A court resurrects the United States Institute of Peace
The night the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) was taken over, March 17th, staffers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) walked round its headquarters smoking cigars and drinking beers while they dismantled the signage and disabled the computer systems. The takeover of the USIP building in Washington, DC, earlier that afternoon was one of the more notable moments of President Donald Trump’s revolution in the capital, because the think-tank is not actually part of the executive branch. The Institute’s board and president, George Moose, a veteran diplomat, were summarily fired. He and other senior staff were ultimately forced out of the building at the behest of three different police agencies. Then a DOGE staffer handed over the keys to the building to the federal government.
All this was illegal, according to Judge Beryl Howell, of the Washington, dc district court, in a ruling on May 19th. Judge Howell declared that the dissolution of USIP was “effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions”, and so was “null and void”. The result implies that Mr Moose is once again the president, and the board reinstated. The building, which was paid for partly with private money, must be returned. So too must the Institute’s $25m endowment (of which around $15m was donated privately). USIP staffers, almost all of whom were fired in late March, must decide if they want their jobs back. George Foote, usip’s lawyer, says he expects the government to appeal. A White House spokeswoman called the ruling the result of a “rogue judge”, and said it “will not be the last say on the matter”.
USIP was created in 1984 by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, including two war veterans, as a research organisation devoted to peacebuilding. Its board is appointed by the president, on the advice of the Senate, but according to the law establishing it, USIP is an “independent, nonprofit, national institute”. According to Mr Foote, “it was important to the founders that they not have an organisation tucked into the State Department or built into the White House”. This status, Mr Foote argues, gives its staffers a degree of freedom in their research and advice that officials in the State Department would not have. Since its foundation, its work has extended beyond research into matters like negotiating local peace deals in Iraq or Nigeria. Much of its $55m budget was spent on grants to charities.
The fact that USIP might become a target of the Trump administration was foreseeable. Last September the Heritage Foundation, a Republican-aligned think-tank with close links to Mr Trump’s team, criticised the organisation. USIP’s staff, Heritage said, mostly donated to Democrats; the institute’s work, Heritage argued, had expanded beyond what was mandated by law—defence-adjacent research—into international development. Yet Heritage called on Congress to restrict its funding and hold hearings to look at its bias. It did not suggest the president could just shut it down.
In her judgment, Judge Howell argued that the government chose “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers” to impose its legal view that the president has almost unlimited power over almost anything the government funds. In reality, she concluded, not everything funded by Congress is part of the “executive branch”, and so the government’s sweeping assertion of absolute power is unjustified. In effect she ruled that the legislature retains the right to restrict the president’s power over certain institutions. This, Mr Foote argues, has implications that go beyond usip. It is a “victory for the rule of law”, he says.
Goodwill toward men
What will happen now? Before March, it seemed unlikely that Congress would have agreed to shut down USIP. The organisation had Republican supporters, and indeed, under the continuing resolution passed that month, it is fully funded until September. Assuming a higher court does not overrule Ms Howell, usip will be revived. Now that the organisation has become such a partisan cause, however, Republicans in Congress may feel the need to close it by legal means. In the budget bill they are preparing, Congress could fairly easily cut the institute’s funding to the bone. It could also allow Mr Trump to appoint new board members and complete the closure that way.
Still, for now, usip is back. On a rainy afternoon on May 21st, a small group of its staffers walked back into their headquarters. There was no serious physical damage, they said, but it will take time to discover which of the computer systems remain intact and restart work. For now, “we intend now to resume our stewardship and custodianship of the building”, said Mr Moose. “It’s a very meaningful place.” ■
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