Sen. Chris Van Hollen lands a blow in battle to keep FBI headquarters in Md.

Ben Mause, Baltimore Sun on Jul 10, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Maryland won a key fight on Thursday to keep the future headquarters of the FBI in Greenbelt.

After the Senate Appropriations Committee voted on Thursday to preserve $1.4 billion in funds for use at the Greenbelt site for the new FBI headquarters, Republicans tanked the amended bill to prevent it from advancing out of the committee, leaving the destination of the money to be determined as the committee tries to work out a compromise.

An FBI funding amendment to preserve $1.4 billion for the Greenbelt site, proposed by Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, passed 15-14 during the hearing. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, was the only Republican to support the amendment.

“The majority consensus (is) that the executive branch just can’t wake up one day and undermine years of congressional action,” Van Hollen said after the hearing. “This issue goes beyond FBI headquarters.”

But the amendment passed after a bipartisan majority had already approved the overall bill. It was a result of the wonky structure of Senate appropriations hearings, where the full bill is voted on before amendments are offered to change it.

That structure caused some procedural gymnastics from Republicans after Van Hollen’s amendment succeeded.

The full committee originally passed the bill at the start of the hearing. All Republican committee members supported the bill. But once Van Hollen’s amendment was approved, they flipped their “yes” votes to “no,” leaving the typically bipartisan committee at a stalemate on how to move forward.

“We’re for it,” Sen. John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, said of the Trump administration’s plan for the FBI headquarters. “So we can’t support a bill that doesn’t allow that to go forward.”

Committee Chair Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, dismissed the committee to a recess once Republicans had the votes to tank the bill. Members leaving the hearing said Collins will determine the next steps.

The stalled bill is still a win for Van Hollen and lawmakers who want to see the bureau’s next headquarters built in Maryland. It’s the only thing preventing the bill from advancing out of committee to the full Senate, so it’s a point of leverage for Van Hollen. But there’s no clear compromise.

Van Hollen insists the funds shouldn’t be used for the Trump administration’s preferred site. Republicans insist it should be. Something will have to give, but it won’t on Thursday. Though Collins sent the committee to a recess, multiple members told The Sun that the committee would not reconvene until a later date.

Murkowski voted for the amendment but against passing the overall bill.

There’s a simple way Republicans could break the deadlock: convince Murkowski to oppose Van Hollen’s amendment. Her vote would kill the amendment, and the bill could advance to be debated by the full Senate.

Van Hollen hopes that doesn’t happen.

“She believes firmly in this principle: That Congress should not be surrendering its decision-making powers to an executive, regardless of who’s president,” Van Hollen said when asked about his confidence in the solidity of her vote.

Van Hollen had proposed the amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill to prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from utilizing the money to move FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington, D.C. Roughly $500 million of the funding had been set aside by the Senate Appropriations Committee over a period of years to be used at the selected site for the new FBI headquarters. Over $800 million had been set aside for the headquarters in additional accounts.

Greenbelt was previously selected as the next site for the new FBI headquarters in 2023 to replace the current location, housed in a decrepit building in downtown D.C. It was chosen by the General Services Administration over two other locations — one in Landover, Maryland; the other in Springfield, Virginia.

The decision ended a yearslong competition for the new headquarters. But Trump has criticized the selected site, arguing that the agency should remain closer to the Robert F. Kennedy Building, where the Department of Justice is housed.

“They were going to build an FBI Headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state,” Trump said in March. “But that has no bearing on what I’m about to say, but we’re going to stop it, not going to let that happen.”

In a joint statement with the GSA, the bureau announced on July 1 that the headquarters would instead be moved to the Reagan Building.

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