Senate panel approves step on new FBI headquarters plan

Ryan Tarinelli and David Jordan, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 29, 2025

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WASHINGTON — A Republican-led Senate committee took a key step Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to move the FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington instead of a previously selected location in Maryland.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee considered three resolutions related to General Services Administration plans to spend roughly $1.5 billion to repair and alter the Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The committee, in a 10-9 party-line vote on a panel resolution, approved a prospectus on a $1.4 billion project to repair and alter the building to serve as the new FBI headquarters.

The plan said the GSA wants to use about $844 million of previously appropriated funds for the headquarters project, and there would be an additional $555 million from the FBI for the effort.

The project for a new headquarters location downtown would consolidate about 6,000 FBI headquarters personnel who are at the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building and at other locations in the Washington region, according to the document.

The Senate committee also voted to approve resolutions related to a $95 million upgrade for fire alarms and other building safety and $36 million in repairs to wall systems and an atrium skylight at the Reagan Building.

The Senate action is the latest in a yearslong saga over where to put the new FBI headquarters. The GSA, after a lengthy process, in 2023 picked Maryland as the home over Virginia.

But in July, the Trump administration announced the Reagan complex had been selected instead, and a cohort of Maryland members of Congress said they would fight back against the proposal.

The vote is the first in a few steps Congress needs to take to make the project happen, according to the Congressional Research Service.

For projects of a certain size, the Senate panel and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee must give their sign-off for appropriations to be made, according to the CRS, but those resolutions do not require floor action.

The prospectus said the GSA also has put in a transfer request to the House and Senate Appropriations committees to allow the $844 million in previously appropriated funds to be used to repair and alter the Reagan Building.

The House transportation panel has not voted on the FBI headquarters prospectus.

At the meeting Wednesday, Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said it would be up to the “Appropriations Committee whether to approve a transfer request that would allow GSA to use already appropriated dollars to fund the Reagan Building Project.”

“GSA has indicated to me that if the transfer is approved, there are sufficient funds to complete the project with those already appropriated dollars,” she said.

Capito said the GSA has completed its statutory requirement by submitting its prospectus on the Greenbelt, Md., site to the congressional committees, neither of which acted on that prospectus. She added that nothing prevented the Trump administration from submitting its own prospectus.

Capito, a frequent critic of the size of the federal government’s real estate portfolio, said the GSA should utilize existing buildings before constructing new ones.

Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., a member of the Senate panel, expressed frustration with the process ahead of the vote Wednesday.

“Between federal, state and local partners, and at every step, the goal was to ensure that the FBI would have a headquarters capable of supporting its national security mission while also being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Alsobrooks said.

Alsobrooks objected to the assertion that the Reagan Building was underutilized, noting that it was home to both public- and private-sector tenants. She also raised concerns that a public parking garage and its location on top of a Metro station means it cannot meet the FBI’s own security standards.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., issued a statement that the selection process for the Greenbelt site was thorough, transparent and competitive and was chosen “based on its ability to meet the mission requirements of the men and women of the Bureau – including their security needs.”

Van Hollen said the Trump administration presented “minimal planning and provided zero transparency,” and the prospectus has “few details, no completed security plan, and an incomplete cost assessment.”

Of the GSA money, an estimated $789 million would be for construction costs, while $23.5 million would go to design and $31.5 million would go to management and inspection, with the project anticipated to end in fiscal 2030, according to the document.

The Trump administration has pitched the move to the Reagan Building as cost-effective. Repairing and altering that building “will meet the FBI’s mission requirements and provide the fastest FBI headquarters solution at a fraction of the cost of new construction,” the document said.

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