Fire Sale!
By UPDATE (3/5/2025): It looks like the list has been withdrawn. Pushback works! Wired has an interactive map of the buildings on the list.
I think Josh Marshall has this right:
It hasn’t gotten a lot of attention but Donald Trump’s February 11th “workforce optimization” executive order provides a very clear framework for the end stage goal of all the cutting. After a bunch of specific imperatives listed under Section 3-C of that executive order, it includes the following language: government department and agencies must plan to cut “all components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or other law who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations as provided in the Agency Contingency Plans on the Office of Management and Budget website.”
….
What will it be like after they’re done? It will be like a permanent shutdown. That’s not hyperbole or a metaphor. It’s literally what they say in the executive order.
That would be why they’re terminating leases for buildings, like the one the DOE occupies in Carlsbad, NM. And they’re selling buildings, too.
That includes the Oklahoma City Federal Building, the one that replaced the one Timothy McVeigh blew up; the Rosa Parks Federal Building in Detroit; the US Customs House in Philadelphia; the J. Edgar Hoover Building; the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building; and many others.
The most common surmise in the quote-posts is that Musk and friends will buy them for pennies on the dollar and then lease them back to the government. But, combined with the lease terminations, it’s consistent with Josh’s theory that they really do want to shrink the government down to where they can drown it in a bathtub.