The Trump administration has reversed its decision to list nearly 80 million square feet of federal property for possible sale, a setback for President Donald Trump’s efforts to quickly shrink the federal government.

The General Services Administration said the properties could be listed again soon, but for now it has removed the inventory of “non-core” properties after receiving “an overwhelming amount of interest.”

“We anticipate the list will be republished in the near future after we evaluate this initial input and determine how we can make it easier for stakeholders to understand the nuances of the assets listed,” said GSA spokesperson Stephanie Joseph.

The agency’s retreat capped a stunning 18 hours that shook federal agencies and threatened already-wobbly commercial real estate markets. At 2 p.m. Tuesday, the General Services Administration — often referred to as the federal government’s landlord — posted a list of 443 properties it was considering for sale. The an inventory ranged from an El Paso toll booth to the Food and Drug Administration’s research campus in Silver Spring, Maryland.

About five hours later, 123 properties were removed from the catalog, including the agency headquarters of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Justice, Labor and Veterans Affairs. By Wednesday morning, the entire list had been removed with a message that said, “Non-core property list (Coming soon).”

The reversal is the latest example of a clash between Trump’s desire to quickly downsize the federal bureaucracy — which he’s long deplored as a “swamp” — and the realities for implementing such sweeping cuts.

In a frenetic six weeks of executive action, the Trump administration has had to undo spending freezes, rehire government employees and walk back management directives.

At the center of the disruption is billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which is racing to tally up billions of dollars of taxpayer savings.

Today, Musk is expected to meet with Republican members of Congress, many of whom have been curtailing their public meetings with their constituents given voters’ anger and frustration with the cuts.

For sale

The list posted Tuesday was provocative in its breadth. It contained properties in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, impacting Republican and Democratic congressional districts alike. Many of the properties were on the National Register of Historic Places. And some were wrapped up in political and historical legacies, including buildings named for presidents, civil rights leaders — and even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

And many of the federal buildings were hubs for taxpayer services in cities across the country, handling small business loans, Social Security benefits and health and safety enforcement.

On Tuesday, GSA said it would manage the sale of properties to ensure taxpayers got the best deal and that it wouldn’t disrupt already fragile commercial real estate markets. That’s especially true of Washington, where agency headquarters give the federal government an outsized influence on the market — which is already seeing stubbornly high vacancy rates.

“To be clear, just because an asset is on the list doesn’t mean it’s immediately for sale,” Joseph said Wednesday. “However, we will consider compelling offers and do what’s best for the needs of the federal government and taxpayer.”

She said the purpose of the list was to align office space with the demands of a changing federal workforce, which is being rapidly reshaped as Trump has insisted on downsizing but also requiring the remaining federal workers to shown up to the office.

“We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work,” Trump said in an address to Congress Tuesday. “We are draining the swamp. It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.”

GSA said it’s also trying to eliminate unused space and consolidate into lower-maintenance buildings to save taxpayer money.

The sale of some of the properties could have created unique problems. The inventory of properties for disposal included a specialized satellite facility for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Suitland, Maryland, the 3.1 million-square-foot (288,000-square-meter) FDA research lab, and a northern Virginia campus that doesn’t appear in federal property records but has long been associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Latest hurdles

Musk’s efforts to curtail the government — through a White House office he’s dubbed DOGE — have faced new practical and legal hurdles in just the last 24 hours.

On Tuesday, the Office of Personnel Management walked back a directive telling federal agencies to cut probationary employees, after a federal court in California ordered a pause on the dismissals last week.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to pay as much as $2 billion to contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development. And the Food and Drug Administration paused its plans to close a key lab that oversees U.S. pharmaceutical safety in St. Louis after DOGE listed the facilities lease among those canceled by the Trump administration.

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