‘Wildly disruptive’: What happened last time Trump moved a federal agency out of DC

As part of his campaign to reclaim the White House, Donald Trump made clear that in a second term in office, he’d move tens of thousands of federal jobs outside the “Washington swamp” and into “places filled with patriots who love America.”

As part of his campaign to reclaim the White House, Donald Trump made clear that in a second term in office, he’d move tens of thousands of federal jobs outside the “Washington swamp” and into “places filled with patriots who love America.” “This,” Trump said in one campaign video, “is how I will shatter the deep state.” The relocation of federal jobs outside Washington, DC, was something Trump embarked on near the end of his first term — shifting the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management about 2,000 miles west to Grand Junction, Colorado. But if that move is any indication of what’s to come, the massive push to relocate federal jobs outside the Beltway comes with the risk of kneecapping agencies through the loss of experienced workers and bogging them down in logistical minutia. The BLM move became an unproductive debacle marked by an exodus of experienced employees and a surge in vacancies that arguably undermined the then-Trump administration’s agenda, according to a half dozen current and former senior BLM staffers – including the agency’s current director — and a CNN review of government records. That western relocation was “wildly disruptive” and should serve as a “cautionary tale” for the incoming Trump administration, said Tracy Stone-Manning, the Biden administration’s BLM director.