U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry plans to resign in a matter of weeks, after nearly three years as the Trump administration’s top manager for civilian nuclear weapons and cleanup operations, media reported Thursday.
Politico broke the story, citing three informed sources. The Washington Post confirmed the story, citing four sources familiar with Perry’s plans. Politico reported that Perry would make an announcement before the end of November. Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette is his anticipated successor, sources said.
Perry, who served more than 14 years as the governor of Texas, was sworn in as energy secretary in March 2017. He has been among the quieter members President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, but has in recent weeks been scrutinized for his travels to Ukraine as the House considers whether to impeach Trump over allegations that he pressured that country’s president to investigate potential political rival Joe Biden.
Two sources told Politico that Perry has for months been eyeing his exit from the Cabinet, and that his planned departure is not linked to the impeachment inquiry.
As energy secretary, Perry manages a massive agency with a budget of more than $30 billion per year. Around half of that is for the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, the civilian steward of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Although he has shown no deep-rooted passions for either nuclear weapons or cleanup during his time at DOE headquarters, Perry has dutifully defended the budget increases the NNSA has sought under his watch as part of 30-year nuclear modernization and maintenance program started in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama.
In 2017, the NNSA budget hovered around $13 billion. The fiscal 2019 budget was more than $15 billion, and the NNSA seeks $16.5 billion for the federal 2020 budget year that began on Tuesday. Congress is still working out spending levels for the year, in the interim passing a stopgap budget that will keep the federal government open through Nov. 21.
Perry has defended the agency’s plan to cancel the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility and turn the partially completed plutonium-disposal plant in South Carolina into a factory to annually produce 50 plutonium pits — nuclear-weapon cores — by 2030.
Perry has also taken his licks, and kept on advocating for, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility’s planned replacement, the Surplus Plutonium Disposition project — even though it put him at occasional odds with a key ally of President Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
In one of his few widely broadcast public appearances devoted solely to nuclear weapons, Perry appeared in January at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, where he memorably rubbished his prepared remarks in favor of stream-of-consciousness praise for Pantex employees, who had recently completed the final W76-1 warhead: a refurbished version of the smaller of the Navy’s two submarine-launched, ballistic-missile warheads.
