On Wednesday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

President Donald Trump issued on Aug. 24 an executive order to direct federal agencies to prioritize moving their facilities to distressed areas, including opportunity zones, in an effort to lower costs and uplift poor communities.

The new order could help support investments in any of the 8,766 distressed areas designated as opportunity zones, a bipartisan incentive created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

In the past, federal agencies were encouraged to consider locating facilities in central business districts, which were often the most expensive areas, according to a White House statement.

But the new order will change that policy and “invest Federal resources in distressed areas and save taxpayer dollars.”

There is another aspect of this. The move will put federal employees in contact with real people who live with the policies the bureaucracies create. It will get federal employees out of the ‘Washington bubble’ and into communities where people have different ideas than the political elite.

The article concludes:

There has been a bipartisan push to move some federal agencies outside the Beltway to help distressed communities.

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced in 2019 the HIRE Act that proposed moving most federal agencies out of Washington and into the heart of America.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang also proposed moving agencies to support distressed communities.

“Federal agencies that aren’t directly tied to general government activities (e.g., the NIH) should be relocated to different areas throughout the country to provide a boost to local economies,” he stated on his campaign website in 2019.