In the latest step by the Trump administration to shrink the federal education presence, officials announced Thursday that all staff will vacate the Department of Education’s long‑time Washington, D.C., headquarters in the Lyndon B. Johnson building, which the administration says “is roughly 70% vacant.”
“Thanks to the hard work of so many, we have made unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement announcing the move, “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.”
The administration says the Department of Energy, a larger agency currently housed in the James V. Forrestal building, will move into the Lyndon B. Johnson building later this year. The move, which the administration describes as saving taxpayers more than $350 million in “deferred maintenance costs,” is presented as a cost‑saving consolidation.
Education Department employees will relocate in August to a smaller office about a block away at 500 D Street SW.
Democrats criticized the decision. “Leaving the Lyndon B. Johnson headquarters building does not cut bureaucracy — it rearranges it,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, the ranking member of the House education committee. “This decision to close the Department’s physical building is not just a symbolic move — it reflects a broader effort to reduce the federal government’s role in ensuring people have equal access to a quality education.”
In an internal email obtained by NPR, McMahon called the move a “critical step in returning education to the states.” Over a little more than a year, in line with President Trump’s pledge to eliminate the Education Department, McMahon has reduced staff by nearly half — to about 2,300 employees — and reached ten agreements to transfer portions of the department’s work to other federal agencies.
The most recent of those agreements sends much of the department’s management of the federal student loan program to the Treasury Department, bringing into focus a central hurdle for McMahon’s effort to dismantle the agency: the Department of Education was created by Congress in 1979, and only Congress can formally abolish it.
When asked by NPR about the Treasury move, a senior Education Department official acknowledged that Treasury cannot fully assume all of the department’s statutory student‑loan obligations. The official said the department will be wound down only to the extent permitted by law and emphasized that McMahon understands “Congress is the only entity that can close the Department.”
Leaving the Lyndon B. Johnson building carries symbolic weight. During President Johnson’s administration, the executive branch and Congress created major federal education initiatives — many aimed at helping students in poverty — that reshaped the federal role in K–12 and early education.