NEW: DOGE Terminates Lease At Obama Presidential Library Site
Published 18 hours ago
on March 5, 2025
By Chris Powell
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the federal agency established under the Trump administration and now overseen by Elon Musk, has terminated the lease for a facility that housed records from former President Barack Obama’s administration. The site, located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, was part of the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) system for preserving presidential materials.
The decision to cut ties with the facility is part of DOGE’s initiative to reduce government spending by eliminating leased properties deemed unnecessary. The closure is among nearly 750 lease cancellations ordered by the agency, a move that officials claim will save taxpayers approximately $468 million.
The Hoffman Estates facility, which was not the official Obama Presidential Library but rather a NARA-run records storage site for the main facility, contained roughly 25 million unclassified paper documents and 35,000 physical artifacts from the Obama presidency. The materials are in the process of being digitized and will be relocated to a NARA site in College Park, Maryland, by the end of Fiscal Year 2025, according to Fox News.
The Hoffman Estates site has played a role in managing records from the Obama administration while the official Obama Presidential Center is still under construction on Chicago’s South Side. The center, which is privately funded and run by the Obama Foundation, is expected to open next year.
The foundation has previously said that it does not operate as a traditional presidential library with a NARA-managed archive, a departure from past presidential centers. The termination of the lease aligns with DOGE’s larger strategy of reassessing the federal government’s real estate portfolio.
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