The U.S. Department of Education plans to move out of its Washington headquarters to a smaller office later this year, a step Education Secretary Linda McMahon and other administration officials described as part of a broader effort under President Donald Trump to dismantle the agency. Officials said Thursday that the relocation is planned for August, and they said the department’s current headquarters building is largely unused.
The Education Department said its headquarters building has been about 70% vacant. It also said the Energy Department will assume the lease for the building, replacing the department’s long-term footprint there. In a written statement, McMahon called the relocation a milestone in the administration’s efforts to shutter the agency.
McMahon framed the move as progress in reducing federal involvement in education. “Thanks to the hard work of so many, we have made unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint, and now we are pleased to give this building to an agency that will benefit far more from its space than the Department of Education,” she said in the statement. The union representing workers at the department criticized the decision.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, said McMahon’s announcement conveyed that education was next for cuts. “The message the Secretary’s announcement sends to our staff and the American public is clear — education is next on the chopping block,” Gittleman said in a statement. Gittleman’s union statement did not describe specific operational changes tied to the relocation, but it placed the move within what it said was a wider dismantling plan.
Administration officials also said the move would save taxpayers money. They said relocating would eliminate what they described as wasted space and avoid maintenance needs tied to the Energy Department’s current headquarters building. Although the Education Department’s move is an executive-branch decision, lawmakers and the union argued it is part of a larger effort to shrink the agency.
House Education and Workforce Committee top Democrat Bobby Scott said the physical move was among the more direct actions McMahon has taken to shut down the department. Only Congress, Scott said, has authority to close the department, but he argued the administration has shifted many programs and functions elsewhere in the federal government through “interagency agreements.”
Scott also characterized the relocation as more than symbolism. “This decision to close the Department’s physical building is not just a symbolic move,” Scott said in a statement. “It reflects a broader effort to reduce the federal government’s role in ensuring people have equal access to a quality education.”
The relocation was described as the latest step in a sequence of changes to the Education Department. In the most recent effort to break apart the agency, administration officials said last week they assigned management of student loans in default to the Treasury Department, with responsibility for the rest of the $1.7 trillion federal student loan portfolio to go to Treasury at an unspecified date. Over the last year, officials said, other education-focused programs—including family engagement, funding for low-income schools and teacher training—have been moved to agencies such as Health and Human Services and the Labor Department.