Education Dept. HQ handed to Energy as Trump advances effort to dismantle agency

The Education Department will leave its headquarters building this year, marking the latest step in the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency as it hands the space off to the Energy Department. 

Education has already slashed about half of its workforce since President Trump took office last year and Secretary Linda McMahon told employees on Thursday its Washington headquarters, a location just south of the National Mall that the department has occupied for decades, contained far more space than the agency requires. Trump has vowed to eliminate the department entirely and offloaded some of its work to other agencies, but Congress has declined to defund it. 

Energy will also move out of its headquarters, which it said would help it avoid $350 million in deferred maintenance costs. Education employees will move to another building just blocks away from its existing location into a leased space that most recently housed an annex of the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

“This relocation is a common sense, forward-looking step to down-size the department's federal footprint here in D.C., ensuring we are a more responsible steward of taxpayer dollars and allowing the Department of Energy to occupy the [Lyndon B. Johnson] building, which it can utilize fully,” McMahon told employees in an email obtained by Government Executive. 

She said it would save Education nearly $5 million annually and would not result in any interruption to federal operations or employees’ workflow. The department would provide additional updates to staff in the coming months, she added. 

“Relocating to the LBJ building will deliver significant taxpayer savings and will ensure the Energy Department continues to deliver on its mission,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said. “We look forward to working closely with the General Services Administration and the Education Department throughout this process.”

Government Executive confirmed the changes earlier in the day and reached out to both Energy and Education early Thursday for comment, but neither responded before issuing a press release that afternoon. 

Education laid off around one-third of its workforce last year and shed additional employees through various incentives. Earlier this year, Interior announced interagency agreements with the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State to offload many of its responsibilities. Most recently, it announced it would offload federal student loan duties to the Treasury Department. 

Under the agreements, however, staff reporting to the new agencies still work for and are paid by Education. In some cases, they still must use Education systems to manage their work. 

A funding measure that Trump recently signed into law rejected most of the cuts the president sought to implement and raised questions about the legality of the transfers. 

"No authorities exist for the Department of Education to transfer its fundamental responsibilities under numerous authorizing and appropriations laws, including through procuring services from other federal agencies, of carrying out those programs, projects, and activities to other federal agencies,” lawmakers wrote in their bipartisan statement accompanying the bill. 

McMahon called the latest announcement “a significant step forward toward the final mission” of the Education Department. 

“I'm proud of what we accomplished in this building, and I look forward to what we will do in the next,” McMahon said. “Thank you for your continued dedication and flexibility as we deliver on our promise to put students first, make government work better for the American people, and return education to the states.”