Trump White House believes is full of long-term, bureaucratic staffers who don’t align with Trump’s agenda. 

Additionally, the restructuring will move Andy Barker, national security advisor to Vice President JD Vance, and Robert Gabriel, assistant to the president for policy, into roles serving as deputy national security advisors. 

Axios was the first to report the Trump administration’s restructuring plans. A White House official confirmed Axios’ reporting to Fox News Digital. 

A White House official involved in the planning said Trump and Rubio are driving the change in an attempt to target Washington’s so-called ‘Deep State.’ 

‘The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,’ a White House official told Axios. 

The National Security Council is located within the the White House and provides the president guidance on national security, military and foreign affairs matters. 

Waltz’s departure from the agency followed his involvement with other administration officials, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in the Signal chat controversy over strike plans against the Houthis in March.

Since Waltz’s departure earlier this month, Rubio has taken on the role of national security advisor. That’s in addition to leading the State Department and serving as acting archivist and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration is aiming to dismantle this year. 

Fox News Digital was the first to report that the State Department planned to absorb the remaining operations and programs USAID runs so it would no longer function as an independent agency. The move requires cutting thousands of staff members in an attempt to bolster the efficiency of the existing, ‘life-saving’ foreign assistance programs, according to a State Department memo Fox News Digital obtained. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

Satellite imagery captured what remained of a mangled 5,000-ton North Korean naval destroyer damaged during its launch ceremony this week, leaving the country’s dictator distraught. 

A photo captured by Maxar Technologies of the northeastern port of Chongjin, shows the ship apparently twisted and lying on its side, partly lodged on a launch slip and partly submerged in water. 

The secretive communist nation covered the would-be warship with a blue tarp.

Mexar Technologies also snapped a satellite photo of the ship before the launch, looking pristine as it prepared for its first voyage. 

But that voyage was put on hold after a flatcar guiding the ship failed to move during the launch, throwing the warship off balance and crushing parts of its bottom before its stern eventually slid down the launch slipway into the water, state media reported.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was reportedly fuming over the botched launch, which was intended to show the nation’s military might but instead became an embarrassment on the world stage. 

State media also reported on Kim’s fury. 

He reportedly blamed military officials, scientists and shipyard operators for a ‘serious accident and criminal act caused by absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism.’ 

The extent of the damage to the destroyer is unclear, though Kim demanded that repairs be completed before the communist Working Party’s meeting in June.

The dictator, known for his brutality as much as his secrecy, ominously warned that during that meeting, mistakes caused by the ‘irresponsibility of the relevant officials’ would be investigated. 

Under Kim’s rule, North Korea has been focused on building an arsenal of military weapons in what it regards as a response to western aggression. 

In March, Kim personally oversaw tests of AI-powered suicide drones, unmanned exploding drones that can be used to launch an attack without putting the attackers’ lives in danger. He reportedly called for an increase in production of those drones. 

He also recently claimed the country was in the process of building a nuclear submarine. 

In its first real showing of military force since the Korean War in the 1950s, an estimated 15,000 troops were sent to Russia to fight alongside the fellow communist nation in its war against Ukraine. 

South Korea claimed in late April that 600 of those troops had been killed. 

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are continuing to overhaul the National Security Council and shift its main functions to other agencies like the State and Defense departments. 

The latest efforts to slim down a federal agency come weeks after Trump announced former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz would depart his post at the White House overseeing the agency and serve as UN ambassador. Waltz himself began the streamlining process in January, when, in one of his first moves as Trump’s national security adviser, he ordered 160 NSC staffers off the job pending a comprehensive review of the agency’s alignment with Trump’s agenda.

The current plans to upend the agency would include whittling down the size of the National Security Council, which the Trump White House believes is full of long-term, bureaucratic staffers who don’t align with Trump’s agenda. 

Additionally, the restructuring will move Andy Barker, national security advisor to Vice President JD Vance, and Robert Gabriel, assistant to the president for policy, into roles serving as deputy national security advisors. 

Axios was the first to report the Trump administration’s restructuring plans. A White House official confirmed Axios’ reporting to Fox News Digital. 

A White House official involved in the planning said Trump and Rubio are driving the change in an attempt to target Washington’s so-called ‘Deep State.’ 

‘The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,’ a White House official told Axios. 

The National Security Council is located within the White House and provides the president guidance on national security, military and foreign affairs matters. 

Waltz’s departure from the agency followed his involvement with other administration officials, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in the Signal chat controversy over strike plans against the Houthis in March.

But Waltz had been focused early in his short tenure on the issue of what the Trump administration considers ‘deep state’ infiltration of the agency. The former Green Beret and Florida congressman was especially concerned about Biden administration political appointees and holdovers assigned to the NSC from other agencies. 

Since Waltz’s departure earlier this month, Rubio has taken on the role of national security advisor. That’s in addition to leading the State Department and serving as acting archivist and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration is aiming to dismantle this year. 

Fox News Digital was the first to report that the State Department planned to absorb the remaining operations and programs USAID runs so it would no longer function as an independent agency. The move requires cutting thousands of staff members in an attempt to bolster the efficiency of the existing, ‘life-saving’ foreign assistance programs, according to a State Department memo Fox News Digital obtained. 

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report. 

In his famed 1953 ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech, President Eisenhower proclaimed that ‘the United States knows that peaceful power from atomic energy is no dream of the future.’ That dream was soon realized, as America built more than one hundred reactors over the next twenty-five years. But today, the promise of nuclear energy and innovation does indeed seem like a dream of the future.

Through a series of executive orders signed this week, President Trump is taking action to usher in an American nuclear renaissance. For the first time in many years, America has a path forward for quickly and safely testing advanced nuclear reactor designs, constructing new nuclear reactors at scale, and building a strong domestic nuclear industrial base.

Our stagnation was not for a lack of ingenuity or desire to innovate among America’s great scientists and technologists. By the end of the 1970s, dozens of nuclear reactors were planned or under construction. In the past 30 years, however, only three commercial nuclear reactors have been built, and many more have been shuttered. We know America can accomplish great feats in nuclear energy, so what happened?

In the wake of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, public opinion began to sour on nuclear energy, and the effects of a decade of new federal bureaucracies began to set in. Overly burdensome regulations stifled our ability to even test, let alone deploy, new nuclear technologies. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) set the gold standard for safety regulation when it was established in 1975, but it soon transformed into a lead curtain for innovation. Onerous environmental requirements and long, uncertain regulatory timelines have killed industry’s willingness to fund new technologies.

Similarly, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Labs—which once led the world in the development and demonstration of advanced nuclear technologies—shuttered nuclear development programs, shifting focus to other priorities.  All but three of fifty-two reactors at Idaho National Laboratory have been decommissioned, and it has been almost half a century since the Army Nuclear Power Program was shut down. These decisions eroded our domestic nuclear supply chain, undermined our national security, and left us having to relearn what we once pioneered.

President Trump wisely recognizes that the time is ripe for an American nuclear renaissance and is acting to deliver on the promise of nuclear energy for the American people. Across the country, American entrepreneurs and engineers are launching a new generation of nuclear companies featuring innovative reactor designs and scalable manufacturing techniques that can make nuclear safe, efficient, and economic. The Trump Administration will clear their path by dismantling outdated barriers that previous administrations had put up in their way.

Today, nuclear power plants provide approximately 19% of the electricity generated in the United States, more than solar and wind combined. That is reliable and affordable electricity for the American people, and it could and should be even more.

Today, nuclear power plants provide approximately 19% of the electricity generated in the United States, more than solar and wind combined. That is reliable and affordable electricity for the American people, and it could and should be even more. The Trump Administration is setting the goal of expanding American nuclear energy capacity from 100 GW today to 400 GW by 2050. This week’s executive actions will help us reach that goal in four ways.

First, we are going to fully leverage our DOE national laboratories to increase the speed with which we test new nuclear reactor designs. There is a big difference between a paper reactor and a practical reactor. The only way to bridge that gap—understanding the challenges that must be surmounted to bring reactors to the market, and building public trust in their deployment—is to test and evaluate demonstration reactors. 

Second, for our national and economic security, we are going to leverage the Departments of Defense and Energy to build nuclear reactors on federally owned land. This will support critical national security needs which require reliable, high-density power sources that are invulnerable to external threats or grid failures.

Third, to lower regulatory burdens and shorten licensing timelines, we are asking the NRC to undergo broad cultural change and regulatory reform, requiring a decision on a reactor license to be issued within 18 months. This will reduce regulatory uncertainty while maintaining nuclear safety. We will also reconsider the use of radiation limits that are not science based, impossible to achieve, and do not increase the safety of the American people. 

Fourth, we will be supporting our domestic nuclear industrial base across the nuclear fuel cycle.  The President has called for industry to start mining and enriching uranium in America again, as well as an expansion of domestic uranium conversion capacity as well as enrichment capabilities to meet projected civilian and defense reactor needs.

When President Eisenhower spoke about nuclear potential over 70 years ago, he expressed no doubt that the world’s best scientists and engineers, if empowered to ‘test and develop their ideas,’ could turn nuclear energy into a ‘universal, efficient, and economic’ source of power. In 2025, we have only to believe in American technologists, and give them the chance to build, to turn nuclear power into energy dominance and national security for all.