I’m still trying to find out more about this. But as I do, I just wanted to put it on your radar because it’s completely crazy and epitomizes the Trump presidency. The National Science Foundation is already in the process of being gutted — in perhaps a not quite as drastic way as its peer biomedical agencies such as NIH and elsewhere. But out of the blue yesterday, word emerged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking over the NSF’s building, evicting all of its more than 1,800 employees. Multiple NSF employees leaked word of this yesterday to journalist Dan Garisto. After Garisto reported the information on Bluesky I independently got word of this from NSF employees and now it’s been officially announced at a press conference by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and GSA Commissioner Michael Peters.
Adding to the wildness, the top floors of the building are, according to the AFGE Local 3403, going to be retrofitted into a kind of executive mansion for HUD Secretary Turner, including an executive suite, executive dining room, reserved parking for the Secretary’s five cars, exclusive use of an entire elevator, special space for his various assistants and a planned gym for the Secretary and his family. Turner wouldn’t be the only Secretary with nice office space. But this does sound like it’s on the extreme end of the spectrum. Equally eye-catching, there appears to be no plan for where the NSF staff will go.
Warner suggested that the move stems from Vought’s stated desire to “traumatize the federal workforce.” And I don’t doubt that. But I still think there’s more evidence that the the big driver of this is the vacuum created by DOGE and quite possibly Turner’s desire for the Sky Mansion. (I’m told that Turner brought his wife to tour the facilities when they were deciding whether they wanted it. And I’m hearing from people at NSF that they think the renovation design suggests Turner actually wants to live in the Sky Mansion.) The administration is putting out that this is an example of creating efficiency and cost-savings, as we’ve discussed. They’re also billing it as the first big example of their efforts to get the government out of Washington, DC. But this is Alexandria, Virginia, so only outside of DC in the most nominal sense. As is often the case, the justifications seem like a bunch of stuff kind of pulled together haphazardly to justify something that originated for other reasons.
I’m told that National Science Foundation staffers were informed this morning that the leaderships of GSA, HUD and NSF met this morning and agreed that no one will be forced to vacate the NSF building until there’s a formal, written agreement about the whole switch and a plan for where the NSF staff will move to. As I’m sure Warner is thinking, it’s very hard to see how there’s cost savings to moving two federal agency staffs instead of one, moving one into a building custom-built for the other and finding yet a third office that will need to be renovated to meet the needs of the NSF.
One final interesting nugget. The staffs of HUD and the NSF are both represented by the same union, the American Federation of Government Employees. So this opens up some interesting possibilities — which I’m told are already afoot — for the unionized workforces on both ends of the transaction to question and organize against the move. From what I understand, the HUD folks definitely do want to leave their current building. But while Alexandria isn’t that far from downtown DC, it’s a very different commute. So there’s a desire for answers and at least some resistance to this move on both sides. Final point: something seems to overtake HUD Secretaries after they move into headquarters. Remember Ben Carson’s first big policy move as HUD Secretary was paying $31,000 for a set of dining room furniture for his office suite. Maybe there’s something in the air in the building — fumes or something — and people just get weird.