After decades of glowing for Uncle Sam, nuclear workers find their compensation board shut down like a Blockbuster Video
Here’s something to make your head spin.
We’re talking about America’s Cold War nuclear workers — the guys who mined uranium, lugged plutonium around like bowling balls, and basically glowed in the dark so we could feel safe under our mushroom cloud nightlight.
Heroes, every last one of them. And how does Uncle Sam repay them? With an IOU, a shrug, and a big ol’ radioactive middle finger.
See, Congress once said, “Hey, if you’ve got cancer from bathing in enriched uranium every day at work — no problem, here’s $150,000 and some medical coverage.”
Not much, but at least it acknowledged, “Yes, you were screwed by your job, and no, the Geiger counter wasn’t lying.”
Fast forward to now: Trump comes along, grabs the review board that approves these claims, and says, “Streamline the government! Poof! Gone!”
Because nothing says efficiency like pulling the plug on people dying of leukemia.
Imagine this: you’re coughing up blood, bones brittle as stale pretzels, and the board that could help you is suspended. Why? Because “small government.”
Translation: We can spend billions painting the border wall black so migrants burn their hands climbing it, but we can’t afford to keep ten doctors in a room saying, “Yes, Joe, uranium probably killed you.” Priorities, people!
And the gall — the chutzpah — is stunning. Workers swore loyalty oaths back in the day. They couldn’t even tell their families, “Honey, I’m home — oh, and I may be irradiated like a Christmas tree topper.”
They kept the secrets, did the dirty work, and now, when they line up for compensation, the government says, “Sorry, your membership has not been renewed.” Like it’s Netflix.
Brad Clawson, one of the workers, gets a phone call: “You’re out, no detail.” Meanwhile, his body is basically a living billboard for what happens when you cuddle uranium for a paycheck.
And Denise Degarmo, a daughter who watched her dad die a hideous radioactive death — bones shattering, skin fragile as rice paper — she’s got three petitions stalled in the pipeline.
Thousands of names on them, people waiting for justice that’ll never come because the board is “on pause.”
And the kicker? The government has already paid out $25 billion. That’s proof enough it wasn’t all sunshine and daisy-chains in the uranium mills.
But now?
Now we just stop the process midstream. Like the government’s running a carnival booth: “Step right up, folks! Try your luck! Will you live long enough to get your compensation? Spin the wheel!
Sorry, you landed on ‘suspended board.’ Try again… oh wait, you’re dead.”
So yeah, you’ve got dying workers, grieving families, petitions gathering dust, and a president whose idea of efficiency is cutting paperwork by cutting people off.
This isn’t “streamlining government.”
This is slow-motion manslaughter with a bureaucratic smile.
Because in the end, America’s nuclear workers gave us their health, their lives, and sometimes their humanity.
And what do we give them back? Silence, delay, and the kind of indifference only a government high on hubris and cheap slogans can deliver.
God bless America.
And pass the lead apron.
