Dept. of Energy to Move Into Education Dept.’s Headquarters

The Education Department will vacate its headquarters this summer and move a block away, the agency announced Thursday. 

The Energy Department will take over the Lyndon B. Johnson Building, which has been ED’s home since the agency was created in 1979. The agency is slated to move into a privately owned building at 500 D Street SW, which recently served as the annex for the U.S. Agency for International Development. (The Elon Musk–directed Department of Government Efficiency dismantled USAID early in the second Trump administration.)

ED officials said in the release that moving offices will save taxpayers about $4.8 million a year in operating costs. The building is currently 70 percent vacant, according to the release. The Energy Department is expected to save about $350 million in deferred maintenance costs by moving into ED’s current headquarters.

The announcement that ED will vacate its headquarters comes as the Trump administration is trying to shut down the agency. Although only Congress can close the department, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has laid off half of the agency’s 4,000 employees and outsourced dozens of programs to other federal agencies.

“The Trump Administration has successfully decreased the scope of the federal education bureaucracy, so much that the headquarters building is no longer needed,” a fact sheet about the move states.

McMahon said in a statement that she was pleased to give the building to an agency “that will benefit far more from its space.”

“This is an important step in our efforts to forge brighter futures for our nation’s students, honor the taxpayers who invest in their promise, and support the civil servants who keep this vital work moving forward,” she added. 

The union representing ED employees blasted the move.

“The message the Secretary’s announcement sends to our staff and the American public is clear—education is next on the chopping block,” AFGE Local 252 president Rachel Gittleman said in a statement. “But after more than a year of fighting back against this unlawful and unprecedented gutting of a Congressionally created agency, we know that the will of the people, congressional intent, and the law is on our side.”