Federal Judge Kills Trump Plan to Move FBI HQ to DC, Orders Return to Maryland

A federal judge on Monday shut down the Trump administration's plan to move FBI headquarters into the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, ruling the move violated federal law.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee, found that Congress required the General Services Administration to pick the FBI's new home from three specific suburban sites: Greenbelt, Maryland; Landover, Maryland; or Springfield, Virginia. The GSA picked Greenbelt in 2023 under President Biden, according to Reuters. There was no legal off-ramp for a president to override that pick later, Chuang wrote.

"Notably, the text provides no conditions under which the selection could be unilaterally rescinded or switched to a nonconforming site," Chuang wrote, according to Reuters.

The Trump administration scrapped the Greenbelt plan in July 2025, arguing that renovating the existing Reagan Building instead of building new in Maryland would save taxpayers money. FBI Director Kash Patel backed the switch as a cost-saving move. But Chuang ruled the administration couldn't legally redirect the $555 million Congress had approved for the Maryland project toward the DC alternative, per Reuters.

Congress wrote a law in 2022 and 2023 that named the process. The administration didn't like the outcome of that process and tried to route around it. The judge said no.

Maryland claims a win, FBI cries foul

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, didn't hold back. "Congress made a promise," he said in a statement. "The Trump administration tried to break it. Now, the jobs, investment, and opportunity Marylanders deserve are within reach," according to Reuters.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Democrat, said it's "time to stop the games and get to work building the world-class FBI headquarters that our public servants deserve, where it belongs: in Prince George's County, Maryland," per ABC News.

The FBI didn't accept the loss quietly. "This is not the first time courts have tried to undermine the administration in its goal to make government more cost-effective for American taxpayers," the bureau said in a statement carried by ABC News, Breitbart, and Reuters. "The court has chosen to impermissibly intervene for political reasons. This FBI is mission focused and will continue the best course of action to meet the needs of law enforcement."

If moving into an existing federal building genuinely costs billions less than building new in Greenbelt, taxpayers have a legitimate interest in the administration pursuing the cheaper option. Government waste is bad no matter who's spending. The legal question, however, isn't which option is cheaper. It's whether the executive branch had authority to override a process Congress explicitly wrote into law. Chuang ruled it didn't, and cost savings don't override statutory text.

The bigger fight over judges

This case lands in the middle of a broader argument the Trump administration is waging against the federal judiciary. DHS General Counsel James Percival has been publicly naming district judges he says are engaged in "open defiance" of the Supreme Court and "naked political activism," according to Fox News. Percival pointed to Boston judge Brian Murphy's rulings on deportation flights as an example, arguing plaintiffs are "forum shopping" for friendly courts.

Percival insists this isn't about intimidating judges, just informing the public which ones keep ruling against the administration. Critics call it exactly the opposite: a pressure campaign dressed up as transparency. Neither claim is proven or disproven here. What's true is that Chuang, like Murphy, is an Obama appointee, and Trump officials have a pattern of framing adverse rulings as political rather than legal.

Separately, a Boston federal judge, Indira Talwani, also an Obama appointee, expanded a nationwide block on Trump's executive order tightening mail-in voting rules ahead of the November 3 midterms, according to the Daily Wire and Epoch Times. Talwani ruled the president "likely lacks the constitutional authority" to impose federal mail-ballot standards, since election administration belongs to states and Congress. The White House said it will keep "lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact," per the Epoch Times, and continues pushing Congress to pass the SAVE America Act instead.

Two separate rulings, two separate Obama-appointed judges, same theme: courts telling the executive branch it doesn't have authority it claimed for itself. Whether that's judicial activism or basic separation-of-powers enforcement depends on which case you're looking at and who's arguing it.

What happens next

The FBI headquarters case isn't over. The administration can appeal Chuang's ruling to the Fourth Circuit. Meanwhile the $555 million Congress set aside for Greenbelt stays tied up in litigation, the FBI stays in the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, dedicated in 1975 and now ringed with debris netting, and roughly 15 years of federal planning for a new headquarters remains unresolved.