President Donald Trump issued an
executive order on Feb. 19 aimed at reducing the scope of the federal bureaucracy. The U.S. Institute of Peace, a think tank with an apparent problem with political bias and a budget last year of $55 million, was among the federal entities whose non-statutory components and functions Trump sought to eliminate “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
Sure enough, the administration canned 10 voting members of the USIP board of directors along with the institute’s president, former Clinton official George Moose; terminated nearly all of the institute’s staff and activities around the world; had elements of the Department of Government Efficiency take over the institute’s headquarters on March 17; and transferred USIP’s property to the General Services Administration.
This proved intolerable to four outgoing members of the board and the board’s chair, John Sullivan — Biden’s ambassador to Russia at the time of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — who
filed suit on March 18.
‘The United States Institute of Peace has existed for 40 years on a $50 million annual budget but failed to deliver peace.’
The Obama judge who previously
found that Trump’s firing of a member of the National Labor Relations Board was an “illegal act” reversed the administration’s USIP-related actions in a ruling Monday, declaring that the changes undertaken at the institute by officials affiliated with the DOGE were “effectuated by illegitimately installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void.”
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell not only reinstated Moose as USIP president and reversed the administration’s key changes but banned defendants — among them, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — from “further trespass against the real and personal property belonging to the Institute and its employees, contractors, agents, and other representatives.”
When the DOGE took control of the USIP headquarters, Moose had remained inside until forced to leave by Washington, D.C., police.
Howell assigned greater weight to the judgment of a previous president than the one elected to now run the country, stating, “The President second-guessed the judgment of Congress and President Reagan in creating USIP 40 years ago,” and claimed that Trump’s efforts “represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP.”
When pressed for comment about U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Blaze News, “The United States Institute of Peace has existed for 40 years on a $50 million annual budget but failed to deliver peace. President Trump is right to reduce failed, useless entities like USIP to their statutory minimum, and this rogue judge’s attempt to impede on the separation of powers will not be the last say on the matter.”
Congress established the USIP under the Department of Defense Authorization Act of 1985 to
serve as:
an independent, nonprofit, national institute to serve the people and the Government through the widest possible range of education and training, basic and applied research opportunities, and peace information services on the means to promote international peace and the resolution of conflicts among the nations and peoples of the world without recourse to violence.
Howell noted that the institute is “unique in its structure and function” because it is neither a “traditional Executive branch agency nor an entirely private nonprofit corporation,” adding that USIP officers and employees “are considered federal employees only for limited, express purposes.”
‘USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel.’
The Heritage Foundation
noted in a report last year that the USIP had “expanded its remit far beyond the intent of the [United States Institute of Peace Act of 1984] — and to such an extent that the mandated activities and lawful purposes of the institute are hardly reflected in its current portfolio.”
In addition to the USIP overstepping its bounds, Heritage noted that the institute is not bipartisan, as required by law.
“The USIP is neither nonpartisan nor bipartisan. Political contribution analysis suggests that its staff are almost entirely Democrat, indicating political discrimination (i.e., a ‘political testing’) in its hiring decisions,” claimed the Heritage report. “The USIP’s Republican board members lack significant connection to the most recent Republican president and current nominee for president.”
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Weeks after it conducted its March house-cleaning, the DOGE
alleged on X that the prior management at the institute, which “receives $55M in congressional (taxpayer) funds” annually, “would sweep excess funds into its private Endowment (zero congressional oversight)” and that “in the past 10 years, USIP has transferred ~$13M to its private Endowment, mainly used for private events and travel.”
The DOGE also alleged that USIP’s contracts included: “$132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, an ex-Taliban member who was Afghanistan’s former Chief of Protocol”; “$2,232,500 to its outside Accountant, who attempted to delete over 1 terabyte of accounting data (now recovered) after new leadership entered the building”; “$1,307,061 to the Al Tadhamun Iraqi League for Youth”; and “$675,000 for private aviation service.”
George Foote, a former lawyer for the institute who helped bring the lawsuit,
told the Times that “the culture is intact, and the management and staff are ready to go back to work.”
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