A federal judge declared that the gutting of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Trump administration was “unlawful.”
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Monday found that DOGE removing “USIP’s president, his replacement by officials affiliated with DOGE” and the termination of some USIP staff had been “effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders” who didn’t have the legal authority, NBC News reported.
“In a drastic and abrupt change of course, within the first month of his second term, President Trump unilaterally decided that USIP is ‘unnecessary,’ issuing Executive Order 14217 (‘EO 14217’) § 1, 90 Fed. Reg. 10577, 10577 (Feb. 19, 2025), to this effect, and then his Administration rushed through actions, including removal of Board members, to reach the professed goal of reducing all of USIP’s operations and personnel to the bare minimum to perform only mandated statutory tasks, while ignoring the broader statutory goals set out for this organization to fulfil,” Howell said in a court document. “The unilateral actions were taken without asking Congress to cease or reprogram appropriations or by recommending that Congress enact a new law to dissolve or reduce the Institute or transfer its tasks to another entity, despite the President’s constitutional duties either to ‘take care’ of ‘faithfully execut[ing]’ the law, U.S. CONST. art. II § 3, cl. 4, or to ‘recommend to [Congress’s] Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,’ id., cl. 1.”
“Instead, the current Administration decided to effectuate the President’s Executive Order 14217 through blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies,” Howell continued.
JUST IN: Judge Howell rules that the Trump/DOGE takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace was illegal and should be treated as null and void.https://t.co/gkeXfkQ2XH pic.twitter.com/12eFcksRFN
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 19, 2025
Per NBC News, Howell’s decision, which “came two months after a dramatic showdown” at USIP’s headquarters, also noted that “the institute’s acting president, George Moose, would continue to serve”:
The decision came two months after a dramatic showdown at the building’s headquarters in Washington, when the acting head of the Institute of Peace issued a statement saying that “DOGE has broken into out building.” After members of the DOGE team took over the building with the help of law enforcement, most institute employees were subsequently laid off.
“The President second-guessed the judgement of Congress and President Reagan in creating USIP 40 years ago, and the judgement of every Congress since then, including in 2024, in appropriating funds to USIP, when he deemed this organization to be ‘unnecessary’ three months ago in EO 14217,” Howell added. “The President and his subordinates then used brute force and threats of criminal process to take over USIP’s headquarters, despite being cautioned that this organization did not fall within the Executive branch and its leadership was not subject to the President’s unilateral Executive branch removal power.”
Breitbart News’s Katherine Hamilton reported at the end of March that mass firings had been conducted at the USIP, which was created by Congress in 1984 under a statute signed by former President Ronald Reagan.
