Elements of the judicial branch, including public defender offices, have been caught up in the Trump administration’s headlong rush to terminate thousands of leases of government office space, TPM has learned. Unlike the vast majority of federal workers whose office leases are under review for termination, public defenders are not executive branch employees. They work for the judicial branch.
The prospect of President Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE infringing on judicial branch operations and prerogatives raises the constitutional stakes as the new administration sidelines Congress and unilaterally shutters agencies, purges federal workers, and imposes spending freezes.
Some federal public defenders’ offices received a notice last week from the General Services Administration titled “Right-sizing the Federal Inventory.” The notice, obtained by TPM, was issued by acting GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian and asked recipients to indicate whether terminating the lease on a given office will leave their mission “irreparably compromised,” and whether the location “directly serves the public.”
The possibility that the Trump administration’s opening salvo of aggressive and, in some instances, unlawful executive actions was impinging on the judicial branch was first alluded to by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) during a Monday tele-town hall with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA). Kaine told listeners that “there are already some moves on some of the expenditures in the judiciary that [Trump] is trying to make unilaterally.”
A TPM reporter on Wednesday tracked Kaine down on Capitol Hill to prompt him to clarify his remark. Kaine exclusively told TPM that his office had received a tip from a whistleblower saying that the Trump administration had told federal defenders and probation officers that it viewed their leases as immediately terminable.
TPM was able to independently confirm that dozens of federal public defender offices have received the GSA notice about potentially terminating their government office leases. TPM was not able to independently confirm that probation offices had received similar notices.
“Obviously any effort to fool around with the court system is very, very serious and I can’t imagine the courts will take that lying down,” Kaine told TPM.
A spokesman for the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, which administers the federal public defender program, declined to comment.
The GSA notices arrived at public defenders’ officers at the same time as Musk’s DOGE has taken the lead in seeking to terminate en masse federal government office leases nationwide. The Associated Press reported that, two weeks ago, regional managers for the GSA were ordered to begin terminating leases on the federal government’s entire, nationwide stock of 7,500 rented offices.
It’s unclear if the notices sent to public defenders’ offices were part of the larger DOGE lease termination spree at GSA, or a separate initiative.
Kaine told TPM that he believed it was likely linked to DOGE’s GSA sell-off.
“It’s probably connected with the larger GSA effort,” he said. “Not specific to Article III, judicial branch, but it affects them.”
It’s also not clear whether DOGE or the Trump administration more broadly recognized that the move had the potential to open conflict with the judicial branch.
Accidental or not, it’s not the first time that DOGE initiatives have ruffled the feathers of the judicial branch. In the first week of the Trump administration, the Administrative Office Of the U.S. Courts rebuked the Office of Personnel Management for emailing the entire judicial branch workforce. Later, federal judges across the country received a “fork in the road” email, proffering the same dubious offer of deferred resignation that executive branch employees received.
Read the letter here:
