On Tuesday, the Trump administration released a list of over 440 federal facilities that it had determined were not essential to government operations and identified to close or sell, including the main Department of Justice building and the FBI headquarters. 

A few hours later, the administration released a revised list with only 320 properties, and none of them were in Washington, DC. By Wednesday morning, the list was completely removed, with a message saying "Non-core property list (Coming soon)." The General Services Administration, which published the lists, did not respond right away to questions about why the properties were removed or what caused the changes. The initial list included some of the most well-known buildings in the country, such as courthouses, offices, and even a parking garage, covering almost every state. In Washington, DC, the list featured the J. Edgar Hoover Building, which is the FBI headquarters, the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the Old Post Office building (where President Donald Trump previously ran a hotel), and the American Red Cross headquarters. It also included the headquarters of several agencies, such as the Department of Labour and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Across the country, authorities focused on several major federal buildings, including the massive Major General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Indiana, the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco, and the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York. About 80% of the 2.4 million federal employees work outside the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. “We are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations, or non-core properties for disposal,” the GSA said of the initial list of 443 properties. “Selling the properties ensures that taxpayer dollars are no longer spent on vacant or underutilised federal space,” it added, and “helps eliminate costly maintenance and allows us to reinvest in high-quality work environments that support agency missions.”

Trump and billionaire Elon Musk are working on a plan to reduce the size of the federal workforce and cut government spending. They believe that selling government buildings could save hundreds of millions of dollars while also changing how major government agencies operate. The Trump administration has also required federal employees to come to the office every day. The new administration is focused on reducing federal office space. Last month, the General Services Administration (GSA) instructed its regional managers to start ending leases for all 7,500 federal offices across the country. Many of the buildings set to be removed house agencies that Trump has frequently criticised, including the FBI and the Justice Department. The headquarters of the FBI and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are also known for their brutalist architectural style, which Trump has opposed for years in favour of traditional, neo-classical designs.

In a follow-up meeting, GSA regional managers were informed that their target is to end up to 300 leases per day, according to an employee who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation. Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has posted a list of many cancelled office leases on its official website. This has raised concerns across the country about the future of services that were provided by these offices. Among the properties listed Tuesday were a courthouse and large federal building in Los Angeles; a federal building in Oklahoma City that was rebuilt after one was destroyed in a 1995 bombing; IRS service centres in Ogden, Utah; Memphis, Tennessee; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Andover, Massachusetts; and Holtsville, New York; and an IRS computing centre in West Virginia. 

The GSA’s Public Buildings Service stated that most of the properties it identified as unnecessary are office spaces. Due to years of insufficient funding, many of these buildings have become outdated and no longer suitable for federal employees. The GSA plans to carefully decide what to do with these buildings, ensuring taxpayers are no longer burdened with the costs of empty or underused office spaces. This move could save over $430 million each year in maintenance and operational expenses. “The original list of 443 buildings, which are currently owned and maintained by GSA, spanned almost 80 million rentable square feet,” the agency said.