President Donald Trump and FBI Director Kash Patel chose an existing federal building for the FBI’s new headquarters, saying the move would save taxpayers billions of dollars.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang told them they couldn’t do it. Chuang, appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Hussein Obama, issued a permanent injunction blocking the move to the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.
From Reuters:
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang sided with the Democratic-led state of Maryland and Prince George’s County in ruling the administration had unlawfully scrapped a plan to construct a new FBI headquarters in Greenbelt, Maryland, and diverted money approved by Congress for that project to an alternate location, the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.
The judge said the selection of Ronald Reagan Building violated measures passed by Congress in 2022 and 2023 that required the General Services Administration to pick from one of three short-listed sites outside of Washington.
“Notably, the text provides no conditions under which the selection could be unilaterally rescinded or switched to a nonconforming site,” wrote Chuang, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama.
He said that because the administration lacked authority to pick the Ronald Reagan Building to serve as the new FBI headquarters, it likewise could not legally divert $555 million of funding approved by Congress to prepare the site for that purpose.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, in a statement said the ruling cleared the way for the headquarters project to return to Greenbelt.
“Congress made a promise,” he said. “The Trump administration tried to break it. Now, the jobs, investment, and opportunity Marylanders deserve are within reach.”
Chuang didn’t pull the restriction from thin air. Congress directed the General Services Administration in 2022 and 2023 to select the new headquarters from Greenbelt or Landover, Md., or Springfield, Va.
GSA selected Greenbelt in 2023 and said it was the cheapest of those three choices.
But the Trump administration looked at a fourth option: an existing federal building. The FBI says moving into the Reagan Building would save billions in new construction costs and avoid more than $300 million in deferred maintenance at the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building. Patel called it the most cost-effective and resource-efficient way to carry out the FBI’s mission.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown and Prince George’s County brought the case. Maryland and the county had committed more than $300 million toward transportation, parking, and other improvements tied to Greenbelt.
After winning Monday, Brown celebrated the return of the jobs, investments, and opportunity Maryland expected from the project.
Chuang’s own opinion makes Maryland’s economic interest explicit. While weighing whether to impose a permanent injunction, he found that moving ahead with the Reagan Building would deprive Maryland and Prince George’s County of substantial economic benefits. His ruling on the merits rested on Congress’s site restrictions, but Maryland’s financial loss helped support the remedy.
Congress controls federal spending. Presidents don’t get to erase statutes because they dislike them; but Congress also has a responsibility to own what happens next.
Chuang expressly wrote that his injunction can be revisited if Congress rescinds or changes the site-selection provisions.
Good.
Members of Congress should have to make that choice in daylight. If they believe taxpayers must finance a new Greenbelt complex even after the FBI says an existing federal building will save billions, let them vote for it and explain why.
What bothers me is how easily Washington turns an old government decision into something nearly untouchable. A new president takes office; his FBI director identifies an existing property that the FBI says is cheaper; a state sues because it stands to lose jobs and investment; and yet one district judge freezes the change because Congress wrote restrictive language years earlier.
Maryland can fight for Maryland. Brown is doing his job. President Trump was elected to run the executive branch, and Patel is responsible for running the FBI. Their judgment about where the FBI can safely and economically operate deserves to be weighed against today’s costs, not simply buried beneath a decision made during the Biden administration.
If Congress wants Greenbelt, Congress should say so again, clearly, and pay for it. If lawmakers won’t, they shouldn’t hide behind an old appropriations directive while taxpayers absorb the consequences.
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