A dormant government building in the nation’s capital may seem like an unlikely setting for the signing of a peace deal. But nearly nine months after the Trump administration seized control of the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in an extraordinary public showdown and all but shuttered it, the center has re-emerged, newly named for President Trump.
The morning before Mr. Trump was scheduled to host a signing ceremony at the institute with the presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, workers arrived at the building on the National Mall to install Mr. Trump’s name in large, silver letters to two sides of the exterior of the building, positioning his name to the left of where the institute’s name was already engraved into the facade.
The result was a re-dubbing of the building as the “Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.”
The White House confirmed on Wednesday evening that the institute had been renamed for the president “as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability,” Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman, said.
“Congratulations, world!” she added.
Renaming the decades-old institute, which had been heralded by presidents like Ronald Reagan, who signed it into law, and adhering his name to its facade appears to be a continuation of Mr. Trump’s effort to portray himself as a great diplomatic deal-maker as he campaigns for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Over the past year, Mr. Trump claimed credit for ending a host of conflicts, including the three-decade war between Rwanda and Congo. The White House has previously asserted that his work on diplomacy is more impressive than that of the Institute of Peace, which the White House has called a “bloated, useless entity.”
Nevertheless, the move has once again thrust it into the spotlight of the fierce battle over the institute.
The headquarters has sat vacant since the administration seized control of the building in March as part of a broader effort by the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by Elon Musk, to dismantle institutions that work on foreign policy. In the weeks after the building was seized, the administration fired most of the staff and gutted the organization. It even dismantled a fixture inside with the institute’s name and logo, a depiction of a dove and an olive branch.
George Foote, a former lawyer for the institute who is now part of the lawsuit against the administration, said in a statement on Wednesday that “renaming the U.S.I.P. building adds insult to injury.”
The 150,000 square-foot building is a central part of the lawsuit. The institute was created by Congress and received federal money for its programs, but former staff have argued that it is not part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the president’s authority.
The prominent glass-roofed building, designed as a national symbol of peace was built in 2012. It was paid entirely by private donors, and it sits on land owned by the Navy, which transferred jurisdiction to the institute more than two decades ago.
A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly said that the administration had rehired some staff in advance of Thursday’s event.
After the institute’s former staff sued, it temporarily regained control of the building in May, after a federal judge ruled the Trump administration’s takeover was a “gross usurpation of power,” and restored both the building and the fired leadership.
But after the administration appealed that decision, a higher court returned the building to the executive branch while it considers the case. The institute’s current head, a senior State Department official who was fired from a White House post during the first Trump administration, has not publicly laid out any plans for the organization or the building.
Last month, the court turned down a last-ditch request from the institute’s former staff to regain control of the building. But former staffers, many of whom are independently continuing the institute’s international work, said that they planned to protest what they called the theft of the building on Thursday, during the signing ceremony that will be hosted by Mr. Trump.
The decision by the appeals court on the fate of the institute and the building is not expected until next year.
“The rightful owners will ultimately prevail,” Mr. Foote said on Wednesday, “and will restore the U.S. Institute of Peace and the building to their statutory purposes.”
Aishvarya Kavi works in the Washington bureau of The Times, helping to cover a variety of political and national news.
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