Trump says he’ll move thousands of federal workers out of Washington. Here’s what happened the first time he tried
1 min readImage caption: A total of 176 employees working in the Bureau of Land Management headquarters were told to move; 135 declined, with many leaving the agency to take positions elsewhere in the federal bureaucracy. Image source: Bureau of Land Management. Article by Mark Olalde. Nextgov / FCW – October 23, 2024. Article originally published on ProPublica.
The Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters moved from the capital to Colorado in 2020, causing an exodus of leadership. If elected, Trump plans to use the same tactic across more of the federal government.
In 2019, the administration of then-President Donald Trump announced plans to relocate the federal government’s largest land management agency from the nation’s capital to Grand Junction, Colorado, a city of about 65,000 people a four-hour drive from the nearest major airport. Trump had campaigned on a vow to “drain the swamp” and throughout his time in office voiced suspicions about the federal bureaucracy. Moving the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters out of Washington, which officially happened in August 2020, was a step toward fulfilling that promise. […]