Monday, June 29, 2026
Sunday, June 28, 2026
We Need Plot Twists’: Behind the Scenes of Trump’s Second Term
We Need Plot Twists’: Behind the Scenes of Trump’s Second Term
“In “Regime Change,” New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan chronicle the first 14 months of Trump’s second term, highlighting his family’s financial gains and the enabling of his actions by sycophantic supporters. The book delves into Trump’s reality-distorting world, revealing his impulsive decisions and the fusion of reality and show business in his presidency. Despite Trump’s belief in his constant victories, the authors expose the consequences of his actions, hinting at the eventual downfall of his hubris.
In “Regime Change,” two New York Times journalists offer a riveting chronicle of the weird fusion of reality and show business in the White House.
By Fintan O’Toole
Fintan O’Toole is the author of “We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland” and the advising editor of The New York Review of Books.
When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.
REGIME CHANGE: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan
In January 2026, The New York Times asked Donald Trump why, having told his family not to make new business deals in foreign countries during his first term as president, he was permitting them to do so now. He answered: “Because I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to.”
In “Regime Change,” the New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s riveting and richly textured narrative of the first 14 months of Trump’s second term, the authors include this reply as part of a coldly devastating account of how the Trumps have added more than $1 billion to the family fortune.
By “nobody,” as Haberman and Swan make clear, Trump meant those who enable his impunity: the sycophantic courtiers with whom he has surrounded himself; the Republican majority in Congress that abandoned its duty to check executive power; the tech moguls who rushed to pay homage to him; the MAGA base that venerates him. So long as none of them publicly objects to his actions, he has permission to do whatever he wants.
All this presents a profound challenge to journalism. The profession is shaped by an assumption that has been around at least since the Greek tragedians: Revelation is followed by reversal. When Oedipus’ (or Richard Nixon’s) crimes are exposed, he must fall from power. But not so Trump. With a few notable exceptions, he relies on a collective shrug of indifference from those in his support system, and defies exposure. What can journalists do in a world where there is no shame and, apparently, no consequence?
Haberman and Swan have spent more than a decade covering Trump’s political career and the events they portray are in themselves well known: the excesses of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the chaos of Trump’s tariffs, the vampiric return of Jeffrey Epstein, the militarization of American cities, the unleashing of ICE on migrant communities, the abuse of the justice system to go after Trump’s perceived enemies, the assault on the independence of the Federal Reserve, the headlong stumble into war on Iran.
What the authors add is the vivid detail that makes these events feel actual. They wrest reality itself back from the distorted world of entertainment, illusion, fantasy and denial that Trump has generated around himself. It is this flood of provocation, atrocity, self-dealing and fabrication that makes Haberman and Swan’s counternarrative so vital.
In an hourlong interview with the president in March 2026, Trump reflects on his legal battles and presidential campaigns and tells the authors, “Essentially I won every fucking time,” but then complains, “And I’m tired of winning and winning and winning and just getting bad fucking press. It’s about time that you tell the truth. Okay?”
T.S. Eliot wrote that “human kind/Cannot bear very much reality,” and in this at least Trump is all too human. Here is a man who, as Haberman and Swan report, employs an aide, Natalie Harp, to immerse him in “a fresh stream of positive news stories and social media comments that she would often read aloud.” Harp, the authors note, “wrote Trump adoring letters that she left in his personal spaces, including one that read, ‘You are all that matters to me.’”
Triumphant Roman emperors are said to have had an enslaved attendant whisper in their ears that they were, after all, merely mortal. Trump, even as he is planning to mark his own immortality with a colossal triumphal arch in Washington, has his ears filled with constant trills of adulation.
In this bath of self-glorification, even imperial conquest seems easy: Haberman and Swan write that, alongside his public desire to annex Canadaand Greenland, Trump privately “told several associates that Venezuela could be America’s 51st state and that he would appoint a governor to run it.” The success of the daring raid on that country in January 2026 and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, reinforced Trump’s certainty that he could reshape the world quickly and painlessly.
Haberman and Swan burst all these bubbles. “Regime Change” is that good old-fashioned creation: a chronicle. And chronicles have never been more necessary — or more countercultural. The “constant stream” of positive stories that Trump’s aides feed him is recycled into the posts he pumps out on his own social media platform, sometimes nearly all night long. (Haberman and Swan report that when the United States appeared to be joining the Israel bombing campaign against Iran in June 2025, reporters seeking comment from the White House “were directed to Trump’s Truth Social feed.”)
Moreover, the authors depict the weird fusion of reality and show business in the White House. “We need plot twists,” Trump tells a “startled ally” as he muses on the possible appointment of his vanquished rival, the Florida governor Ron DeSantis, as defense secretary. “I’m not a big fan of Ukraine,” he announces at a high-level Oval Office meeting. “Except their women. They keep winning Miss Universe.” He nominates John Ratcliffe as C.I.A. director because, “if you were going to cast a guy to play C.I.A. director, that’s who you’d pick.”
He also declares his scandalous public dressing-down of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, in February 2025, “great television” and “better than ‘The Apprentice.’” And his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, keeps Trump supplied with gruesome video footage of the bloody effects of drone strikes on human targets, described by one official as “Hegseth’s snuff films.”
There are episodes in “Regime Change” that read like satire. Trump, worrying about his own envisaged arch, calls the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to ask him whether there is a viewing deck on the Arc de Triomphe and, if so, whether it is dangerous: “What do you think, Emmanuel, do people jump off it?”
In ordinary times, the authors’ exercise in almost instant history might seem premature and precipitate. But if these crazy times are not to become ordinary — if we are not to be habituated to the recklessness of autocratic misrule — we cannot afford to wait for the archives to be opened.
The plot twist that Trump will not relish is that by the end of this saga of unrestrained hubris, there are intimations of the nemesis that must follow: the war on Iran throwing the Strait of Hormuz into chaos, the rising cost of livingmaking a mockery of his promise to control inflation, his popularity slumping to new lows. Trump will not want to read this book because it shows him, not winning and winning, but gradually losing it as reality has the temerity not to bend itself to his whims. Will anyone whisper in his ear that Haberman and Swan have done what he demanded and told the truth?
REGIME CHANGE: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump | By Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan | Simon & Schuster | 464 pp. | $34“
Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement
Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten interim peace agreement
“Escalating US-Iran strikes threaten the interim peace agreement, with Iran attacking Bahrain and Kuwait in response to US strikes on Iranian sites. The conflict centers around control of the strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global oil and gas supplies. Iran aims to control the strait and charge fees, while the US promotes a southern lane bypassing Iran.
Tehran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait amid efforts to open strait of Hormuz without Iran’s direct oversight
A new round of escalating strikes between Iran and the US has continued, further undermining the fragile interim peace agreement between the two countries, and prompting Donald Trump to threaten violence that would ensure Iran “will no longer exist”.
On Sunday, Tehran launched drone and missile attacks against Bahrain and Kuwait after new US strikes on sites in southern Iran and threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations to end the war. Trump said that a moment might come soon when he abandoned talks and the US would “militarily finish the job”.
The US president posted on social media: “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
Kuwait, which hosts a major US army base, said it had intercepted two ballistic missiles and that there were no reports of injuries or damage, while Bahrain’s interior ministry said the Iranian strikes had damaged a residential building near the international airport and that no one had been killed.
The latest violence has been triggered by efforts to reopen the strait of Hormuz to all shipping without Iran’s direct oversight. The strategically critical waterway, which carried a fifth of the world’s oil and liquid gas supplies before the war, has long been considered an international passageway.
US Central Command said in a statement that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.
Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.
Hundreds of vessels, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf by the closure of the strait since war broke out. Some have chanced the passage through the past two weeks, leading oil prices to drop to close to prewar levels and bringing relief to economies around the world.
The US military accused Iran of violating the ceasefire on Saturday by attacking the Panama-flagged tanker Kiku, which carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar. According to ship-tracking websites, the Kiku appeared to be attempting to use the southern corridor near the coast of Oman.
A Singapore-flagged container ship was struck by an Iranian drone while transiting the same route last week.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, restated Tehran’s claim to sole control of the waterway during a state visit to Iraq on Sunday. He said in Baghdad: “Any interference in this matter, any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension.”
Observers say Iran is using its ability to threaten shipping in the strait not just as leverage in negotiations with the US, but to intimidate neighbouring countries and establish a more dominant role in the region.
Aragchi also called for the establishment of a security framework with Gulf countries that would exclude the US. He said: “We should reach a new framework that includes all countries in the region and without the presence or interference of any country from outside the region.”
Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan successfully brought representatives of Washington and Tehran together in Switzerland earlier this month but have been unable to bridge wide gaps on contentious issues such as the future of the strait of Hormuz, sanctions relief for Tehran, and the future of Iran’s nuclear programme. Under the memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month, the two countries have 60 days to work out the details before signing a final agreement.
Leaders in Tehran and Washington face domestic political pressures to avoid a return to conflict and appear committed to a ceasefire for now, despite frequent bellicose rhetoric.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed responsibility for both new attacks on Sunday. It said: “Let the enemy know that violating the ceasefire … will lead to a complete halt of ongoing processes.”
The IRGC, which controls Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, has gained influence in Iran in recent months. Its navy command said American bases in the region would “experience hell in the coming days”.
Bahrain’s foreign ministry denounced the attacks, which it called “a dangerous escalation that reveals that what Tehran is doing is not a passing act, nor an isolated incident, but rather a deliberate approach and a systematic pattern of repeated aggression against the sovereignty of the kingdom, and the security of its citizens and residents”.
Bahrain is home to the US navy’s 5th Fleet, whose base there came under repeated attack during the war.
Violence has also continued in Lebanon, further threatening the agreement between Iran and the US to end their own conflict.
Israeli military officials said a soldier had been killed on Sunday when soldiers encountered a “Hezbollah terrorist after entering a suspicious structure in the area of Deir Seryan in southern Lebanon”.
The Lebanese state news agency reported a new Israeli attack targeting the outskirts of the towns of Deir Seryan and Taybeh in southern Lebanon.
The fresh clashes in Lebanon come two days after Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement aimed at ending hostilities. The deal calls for Israeli forces to begin an initial withdrawal from the south of the country and their replacement by the Lebanese armed forces who will assume responsibility for local security and dismantling the military infrastructure of Hezbollah.
They will also further undermine prospects for any durable peace agreement between Iran and the US, which Tehran has insisted is dependent on a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Israel, which is not a party to the US deal with Iran, invaded southern Lebanon in March in a new offensive against Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran.
Israel and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday, but these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it has seized, and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.
With reporting by Reuters and Associated Press“
Jeffries Faces Steep Test as Far Left Builds Strength in Congress
Jeffries Faces Steep Test as Far Left Builds Strength in Congress
“ Avila Chevalier’s victory over a close ally of Hakeem Jeffries in a New York primary signals a growing far-left presence in Congress. This new wave of progressive candidates, like Avila Chevalier, could challenge Jeffries’ leadership as he aims to become Speaker. While unlikely to block his path, they could create divisions within the Democratic caucus, similar to the challenges faced by Republican leaders.
The victories of Darializa Avila Chevalier and other anti-establishment candidates are changing the face of House Democrats, posing a challenge for their leader.
Just days after she was elected to Congress in 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined protesters outside Nancy Pelosi’s office, urging the speaker-in-waiting to take more aggressive action on climate change.
More than 50 people were arrested that day as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who had won her seat after upsetting one of Ms. Pelosi’s loyal lieutenants in a primary, told reporters she had not yet decided whether she would support the longtime party leader for speaker in January. (Eventually, she did.)
Now Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who succeeded Ms. Pelosi as party leader and is in line to be speaker if his party wins the House in November, is facing a similar challenge.
This time it is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the 32-year-old democratic socialist who defeated a longtime ally of Mr. Jeffries in a New York primary this week. She is now the most polarizing face of a new crop of far-left progressives across the country who are changing the face of the House’s Democratic caucus in ways that could pose a major challenge for their leaders.
Mr. Jeffries, who has led House Democrats since 2022, is poised to become the first Black speaker next year. With no other Democrat currently stepping forward to challenge him, it is unlikely the incoming faction of anti-establishment members would block his path.
But they could make his job very difficult, stoking the same kind of bitter divisions that have made the House Republican majority ungovernable in recent years.
Last week, Ms. Avila Chevalier scored an upset primary victory against Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and one of Mr. Jeffries’s close confidants, whom he backed vigorously in his re-election campaign.
And like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez before her, Ms. Avila Chevalier is making no promises about supporting Mr. Jeffries or any other of her party’s leaders.
“That’s a conversation I’ll be having with my coalition, my community,” she said on Thursday on MS NOW when asked whether she would back Mr. Jeffries for speaker. “I will be looking at what makes most sense in terms of the strategy for how to deliver for New Yorkers.”
Many democratic socialist candidates like Ms. Avila Chevalier view Mr. Jeffries with particular aversion, regarding him as an establishment politician who has purposefully held back some of their progressives goals. They also see him as someone too closely aligned with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group that has come to be seen by many Democrats as politically radioactive.
Mr. Jeffries will have to negotiate with Ms. Avila Chevalier and like-minded Democrats for their votes. But it’s not clear what they want and what he will be able to offer. And he is under competing pressures from more centrist Democrats, who have privately warned him that the party will get flattened if he goes too far in appeasing the left.
How much power Ms. Avila Chevalier and other far-left Democrats will have to make demands of Mr. Jeffries will depend in large part on the size of the margin that Democrats have in the House. But there appears to be a growing bloc of anti-establishment progressives who could cause trouble for Mr. Jeffries next year if the party’s majority is small.
In Colorado next week, Representative Diana DeGette, a 30-year veteran of Congress, is facing a serious primary challenge from a 29-year-old democratic socialist and first-time candidate, Melat Kiros. In Pennsylvania, Chris Rabb, an anti-establishment candidate aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, won his primary last month in a solidly Democratic Philadelphia district, all but assuring his election. And in central New Jersey, Adam Hamawy, a progressive who ran on abolishing ICE and dismantling the Department of Homeland Security, won the primary to succeed the retiring Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman.
Should they prevail and Democrats win control, they could pose a steep test for a new speaker who has never guided his party in the majority.
Ms. Avila Chevalier also appears to be more of a wild card than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ever was. Her archive of deleted social media posts includes ones that used profane language to criticize the Democratic Party and leaders like former Vice President Kamala Harris, questioned the reported origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and disparaged interracial relationships. She campaigned on a hard-line anti-Israel platform and has called for the abolition of prisons, favors open borders and wants an end to deportations.
She will arrive in Congress with no loyalty to any Democrat in leadership or the party, which did not support her. Her view of Israel was shaped by living for months in the West Bank.
Back in 2019, Ms. Pelosi managed, with some difficulty, to establish a working relationship with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and a band of like-minded women of color who dubbed themselves “The Squad.” But the former speaker had a once-in-a-generation political talent for shutting down revolts and bending holdouts to her will, as well as decades of experience leading the Democratic caucus under her belt.
Mr. Jeffries, who has kept the caucus mostly united in the minority over the past four years, has yet to be tested as speaker, and many colleagues view him as stylistically remote. His style, so far, has been less cutthroat than Ms. Pelosi’s, and Democrats often grumble that they don’t hear directly from him the way they used to hear from her.
He has had some success in making allies of the progressives currently in Congress. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez serves on his task force addressing the critical issues of affordability and health care, and Mr. Jeffries gave her a coveted seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee.
After Ms. Avila Chevalier’s victory last week, it was Representative Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 Democrat, who reached out to her, not Mr. Jeffries himself.
Some progressives said they were not worried about the far left subjecting Mr. Jeffries to the same dysfunction that has reigned in the House G.O.P. as far-right Republicans have made life impossible for Speaker Mike Johnson and a long line of Republican speakers before him.
“They want to break things,” Representative Greg Casar of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said of ultraconservative Republicans. “You just need one or two people to break in Congress. Progressives want to pass legislation, and that takes 218 votes.”
Mr. Casar added: “Freedom Caucus members deliver to their base by stopping action on the floor, by nothing happening. If we want a higher minimum wage, to create union jobs, to regulate big tech, we have to get to 218 votes.”
Former Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York conceded there would be “points of contention” between Ms. Avila Chevalier and Democratic leaders. But he said she was not coming to Congress to oust Mr. Jeffries or any other party leader.
“Darializa is an educator, a community organizer, who really wants to make our democracy better,” Mr. Bowman said. “She’s not there to just pop off for the sake of popping off just because you want to rabble-rouse against your leader.”
And Brad Lander, another progressive who won his primary this week against a more mainstream Democrat, Representative Dan Goldman of New York, said it was time to end party infighting and unite around Mr. Jeffries and an affordability agenda.
But he also suggested that Mr. Jeffries would have to shift on some critical issues, including embracing a push in his ranks to cut off military aid to Israel, to keep his caucus unified enough to achieve major priorities.
“People feel like the system is rigged and want to see some real substantive, concrete change,” Mr. Lander said in an interview. “And yes, people don’t want to keep sending military aid to Israel. We have a lot more to gain on making progress on those things than on factional fighting.”
Some said the test for Mr. Jeffries is starting now.
“A lot are looking to see how he tamps down a lot of the nastiness coming from key people in the Democratic Party,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a former chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus, referring to disparaging comments by the former party chair Jaime Harrison and the strategist James Carville about the far-left candidates prevailing in their primaries.
But she also noted that rifts between leaders and the left were nothing new in Congress.
Ms. Jayapal recalled a tough negotiation with leadership in 2019 as she withheld her vote on a rules package that needed to pass for the new Congress to get underway. In a series of frantic, last-minute calls before the vote, she asked for a public commitment from Ms. Pelosi that she could hold a series of hearings about Medicare for All. Ms. Jayapal got her hearings, and Ms. Pelosi got her critical vote.
“Jeffries will have to do that” to round up the votes for speaker and to get things done should he win, Ms. Jayapal said.
But she added that Mr. Jeffries also had work to do “untangling himself” from AIPAC and big money.
“AIPAC is toxic to our brand,” she said. “He’s going to have to figure out how to navigate that.”
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.“
Rats, Leaks and Broken Elevators: Repair Backlog Plagues Federal Buildings
Rats, Leaks and Broken Elevators: Repair Backlog Plagues Federal Buildings
“A $50 billion maintenance backlog plagues federal buildings, causing health and safety hazards for employees and the public. The lengthy congressional approval process for repairs exacerbates the issue, with costs rising as problems persist. The pandemic worsened conditions, leading to stagnant water, mold, and pest infestations, highlighting the urgent need for improved building maintenance.
After decades, deferred maintenance totals an estimated $50 billion. But getting repair funds from Congress is a laborious process.
Rain has been seeping into an Internal Revenue Service building in Atlanta through leaks in the roof that have gone on for years. The mold in Veterans Affairs work spaces in Hilo, Hawaii, got so bad that visitors complained. And on any given day, people in an Oakland, Calif., federal building are at risk of getting stuck in one of its outdated elevators.
Across the federal government, employees are working in buildings that have persistent health and safety problems, in part the result of decades of backlogged maintenance that totals as much as $50 billion, according to one recent estimate by an oversight board. In several years, the cost is set to exceed the entire value of the federal government’s real estate portfolio, the Public Buildings Reform Board said earlier this year.
The health and safety risks were exacerbated last year by the Trump administration’s push for federal workers to return to the office, forcing more employees into buildings whose longstanding needs had gone unaddressed for years.
Unlocking money for repairs is a lengthy and bureaucratic process. Under federal law, Congress must approve major improvements to buildings run by the General Services Administration that total more than $3.96 million — an amount that would cover the cost of replacing just three elevators at a time when the government needs to replace dozens.
The approval process takes an average of 435 days, the G.S.A. said, and in many cases even longer, meaning costs balloon as problems fester.
A project to replace the roof and HVAC systems and update the electrical system of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston has increased by more than 400 percent since it was first presented to Congress in 2016, according to the G.S.A. Since the 24-story building was first flagged for improvements, it has developed additional problems with its elevators, which are more than 30 years old and have entrapped people at least 49 times in the past two years.
Meanwhile, less costly maintenance needs across the government have piled up amid a focus on issues that could be life-threatening, according to federal employees and government officials.
“This isn’t just an accounting exercise,” Edward C. Forst, the head of the General Services Administration, told Congress in March. “This represents real buildings deteriorating and real safety hazards developing when we do not address problems when they arise.”
The conditions affect not just federal workers, but also members of the public who routinely visit the buildings for services such as veterans and Social Security benefits.
In May, Mr. Forst and leaders of 21 federal agencies asked the top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to change the appropriations process and give the G.S.A. full access to the federal buildings fund, and to raise the threshold for how much the agency can spend.
So far, the lobbying effort has not had an impact, and Congress has kept in place the oversight requirement for the G.S.A. to submit detailed requests for projects exceeding $3.96 million. Mr. Forst asked Congress to raise it to $75 million.
Dan Mathews, a former head of the G.S.A. division that manages real estate, said that it was unlikely that Congress would change the law, in part because the state of federal buildings gets little attention. For lawmakers of both parties, spending money on government itself rather more tangible services for voters is not a top priority.
“It doesn’t fall that high, and it never will,” said Mr. Mathews, now a member of the reform board, which was set up a decade ago to identify federal properties that can be offloaded. “Government is a terrible owner of real estate.”
Worsened by the pandemic
The G.S.A., which serves as the landlord for civilian government agencies, owns about 1,475 buildings and properties in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the agency’s online inventory. On average, the buildings are 50 years old. The estimated $50 billion maintenance backlog involves a range of projects, including roof repairs and replacements, fixes to heating and cooling systems, electrical upgrades and asbestos remediation.
In its budget request for 2027, the G.S.A. identified a dozen buildings with the most urgent need of repairs, including seven federal courthouses. Some have been on the list for multiple years.
The decline and decay has been decades in the making, but the coronavirus pandemic created new problems. Many federal offices sat empty for years as employees moved to remote work. Water lay stagnant in pipes. Flora and fauna moved in. HVAC filters went uncleaned and unrepaired. Mold grew.
Employees began to return in 2022, but many agencies allowed some remote work flexibility. Last year, Mr. Trump ordered all federal workers to return to the office as soon as possible, and directed managers to terminate remote work arrangements.
Many employees returning to the office encountered problematic conditions. Water at the Food and Drug Administration headquarters contained Legionella, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires’ disease, a dangerous type of pneumonia, according to the G.S.A.’s website. The website also says buildings with the bacteria can be safely occupied, with “appropriate control measures.” Legionella can develop in water when plumbing fixtures go unused for a period of time. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that there is no safe level.
“Coming out of Covid, you had so many water systems that were just sitting with stagnant water in them that you’ve started to get a buildup of all kinds of unfortunate things, like Legionella,” Brian Gibson, G.S.A.’s deputy assistant inspector general for real property audits, said in an interview. “It’s a risk. It’s a problem.”
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An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the most recent test for Legionella, which was in May, came back negative.
The Mazzoli Federal Building in Louisville, Ky., has also had longstanding problems with Legionella in its water, according to an employee in the building familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, like others who described their working conditions.
Records obtained by The New York Times show that laboratory tests found Legionella in building water fountains and sinks in 2024 and 2025. To this day, there are signs around the Louisville building advising that Legionella has been detected in the drinking water, according to the worker. The G.S.A. did not respond to questions about the Mazzoli building.
Some buildings were in even worse condition. The G.S.A. had to lease new space for some of its employees because 40 percent of its headquarters was deemed unsafe, largely because old radiators and window air conditioning units did not meet air quality standards for ventilation, the agency said.
Despite months of internal complaints, mold festered inside the Veterans Affairs offices in Hilo, Hawaii, for so long that when it was finally evaluated at the beginning of this year, an employee was told to not work in proximity to it, according to a person familiar with the situation. The G.S.A. said that the problem had been resolved, and that the space was safe.
Jordan Barab, a deputy assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017, said that mold, bad water and animals in federal buildings were the kinds of problems that could fall through the cracks.
“They don’t hit the headlines like somebody falling off a building or a huge explosion,” he said. “But workers have a right to have a safe workplace.”
The federal government’s own regulatory agency for safe and healthy working conditions has flagged problems at facilities across the country.
In St. Paul, Minn., the federal government notified the Army Corps of Engineers about an infestation of stinging insects, including wasps and hornets, on the 11th floor of the building where the government leases office space, according to a Jan. 7 letter from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The Army Corps of Engineers said the OSHA case was closed on June 9, and the issue appears to be resolved.
‘Multiple screams a day’
The employees who work at two I.R.S. buildings on the Chamblee campus in Atlanta had a rough spring.
In one of the buildings, workers have been greeted by rats struggling to escape glue traps that have been placed in the middle of their work space.
“It’s multiple being caught a day,” said Sydney Monger, who worked in accounts management in the building until May 29, when she quit, in part because of the rats. “It’s multiple screams a day just on our floor.”
Rat infestations can cause serious health problems, including the transmission of diseases through their urine, droppings and saliva.
In another I.R.S. building on the Chamblee campus, a leaky roof has worsened without repair. When it rains, a makeshift catheter-type contraption of plastic sheeting, hoses and trash cans is attached to the ceiling in parts of the building to direct the rain water into a receptacle.
After a local news report on the rodent complaints and a recent protest by workers, Mr. Forst and the chief financial officer for the I.R.S. visited the campus on June 15 to see the problems for themselves. They decided the situation warranted an aggressive plan, the G.S.A. said, adding that pest management found evidence of mice, not rats.
The agency described the leaky roof as an urgent situation, and said it was using funds to fix it in a piecemeal approach so it did not have to wait for Congress to approve the project funding.
In Austin, I.R.S. employees who work in a leased building have described broken revolving doors at the building’s entrances, out-of-service bathrooms, poor ventilation and leaks that some said have caused headaches, according to an employee. The employee complained of having itchy eyes after entering the building.
Earlier this year, the city documented sewer gas escaping from a drain in one of the men’s bathrooms, which could explain a rotten egg smell workers have reported.
In early April, Austin city officials found 105 code violations in the building, including exposed wiring, improperly installed HVAC units on the roof, broken drinking fountains, leaky faucets and equipment installed without permits. The G.S.A. said that the odors in the building had been addressed, and that other fixes were slated to be completed by October.
Some problems have festered for so long that earlier this year, the federal judiciary asked Congress to take over the management of its buildings that were deeply in need of repair, because the G.S.A. had not been able to do it fast enough.
The cost of the federal maintenance backlog could now total as much as $50 billion, and is on track to cost more than the value of the federal government’s entire real estate portfolio by 2030, according to the Public Buildings Reform Board, which was created to identify properties to be sold.
Full access to the federal building fund will not solve the problem, said the board, which has urged the government to sell underused buildings that have massive deferred maintenance costs.
“The bottom line is that the system is working against the American taxpayer,” Nick Rahall, a board member and former Democratic representative from West Virginia, said on Thursday during a public hearing. “The maintenance backlog translates into unhealthy and sometimes unsafe work environments for our federal employees.”
Eileen Sullivan is a Times reporter covering the changes to the federal work force under the Trump administration.“
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