# GSA The **General Services Administration (GSA)** is the independent agency that serves as the government's landlord and purchasing department. It manages federal real estate, vehicle fleets, and government-wide procurement of goods, services and technology. For the KB, GSA is where "efficiency" becomes physical: offices closed, leases voided, buildings sold. In 2025 it was an early [[DOGE]] target and then the vehicle for consolidating federal buying. Its building sales include the Old Post Office, which Trump once leased from the agency as a hotel. ## Leadership, 2025–26 | Period | Administrator | |---|---| | Jan – July 21, 2025 | Stephen Ehikian, acting (stayed on as deputy, left in September) | | July 21 – Dec 2025 | Michael Rigas, acting | | Dec 24, 2025 – | **Edward Forst**, former Cushman & Wakefield CEO; confirmed 53–43 in an en bloc vote on Dec 18 | In February 2026 Federal CIO [[Gregory Barbaccia]], a Palantir alumnus, also became acting director of GSA's Technology Transformation Services, putting technology policy and its implementation arm in one set of hands. ## The DOGE year - **Leases.** In March 2025 AP reported 793 leases targeted for termination, with about $500 million in claimed savings. The Government Accountability Office's later count found DOGE had targeted about 900 and GSA actually terminated **260**, about 30%, for $112 million a year. About 400 layoffs in the Public Buildings Service were rescinded. - **The building list.** On March 4, 2025 GSA posted 443 "non-core" federal properties, about 80 million square feet, for possible sale. It cut the list to 320 the same day and deleted it by March 6. - **18F.** The in-house digital-services team (about 90 staff) was eliminated on March 1, 2025, announced by email at 1 a.m. by Technology Transformation Services director Thomas Shedd. ## The buyer for everyone - **EO 14240** (March 20, 2025) consolidated purchasing of common goods and services across agencies (about $490 billion a year) into GSA, and made it executive agent for government-wide IT contracts. - **OneGov AI deals (August 2025).** [[OpenAI]] at $1, [[Anthropic]] at $1 for a year across all three branches, and Google's Gemini at $0.47 per agency. These are loss-leader prices that put the companies' models inside agencies before any competitive procurement. ## Selling the buildings, 2026 - The vacant GSA Regional Office Building in D.C. sold for about $24 million in March 2026. HUD's Weaver Building and USDA's South Building are next. - **The Old Post Office.** Trump's company leased the building from GSA in 2013 and opened its hotel there in 2016, then sold the leasehold for $375 million in 2022. On **June 10, 2026** GSA sold the building itself to the current leaseholder, BDT & MSD, for a reported **$80 million**. GSA's release gave no price. - **The FBI.** GSA and the FBI announced on July 1, 2025 that the bureau's headquarters would move to the Reagan Building. - Forst has asked Congress for a $450 million "optimization fund" to shrink and repair what is left. ## The transition role Under the Presidential Transition Act, the GSA Administrator "ascertains" the apparent winner of a presidential election, which releases transition money and office space. In 2020 Administrator Emily Murphy withheld that until November 23, three weeks after the election. That made a procurement agency a pressure point in [[Election Denialism]]. ## See Also - [[DOGE]] · [[DOGE and Government Dismantling Timeline]] · [[Independent Executive Agencies Hub]] · [[Federal Agencies]] - [[Trump Properties Patronage]] · [[Gregory Barbaccia]] · [[First Trump Transition]]