President Donald Trump, who pledged to send up to 100,000 federal workers outside of Washington, could move quickly to eject energy and environmental agencies from the nation’s capital.
The administration on Wednesday directed agencies to submit by April 14 any proposed relocations of bureaus and offices from the nation’s capital to “less costly parts of the country.” Trump also issued an executive order aimed at downsizing the federal government’s real estate footprint as part of a broader push to shrink the size and scope of the bureaucracy.
Energy and environmental agencies — including EPA and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management — could be among the Trump team’s top targets for relocations or downsizing.
The White House, EPA and the Bureau of Land Management did not comment about potential relocations, but the administration has signaled that big changes are coming for energy and environmental agencies. And specifics about any relocation plans could start to emerge as agencies make plans ahead of the April deadline.
Steep cuts are in store for EPA, Trump signaled this week.
The president announced in a Cabinet meeting that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin planned to cut 65 percent of that agency’s staff, although the White House said in a later statement that the president meant he wanted to cut 65 percent of spending, not workers. Whether the cuts are ultimately aimed at staff or spending, the administration appears eager to significantly downsize that agency.
Trump campaigned on a promise to move up to 100,000 federal workers outside of Washington to “places filled with patriots.” He pledged to continue a push started in his first term to “move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp,” citing his previous move to send BLM back to Colorado.
Another BLM move?
Trump during his first term moved BLM’s headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado, as part of a reorganization plan that also included transferring hundreds of Washington-based positions to state offices across the West.
The headquarters move, completed in the summer of 2020, was billed as a strategy to improve public-lands management by moving top decisionmakers closer to the 245 million acres of rangelands they manage in the West and Alaska. The White House memo Wednesday echoes that reasoning, directing that agency reorganization plans “ensure that employees are grouped, to the greatest extent possible, based on like duties and job functions to promote effective collaboration and management.”
The Biden administration reversed the Trump relocation in 2021, noting that most of the bureau’s employees are already located in the West, and that it was important for most top HQ staffers to be in Washington to work closely with other Interior agencies and Congress. The Grand Junction office currently serves as BLM’s “Western hub.”
Though at least 135 people left the bureau rather than move West, the current Trump administration appears unconcerned about losing staff, having fired at least 2,300 Interior Department employees in the past two weeks as part of a broader effort to slash the federal workforce.
More than 200 BLM nonsupervisory headquarters employees in 2022 formed a chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, partly in response to the HQ move.
NTEU did not respond to a request for comment. The union sent out an “urgent” email Wednesday to members nationwide on the White House memo that addressed only the potential staff cuts, and did not directly address the possible relocation of agency headquarters’ offices.
“As a member of NTEU, immediately contact your members of Congress, today and every day, and demand that they take action to protect our government and the federal workforce,” the union email said of the memo.
The union has not addressed the potential reorganization plan or the possible HQ move, according to two BLM staffers who were granted anonymity so that they could talk freely. “NTEU would say something if they knew something” about the reorganization plans, one of the employees said.
A BLM spokesperson said the agency had no comment on the matter.
Kathleen Sgamma, Trump’s nominee for BLM director, has vocally supported moving BLM’s headquarters as president of the Denver-based trade group Western Energy Alliance. Sgamma also co-authored a section of Project 2025, the conservative policy playbook, that includes a recommendation to move the bureau’s HQ back to Grand Junction.
Republican Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado also has sponsored a bill, H.R. 1125, that calls for moving BLM’s headquarters to Grand Junction.
Shake-ups expected at EPA
As the Trump administration eyes overhauls to EPA, that agency could also be targeted for downsizing or relocations. Some conservatives — including EPA’s chief of staff during the first Trump administration — have floated ideas for sweeping restructuring in the agency.
Mandy Gunasekara, former Trump EPA chief of staff, suggested moving EPA to Texas or Florida in her book published last year titled, “Y’all Fired: A Southern Belle’s Guide to Restoring Federalism and Draining the Swamp.”
Gunasekara said such a move would “put career staff in far closer proximity to the stakeholders and interests that the agency is supposedly working for.” Gunasekara also wrote the EPA section of the Project 2025 playbook organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Moving agencies outside of Washington is an important step to “break up progressive power,” Gunasekara wrote.
The Trump transition team reportedly discussed moving EPA’s headquarters outside of Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration, prompting a backlash from critics who argued such a move would prompt a staff exodus and devastate the agency.
Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team in 2016, has suggested that EPA should close all 10 of its regional offices that are now spread across the country.
“If monitoring of the state agencies is necessary and state agencies are actually doing the work, I think it can be done in one centralized place” with “a lot less manpower and a lot less spending,” Ebell said.
Trump’s latest ‘DOGE’ order
As agencies consider their relocation plans, the administration also directed government officials Wednesday to submit plans to terminate leases and ditch government-owned properties that aren’t needed.
That directive came as part of a broader Trump executive order to crack down on spending on contracts, grants, employee travel, credit cards and federal properties.
Trump billed the cost-cutting order as part of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency operation to slash spending and shrink the workforce.
The order gives agency heads 30 days to identify existing leases and determine whether to terminate them. It also directs the General Service Administration to submit a plan within 60 days to shed government-owned property that has been deemed unnecessary.
Trump’s order also freezes credit cards held by agency employees, with exceptions for disaster relief and other services deemed critical.
