NPR reports that Trump and Musk are now targeting federal buildings with DOGE

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is on a mission to slash the federal government — and it eagerly touts its moves on social media.

A recent entry cited more than $100 million in savings from terminating hundreds of federal building leases. Yet it promised federal workers there would still be “plenty of available office space.”

Some of those cancellations could affect public-facing services, like an Internal Revenue Service taxpayer assistance center in Parkersburg, W. Va.; the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Osage Agency in Pawhuska, Okla.; a Social Security office in Minot, N.D.; and a Farm Service Agency office in the heart of Hurricane Helene-struck western North Carolina.

These are just some of more than 1,000 properties leased or owned by the federal government that the Trump administration has marked for potential downsizing as it presses forward with plans to dramatically shrink its physical footprint in communities across the country.

The government is preparing to shed up to a quarter of its 360 million square feet of real estate in the coming months, an NPR analysis of DOGE’s “receipts” page of lease terminations and lists of possible cuts circulating at federal agencies found.

At the same time the General Services Administration, which manages federal real estate, is identifying property to divest, the agency has abruptly fired more than 1,000 workers and is targeting an overall 63% reduction in headcount at its Public Building Service division, according to multiple current and former GSA employees. They are among more than a dozen people who spoke to NPR for this story and requested anonymity because they fear speaking publicly would make them targets for reprisal from the Trump administration in their jobs and future employment prospects.

Some current and former GSA employees told NPR they think the firings are illegal and that the proposed cutbacks are indiscriminate.

“There’s just been no time,” said one GSA manager who was fired earlier this week. They said it appeared that the agency is just “ cutting buildings and people without even, like, analyzing anything.”

“All [job termination] notifications were conducted in accordance with [federal] policies and guidelines,” a GSA spokesperson said in a statement to NPR. The spokesperson added that the potential property sales “will result in increased service quality to our customers and savings to the American taxpayer.”

Like other aspects of the DOGE-inspired efforts to slash the size and scope of the federal government in recent weeks, the process of cutting leases and identifying buildings that could be sold has been marked by confusion, errors and an ever-changing list of potential targets.

This week, the GSA even posted — then deleted — a list of “non-core” government buildings that could be sold, including federal courthouses, the headquarters of the Justice Department and the American Red Cross, and even the home of the GSA itself.

It’s not clear what the lease terminations and proposed building sales would mean for the services and activities carried out by affected agencies, such as Social Security and IRS offices where members of the public come for help.

GSA said it is exploring options “including public-private partnerships, ground leases, sale leasebacks, and interagency co-working agreements” in order to “optimize” the government’s real estate portfolio.

That could mean that some agencies may not have to relocate — but the lack of information and clarity is leaving federal workers worried.

Shifting lists of properties targeted for cuts

According to DOGE’s “wall of receipts,” as of March 6 the GSA has moved to terminate roughly 750 leases covering around 10 million square feet — less than 5% of the government’s total footprint.

These cuts include 61 IRS spaces, 47 with the Social Security Administration, several U.S. attorneys’ offices and a nuclear waste storage facility in New Mexico.

A separate, overlapping list of Interior Department leases slated for termination — shared by a current employee at the agency — includes 25 Bureau of Indian Affairs offices and a Louisiana office housing two Interior bureaus that handle offshore energy projects.

The administration is also considering terminating leases for properties housing vital weather forecasting services and fisheries operations at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to two former NOAA officials and a current NOAA contractor.

Like many other DOGE claims, the list of lease terminations on its website uses opaque methodology to generate apparently inflated savings numbers. By matching DOGE’s data with federal lease inventory, the purported terminations appear to include some leases that the government does not appear to have the right to terminate yet, and some that were already set to end soon.

One that was already set to end: Atlanta office space provided to the late former President Jimmy Carter, who died at the end of last year, before President Trump took office and DOGE came into existence. The list claims more than half a million dollars in savings from that.

A spokesperson for DOGE did not respond to questions about how its lease savings are calculated or verified.

Beyond the lease terminations, a proposal to sell off federal buildings sent shockwaves through the government on Tuesday when GSA released a list of 443 properties it said it was looking to divest because they are “not core to government operations.”

While a list of “core” properties shared with NPR by a GSA employee primarily included facilities on the U.S. southern border or for law enforcement work, the “non-core” list included federal courthouses, historic buildings, sprawling facilities in Indianapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta, and the Washington, D.C., headquarters of agencies including the Justice, Agriculture and Labor Departments, and GSA itself.

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