I wanted to update you on the story I flagged yesterday in which the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Scott Turner, decided to bogart the offices of the Trump-beleaguered National Science Foundation (NSF) at least in part to build a Sky Mansion for himself on the building’s top floors. Stories like this have always had a special fascination for me. You can’t say it’s a bigger story than the US going to war with Iran or the US military low-fi occupying a major American city. But in addition to its immediate impact on three or four thousand people — the employees of HUD and NSF — it captures so much of what 2025 Trump-era Washington is about. As probably goes without saying, there appears to have been no formal process behind this at all. There’s a very Sopranos feel to the whole caper: ‘Nice place you got here. It’s mine now.’
All signs suggest this idea was cooked up by Turner (who seems really focused on the Sky Mansion) and the leadership of the General Services Administration (GSA), which since the first days of the Trump administration has been wholly taken over by DOGE and Russ Vought, the Christian Nationalist militant who runs the Office of Management and Budget. The administration is presenting the move as the first fruits of Trump administration efficiency and cost-cutting. And it’s important to note that it seems commonly agreed that the current HUD headquarters is not up to snuff. There have apparently been discussions of finding a new headquarters for HUD as far back as the Obama administration. So that part of this is not made up. But that doesn’t explain how you’d manage efficiencies by evicting another government agency which occupies a building that was largely customized for the specific needs of that agency. At least on its face it doesn’t seem clear that the NSF building can actually accommodate all the HUD employees, though perhaps there’s enough space when the DOGE-winnowing is figured in. Indeed, the first note of this I’ve seen from an elected political leader came this morning when Virginia Senator Warner held a press conference in which he said he will demand a cost analysis of both the HUD and NSF relocations to see whether there is any actual savings or whether there’s been any analysis of it at all.
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.
As I said yesterday, I’m very, very interested in getting more granular detail on this whole story. So if you have details please take a moment to get in touch with me on one of the encrypted channels you can find above and below this article.