Republicans Have Landed On a Way to Stick It to Those Hippies at the FBI

For more than a decade, the fight for a new, gleaming, suburban FBI headquarters has been between Maryland and Virginia—and it’s gotten exceptionally hot in recent times. In the past few months, though, House Republicans, who’ve had their targets trained on the FBI, have introduced a couple of new options into the mix: Alabama, and nowhere. Would a new headquarters located nowhere work for the FBI?

Federal law dating back a couple of years requires the General Services Administration—the government’s landlord—to pick a new location in an “expeditious” manner, from one of two sites in Maryland or a third site in Virginia. And while the manner hasn’t been particularly expeditious, there was a major development in the process last week. After much, much pushback from the Maryland delegation led by a determined Rep. Steny Hoyer, the GSA revised its site-selection criteria to put less emphasis on proximity to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and more emphasis on advancing equity and cost, two areas where the Marylanders believe they have Virginia beat.

The Maryland delegation announced in a joint statement that it was “encouraged” by the changes. Meanwhile, Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, whose district includes the proposed Virginia site, was furious.

“In February, I said Maryland was trying to cook the books to get the FBI headquarters relocated to their state,” Connolly said in a statement. “Today, I fear I’ve been proven right. This process has been marred by one form of political interference after another. Sadly, GSA has caved to that pressure and such interference has now been rewarded.”

With the selection process finally refinalized, and a victor to be chosen soon, could it be that one of the 21^st century’s most storied fights for a government contract will soon resolve?

That a political fight will … end?

Not quite. Because Republicans are in charge of the House, and MAGA members hate the FBI for reasons that are largely untethered to reality. They formed a new subcommittee devoted to whining about how the FBI—the Federal Bureau of Investigation—is biased against conservatives. As FBI Director Chris Wray told the House Judiciary Committee last week, “the idea that I’m biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me, given my own personal background.” (Wray is a registered Republican appointed by Donald Trump.)

But House Republicans couldn’t quite settle on a strategy to retaliate against the FBI, or its parent, the Justice Department, for the federal indictment of Trump over mishandling classified documents. While some hard-right Republicans immediately suggested cutting FBI or DOJ funding, more mainstream folks within the party worried that such a process of “defunding the police” would be terrible policy and would run counter to their messaging against Democrats.

What Republicans settled on earlier this month as a first volley, then, was targeting the new FBI headquarters project as a symbolic strike against the agency. No more would these hippie-dippie leftist federal agents get a sleek new campus in the suburbs with bougie coffee shops, granola-bar stations, and goat-yoga rooms. Nope—they’d be stuck in the dilapidated J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown D.C., getting hit by chunks of falling concrete.

And so, in the relevant House appropriations bill that passed out of committee last week, the new FBI headquarters received no new funding. (More mainstream Republicans did join Democrats, though, to beat back an amendment from conservative Rep. Andrew Clyde that would have revoked past funding for the project.)

Now, some House Republicans are floating another option that does deliver the FBI a new headquarters, but takes it out of the dark-blue environs of the National Capital Region. In a letter last week to House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan—who’s been leading the “weaponization of the federal government” subcommittee—urged her to include language enforcing an FBI headquarters move away from the Beltway. He recommended transferring it to a growing FBI satellite campus in Huntsville, Alabama.

That language didn’t make it into the bill, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has instead suggested a deconsolidated FBI structure with a “much smaller FBI administration building, and more FBI agents out across the country, helping to keep the country safe.”

All of this amounts to shenanigans—for the moment.

The Senate, in its committee spending bill, approved another $375 million for the new FBI headquarters in the National Capital Region, and the Senate typically does an excellent job of jamming the House on government funding matters.

But the sudden hostility from Republicans to a new headquarters in suburban D.C. does concern those in Maryland and Virginia for whenever a winner gets chosen. At that point, Congress will have to approve the full construction funds, and that’s going to be a big bargaining chip for House Republicans in future spending negotiations. Who knows what could happen to the project if a Republican takes the White House in 2024? The last Republican to win the presidency killed the project, which didn’t get back on track until Joe Biden was elected in 2020.

The FBI headquarters relocation process continues to be cursed in the most unusual of ways. Once the selection process appears to be months away from finality, Republicans decide their top enemy is the FBI, an innately conservative institution that may have cost someone one of the past two presidential elections, but not Donald Trump. We’ll check back in another decade.