SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A Republican senator from Iowa is publicly calling for the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco to be closed due to conditions on the street outside. In a thread posted to X, formerly Twitter Thursday morning, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) likened the building to a “haunted house” and compared the drug dealers and users who frequently congregate outside it to smoke, shoot and deal fentanyl to zombies.
In the thread, Ernst calls the building an “abandoned tower” that’s looming “18 stories into the sky.” In the senator’s narrative, “Zombie-like bodies with blank stares shake & stumble about aimlessly,” while “criminals wield weapons & shoot firearms.”
“This isn’t the backdrop of a Halloween haunted house. It’s the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco,” Ernst tweets.
In a subsequent tweet, Ernst says “the conditions are so frightening, federal employees have been warned to stay away indefinitely.”
In August, it was reported that federal workers at the building had been told to work from home for the foreseeable future due to safety concerns around the building. The building, which is located on the corner of Seventh and Mission Streets, is home to agencies that include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the official office of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a memo sent out to DHHS workers advised working from home “in light of conditions” at the building.
“Employees at the Pelosi Fed Building have already been forced to abandon it, so why should taxpayers keep the lights on at Pelosi’s haunted house?” Ernst asks in a subsequent tweet.
The area around the Federal Building has become a regular spot for drug dealers and drug users to congregate, deal, use and sometimes, pass out.
“The plaza is a dangerous, open-air drug market, with addicts shooting up, snorting, and smoking drugs in plain view,” Ernst says in a letter to the Senate administrator, in which she calls for the building to be closed.
In a news release on her website, Ernst blames conditions around the building on “far left policies that have incentivized crime” and reiterates her call for the building to be shut down.
KRON4 reached out to the offices of Sen. Ernst, Speaker Emerita Pelosi and San Francisco Mayor London Breed for comment on this story. We have yet to hear back.
