On Thursday the Trump administration announced that all staff will leave the Department of Education’s longtime Washington headquarters in the Lyndon B. Johnson building, which the administration says is roughly 70 percent vacant.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon hailed the move as part of a broader effort to shrink the federal education footprint and said the building will be turned over to another agency she said will make better use of the space.
The administration plans to move the Department of Energy into the Lyndon B. Johnson building later this year; Energy currently occupies the James V. Forrestal building. Officials say the consolidation will save taxpayers more than $350 million in deferred maintenance costs.
Education Department employees are scheduled to relocate in August to a smaller office about a block away at 500 D Street SW.
Democrats assailed the decision. Rep. Bobby Scott, the ranking member of the House education committee, said leaving the LBJ building does not eliminate bureaucracy but simply redistributes it, and he characterized the closure as part of a larger effort to reduce the federal role in ensuring equitable access to quality education.
An internal email obtained by NPR showed McMahon describing the move as a critical step in returning education to the states. Over roughly a year, and in line with President Trump’s pledge to pare back the department, McMahon has cut staff nearly in half to about 2,300 employees and negotiated ten agreements transferring portions of the department’s work to other federal agencies.
The most recent agreement shifts much of the department’s management of the federal student loan program to the Treasury Department, a change that highlights a central legal constraint on efforts to dismantle the department: the Department of Education was created by Congress in 1979 and only Congress can formally abolish it.
A senior Education Department official acknowledged that Treasury cannot assume all of the department’s statutory student‑loan obligations and said the department will be wound down only to the extent permitted by law, stressing that McMahon recognizes Congress is the only body that can close the department.
The move carries symbolic weight. The LBJ building is associated with the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, when major federal education initiatives aimed at helping students in poverty were created and the federal role in K–12 and early education was substantially expanded.