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Friday, March 07, 2025
How 443 federal properties were targeted for sale, then suddenly weren’t. (Aaron Wiener, Hannah Natanson and Jonathan O'Connell, WaPo)
The tatterdemalion maladministration of fraudfeasor DONALD JOHN TRUMP continues to torment federal employees, betray our allies and inflict retaliation. "Why do the heathen rage? (Psalm 2). From The Washington Post:
How 443 federal properties were targeted for sale, then suddenly weren’t
The Trump administration sparked confusion by posting a list of properties eligible for sale, including the headquarters for HUD and the Justice Department, then shortened that list before finally taking it down altogether.
7 min
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s D.C. headquarters building was listed as eligible for sale by the Trump administration Tuesday, then removed from the list, which was later taken down altogether. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration announced that 443 federally owned properties were eligible to be sold, including such prominent buildings as the D.C. headquarters of the Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
We anticipate the list will be republished in the near future after we evaluate this initial input and determine how we can make it easier for stakeholders to understand the nuances of the assets listed,” a GSA spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday, adding that the agency had “received an overwhelming amount of interest” since publishing its initial list. The spokesperson did not respond to questions about why the list was modified and then removed, or say whether all 443 properties were still marked for disposal.
The GSA employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the list was taken down at the request of top GSA leadership. But at Wednesday’s meeting of senior GSA officials, the employee said, it was communicated that the plan is still to dispose of the buildings and that the effort is being paused indefinitely.
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The confusion surrounding which or how many federal buildings the Trump administration plans to off-load underscores the broader chaos that has accompanied its headlong plunge into an effort to radically shrink the federal government, leaving agencies scrambling to make sense of the rapidly changing information.
On Wednesday morning, the leadership of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent an email to all agency staff about the previous day’s announcement, which included the agency’s headquarters and several other of its buildings on the list.
“CMS was not aware this was happening, and we didn’t submit or approve any of our current office locations being on this list,” the email stated, adding, “We apologize for the additional and unnecessary stress and anxiety this may have caused.”
The rapid changes have added to the whiplash federal employees have felt amid a barrage of announcements of staff cuts, return-to-office deadlines, office lease terminations, policy changes and court rulings.
One Energy Department employee was watching President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday evening when her phone pinged. In a work group chat, a colleague had shared the link to a news article revealing that Energy’s D.C. headquarters — the Forrestal building, where the employee had worked for years — was targeted for a potential sale.
As the chat buzzed with alarmed reactions, the employee looked up at the television screen, where Trump was boasting, “We ordered all federal workers to return to the office. They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.”
The employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, looked back at her phone. How, she wondered, was she supposed to return to the office if the Trump administration was closing it down?
At 1 a.m., someone in the group chat shared another update: The administration had edited the list to remove all D.C. buildings, including the Energy headquarters. By the next morning, when the employee woke up, the full list of buildings for sale had been wiped from a federal website.
“Nobody’s thinking this through at all,” said a Justice Department employee, who questioned why the administration would consider selling the department’s headquarters when Trump is pushing for the department to prosecute more immigration and fentanyl cases, among other policy aims. The employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, added, “It’s like there are no adults in the room.”
Any effort to overhaul the federal real estate portfolio could run into a number of headwinds. The widespread cuts to the federal workforce by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have led many GSA employees to lose their jobs, with some entire offices being shuttered, raising questions about whether the diminished staff would have the capability to transfer so many properties.
There are complex rules surrounding the disposal of federal property, which is subject to environmental regulations and sometimes must be offered first for public uses before being sold on the private market.
A former senior GSA official described the inclusion of some properties on the list as “nonsensical.” One property on the chopping block was the Central Heating Plant in D.C., which serves many federal buildings around the National Mall. In addition to serving a useful function, the plant costs money to operate, said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in the real estate sector and fears retaliation from the administration.
“So the question is, who’s going to buy it?” he asked.
The GSA even listed its own D.C. headquarters buildings as “noncore” on the initial list Tuesday. One GSA employee said she showed up to work Wednesday struggling to make sense of the situation. Her supervisors three layers up the chain had no idea what was going on either, she said.
On Tuesday, a GSA spokesperson described the list as a way to save money. “Noncore assets cost over $430M annually to operate and maintain, represent over $8.3 billion in recapitalization needs and often do not provide federal employees the high quality work environments they need to fulfill their missions,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson added that the list of noncore assets was subject to change. Two hours later, it did change, shrinking by a third. Then it vanished altogether.
Politicians of both parties have long agreed that many federal buildings are outdated and should be handed off. But the Trump administration’s actions have tapped into partisan acrimony that now infects even the debate over mundane office spaces.
Dan Mathews, who oversaw the GSA real estate portfolio as Public Buildings Service commissioner during Trump’s first term, defended the property list as “a recognition the buildings are in severe disrepair and there is no prospect Congress will fund their renovation.”
Now in the private sector and a member of an independent board charged with helping the government jettison unneeded real estate, Mathews said that “while some could argue a particular building shouldn’t be on the list, the vast majority have no financially viable future. Disposal is the only rational choice.”
At a congressional hearing Wednesday on federal real estate, Trump’s supporters and critics argued over the effort to off-load thebuildings.
“I am pleased that the Trump administration hit the ground running by identifying waste in federal real estate,” said Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Mississippi), who chaired the hearing.
Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, the panel’s ranking Democrat, acknowledged that many public buildings are underutilized. “But rather than going through proper channels, the Trump administration moved straight to the lease termination and building disposal stage,” he said.
Stanton cited “mass confusion” around the administration’s aggressive push to shed offices while ordering workers back to the office. “This appears to be a policy at war with itself,” he said. “Federal employees are returning to offices that are being disposed of.”
Multiple Democrats on the panel complained of the difficulty of getting answers from the GSA. Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Washington) said his office was getting its information on real estate changes from the press and threads on Reddit.
Michael Peters, the current Trump-appointed commissioner of the Public Buildings Service, was initially slated to attend the hearing and answer questions, Stanton said.
“For some reason, we don’t know why, he has changed his mind, and he is not present today,” Stanton said.
What readers are saying
1 comment:
Earl
said...
I support Trump's firings in the federal government...but only because they are giving unlimited legal resources and immunity by the derelict federal courts... and that has led to a lot of rights violations that have gone un remedied. It's not the employees fault though that they've made them super citizens... but regardless those systems need to be reduced since democracy isn't working it's magic. Put them out in the private sector where they can be successfully sued for certain behavior.
1 comment:
I support Trump's firings in the federal government...but only because they are giving unlimited legal resources and immunity by the derelict federal courts... and that has led to a lot of rights violations that have gone un remedied. It's not the employees fault though that they've made them super citizens... but regardless those systems need to be reduced since democracy isn't working it's magic. Put them out in the private sector where they can be successfully sued for certain behavior.
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