A controversial bill which is going through Congress would remove the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which maintains America’s nuclear arsenal, from direct administration control.
If passed the bill would mark a major blow to Trump, who has taken a personal interest in America’s nuclear armoury vowing to expand it “far in excess of anybody else”.
A spokesman for Energy Secretary Rick Perry, a Trump appointee, damned it as a “misguided” plan which would “weaken national security efforts”.
She added: “It is in the best interest of the safety and security of all Americans to remove this provision from the bill.”
Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, which monitors America’s nuclear weapons program, has also hit out at the proposal saying it would begin “dismantling civilian control over the nuclear weapons enterprise”.
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The changes would “gut what oversight and external control there is” he claimed.
A senior Senate aide said the move was a “straight-up power grab” by NNSA staff angered at the amount of time it took the Energy Department to approve their work.
They claimed NNSA staffers took their case straight to Congress’ powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, which added their concerns in a defence policy bill.
This has proven especially controversial as the Committee Chairman, Senator John McCain, has been away from Congress since December as he fights brain cancer.
The proposal has also been sharply criticised by the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
In a joint statement, Republican Lisa Murkowski and Democrat Maria Cantrell said they had “serious questions about the long-term consequences” of the proposal.
Trump has taken a personal interest in America’s nuclear weapons program, stating in February that the US is “creating a brand-new nuclear force”.
“We’re going to be so far ahead of everybody else in nuclear like you’ve never seen before” he added.
Back in January Trump used nuclear weapons to threaten North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, tweeting: “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my button works.’
A review published by the Trump administration in February provocatively claimed America could use nuclear weapons in response to a major cyberattack on critical infrastructure.