National Science Foundation to Be Requisitioned as Mansion for HUD Secretary (And Also HUD Office)

I’m still trying to find out more about this. But as I do, I just wanted to put it on your radar because it’s completely crazy and epitomizes the Trump presidency. The National Science Foundation is already in the process of being gutted — in perhaps a not quite as drastic way as its peer biomedical agencies such as NIH and elsewhere. But out of the blue yesterday, word emerged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking over the NSF’s building, evicting all of its more than 1,800 employees. Multiple NSF employees leaked word of this yesterday to journalist Dan Garisto. After Garisto reported the information on Bluesky I independently got word of this from NSF employees and now it’s been officially announced at a press conference by HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and GSA Commissioner Michael Peters.

Adding to the wildness, the top floors of the building are, according to the AFGE Local 3403, going to be retrofitted into a kind of executive mansion for HUD Secretary Turner, including an executive suite, executive dining room, reserved parking for the Secretary’s five cars, exclusive use of an entire elevator, special space for his various assistants and a planned gym for the Secretary and his family. Turner wouldn’t be the only Secretary with nice office space. But this does sound like it’s on the extreme end of the spectrum. Equally eye-catching, there appears to be no plan for where the NSF staff will go.

Word leaked out yesterday and then, according to Alexandria Now, the NSF staff received a memo this morning from their acting director saying the GSA (basically now an appendage of DOGE) had decided that they weren’t fully making use of their office space so they were giving it to HUD instead. Oh well.

Obviously this is part of the general Trump administration attack on science funding and American universities. But, as one NSF staffer told me, this particular story is likely less a matter of White House policy than the chaos and vacuum created by the DOGE storm. Apparently there are problems with the HUD building and Turner thought NSF had a pretty nice building … and, well, that’s it. He wanted it and he got it.

As I said, I’m still trying to find out more about this story. If you know more, please contact me by the secure channels listed above and below this post.