Musk’s Office Closures Target Trump Country’s Towns, Rural Areas

On Main Street in Somerset, Pa., a 2,700-square-foot office serves as a workspace for National Park Service employees at nearby historic sites including the Flight 93 National Memorial.

That’s set to change at the end of September, when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency plans to close the office as part of a broader effort to save money. The shuttering of the Somerset office is one of 653 lease cancellations proposed by DOGE, aiming to save $350 million.

The office-space purge, which includes the Washington headquarters of several agencies, appears in concept to align with President Donald Trump’s longstanding push to move federal functions away from the nation’s capital.

But many agencies with large real estate footprints are already spread across rural areas, and the DOGE campaign has disproportionately targeted small towns. Batesville, Ark., with a population of less than 12,000, faces four federal lease cancellations, the same number as Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington. Eastern Kentucky faces as many closures as New York City, with five each.

Most of the lease cancellations are in states Trump won in 2024: 369 out of 653.

Canceling the Somerset lease would save the federal government $86,720, according to the DOGE website. The office supports work at the Flight 93 memorial, to passengers and crew who thwarted an attack on the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 11, 2001, as well as Fort Necessity National Battlefield, Friendship Hill National Historic Site, and Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, said Mark Cochran, who leads the union chapter for National Park Service workers in the Northeast US.

“Those parks are already operating on a shoestring budget, as are most parks,” Cochran said in a phone interview. “That’s the thing that just boggles my mind. The Park Service is such a tiny portion of the overall budget. We’ve been understaffed for decades, doing more with less for so long.”

The US Fish and Wildlife Service faces more lease cancellations than any other agency, with 39. The Agriculture Department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, the US Geological Survey, the Labor Department’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the Food and Drug Administration are also among the agencies facing the most closures.

Aside from DOGE’s lease-cancellation campaign, the General Services Administration plans to sell federally owned property. Those plans would also have a widespread geographical impact. As of mid-April, the single largest GSA sale proposal was the Goodfellow Federal Center in St. Louis.

Readers can access an Excel spreadsheet with information about the 653 lease cancellations proposed by DOGE here.

DOGE Office Closures Would Affect Agencies in Rural Areas

Appropriations Battles

The DOGE plans aren’t set in stone. It’s up to the agencies and the GSA to actually close the offices. And Musk’s proposals have shifted as lawmakers lobby to save facilities in their districts.

In mid-April, DOGE removed 35 proposed lease cancellations from its site, mostly affecting the Railroad Retirement Board, the Indian Health Service, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Some Republicans have expressed skepticism about some DOGE proposals. And Democrats are spoiling for a fight.

The proposals to close Department of the Interior offices “threaten to throw our public lands into chaos and then sell them off to the highest bidder,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Interior-Environment Subcommittee, said in a statement. Merkley criticized proposed closures of Fish and Wildlife Service offices, National Park Service offices, and the US Geological Survey’s laboratory in Corvallis, Ore.

Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley (D) is fighting proposed closures of Fish and Wildlife Service offices, National Park Service offices, and a US Geological Survey laboratory.

Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Merkley said he would “fight against these destructive changes and ensure our agencies have the resources and certainty to maintain and preserve our public lands for folks to enjoy for generations to come.”

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chairman of the House Appropriations Interior-Environment Subcommittee, said he wants DOGE to send him more detailed information “pretty soon.” House lawmakers aim to start marking up government-funding bills for fiscal 2026 in May.

“I want to see what they’re proposing to cancel and what impact it would have,” Simpson said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Senate Republican on the Interior-Environment Subcommittee, didn’t respond to requests for comment. She said tracking the federal workforce and spending cuts is “as hard as anything that I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I’ve been in the Senate,” at a conference in Anchorage, the Alaska Daily News reported. DOGE has proposed canceling the leases of eight federal offices in Alaska.

Indian Health, Railroad Offices Spared

Some Republican lawmakers have persuaded DOGE to rein in its proposals. House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) announced in March that plans had been dropped to close a National Weather Center, a Social Security Administration office, and an Indian Health Service office in his district.

Cole told reporters DOGE backed off the Social Security closure plan after he explained “how geographically isolated” the office is in Lawton, Okla.

“It’s a city of 100,000, but there’s nothing else anywhere near that size within a hundred miles of it,” Cole said.

DOGE last week removed all the remaining Indian Health Service offices from its list of proposed lease cancellations. Ten offices in seven states were removed from the list.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “will continue to provide and advocate for tribal/IHS exemptions from executive orders,” HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon said in an email. “IHS is not impacted in the workforce reductions and none of their offices are being consolidated as part of the reductions.”

The Railroad Retirement Board also was spared from office closures previously proposed by DOGE. The agency, which administers retirement, survivor, unemployment, and sickness benefits, previously had nine offices slated for closure in eight states.

The agency “pursued available avenues of appeal” and “is collaborating with the General Services Administration to maintain a public-facing physical office presence in these geographic locations,” said Elizabeth H. Mocek, the agency’s acting director of public affairs, in an email.