On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.
By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”
The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.
The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by Democratic lawmakers and some former federal officials who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.
The agency did not immediately respond to inquiries as to why the list had been removed.
The original version of the list included offices of several cabinet-level departments and other large spaces used by the Agriculture Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those were among the buildings removed when the list was whittled down to 320 properties. Still included for possible sale in that version: buildings used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as field offices for the Social Security Administration in areas like western Pennsylvania and Saginaw, Mich.
Federal buildings that were about a million square feet were marked for possible sale in Los Angeles, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Memphis and Kansas City, Mo. In New York City, the properties included offices for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, along with two downtown buildings that house offices for federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service.
Though the properties are not formally listed on the market, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration said Tuesday that the agency would consider and evaluate all serious offers.
Some lawmakers were quick to condemn the move. In letters to Trump administration officials, Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar, both Democrats of Minnesota, said they were alarmed about the potential sale of buildings such as the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, which houses offices for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Fort Snelling, Minn., near Minneapolis.
“In particular, the closure of the Whipple Building would jeopardize veterans’ services for thousands of Minnesota veterans,” the senators wrote. “Veterans’ access to disability and pension benefits, employment and housing counseling, and memorial benefits would all be impacted.”
Officials at the General Services Administration said Tuesday that the effort was meant to target buildings that were “functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal work force.”
“We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues,” the agency said in a statement.
Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, and his government overhaul operation known as the Department of Government Efficiency have taken a keen interest in the General Services Administration. In recent weeks, Mr. Musk’s team has boasted about the termination of hundreds of real estate leases and promised to eliminate “underutilized” federal buildings.
Several of Mr. Musk’s allies have been deployed to the agency to assess the federal real estate portfolio and work on government technology services.
