DOGE ditches environmental offices nationwide under Trump’s administration. Photo credit: E & E news
(The Post News)—In February, the Trump EPA celebrated renaming its new “Gulf of America Division,” which stated that the Gulf will help power the great American comeback and that the EPA is ready to protect it. But the EPA office based in Gulfport, Mississippi, is also on a list of whose leases the Trump administration’s DOGE operation has been targeted for cancelation.
As part of the administration’s broader push to slash the federal government’s footprint, Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency announced more than 700 lease terminations for offices across the federal government. Dozens of offices used by EPA scientists, National Park officials, and energy regulators are being canceled and/or closed. The administration is targeting over 400 federal buildings for disposal and canceling leases in other properties. The list, now removed, included iconic DC buildings like the Energy and Labor Department headquarters for potential disposal.
According to a GSA list obtained and released by Rep. Hared Huffman, at the Interior Department, Trump officials are looking at closing as many as 164 offices across the country, including 27 percent of all Bureau of Indian Affairs locations. Huffman’s list overlaps but does not perfectly align with DOGE’s published list.
Trump’s early rapid assault on office space raises questions about how many federal employees, including those far from Washington, are likely to face relocation or lose their jobs in the months to come. The Trump administration requires federal employees to return to offices full-time, ending remote work arrangements. Federal workers’ anxiety grows as canceled leases and building disposals fuel fears of large-scale job cuts. The Trump administration claims the canceled leases and building disposals will save taxpayers money.
DOGE said in a post on the 26th of February that it was saving between $100 million and $171 million in rent by canceling leases of spaces that were not being used to capacity or were sitting vacant. The post further claims that there is plenty of available office space for the current workforce. Based on the list released by Huffman, which overlaps with some of the facilities already announced for cancelation by DOGE, well over 2 million square feet of interior office spaces could be canceled in 2025 and 2026. This includes a total of 164 offices.
Huffman’s list states that the lease for Interior’s inspector general offices in Herndon, Virginia, with at least 100 employees, had been proposed for cancelation as early as September of this year. In an emailed statement, Interior agreed to review department facilities but did not provide details of the leases for cancelation. DOGE’s list includes an office in Flagstaff, Arizona, which houses natural resources staff that serve multiple parks and public lands, along with the visitors center for the Little River Canyon National Preserve in northern Alabama.
According to DOGE, the Little River Canyon lease costs $78,171 per year. Huffman’s list has identified two unusual leases that could potentially be canceled. These are the NPS leases for the Cadillac Hotel in Seattle, a national park in its own right. The hotel is the park service’s Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. Chuck Sams, who served as director of the National Park Service during the Biden administration, claims the logic behind the potential lease cancelations was not clear. Sams warns that closing offices on top of Trump’s mass layoffs is going to greatly reduce the experiences for people visiting national parks. Huffman’s tally indicates that one in every four BIA offices could be closed in the DOGE purge.
Based on the website listing cuts to government spending, DOGE has terminated office leases at seven EPA offices. According to the DOGE website, EPA’s canceled leases include offices in the Virgin Islands; Stanford, Connecticut; Los Angeles; Gulfport, Mississippi; Castle Rock, Colorado; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the EPA declined to confirm the lease cancelations or provide further details about the data listed on the DOGE website. Other offices that could be affected included the Southern California Area offices and Western Colorado Area offices, both of which list at least 10 employees in each location on their websites.
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