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A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration unlawfully removed the board of the US Institute of Peace earlier this year and that subsequent actions taken by officials installed by the Department of Government Efficiency to cripple the agency are therefore “null and void.”
The lengthy ruling from US District Judge Beryl Howell is the latest defeat for the Trump administration in its attempts to exert authority over independent agencies.
USIP is not a federal agency within the executive branch. It was created by Congress as a nonpartisan, independent body in 1984 and owns and manages its headquarters.
“The President second-guessed the judgment of Congress and President Reagan in creating USIP 40 years ago,” Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, wrote in the 102-page ruling. The ruling is likely to be appealed by the Trump administration.
Outside of the USIP building in Washington, DC, a crowd of more than a dozen former staffers gathered Monday to celebrate the ruling, greeting each other with hugs and cheers. Messages of support were read aloud from the plaintiffs.
Tonis Montes, who was a senior program officer, said she was “incredulous, so excited, just crying for joy” at the decision.
Most of the DC-based staff were fired on March 28 “in the middle of the night, in alphabetical order” and “with no cause,” said Nicoletta Barbera, who worked as an acting director at USIP.
“There’s a lot to interpret from” the ruling, said Michael Phelan, a former vice president at USIP, “but for the time-being, today is a day of celebration for the Institute and the staff.”
In March, the Trump administration fired most of USIP’s board and acting President George Moose, and the three remaining ex-officio board members – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Defense University President Peter Garvin – said they were installing Kenneth Jackson as acting USIP president.
Days later, DOGE personnel, accompanied by Washington, DC, police, gained access to the headquarters after having been turned away during an earlier attempt. Some USIP officials remained in the building after DOGE’s arrival, including Moose, a retired career diplomat. He was later forced to exit the building by DC police.
Shortly after, USIP filed suit against the administration in an effort to stop its dismantlement and the transfer of its private building and endowment to the federal government.
Howell wrote that Trump and his subordinates “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.”
“This Administration then went even further, taking severe actions to dissemble USIP, including terminating its appointed Board members, its expert management, its dedicated staff and contractors located in both Washington, D.C. and around the world, and dispersing its assets and headquarters building,” the judge wrote. “These actions against USIP were unlawful.”
This is not the first time Howell, of the federal district court in Washington, DC, has concluded that Trump unlawfully fired officials at independent agencies.
Earlier this year, she found that Trump’s firing of a member of the National Labor Relations Board was an “illegal act.” Other judges have made similar rulings after officials brought legal challenges against their dismissals.
In the USIP case, Howell said that while a president has greater leeway in deciding when to dismiss members of the institute’s board for-cause, messages sent earlier this year notifying several that they were being removed “provided no legal or factual justification for the terminations.”
“USIP does not fit within the Executive branch and, even if it does, due to its lack of exercise of executive power, is not subject to at-will presidential removal authority in contravention of statutory limits,” she wrote.
In addition to the presence of the DC police when DOGE gained entrance to the building, Moose, the acting USIP president, said in March that members of the “FBI and the US Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia were approaching members of our staff and our workforce to try to intimidate their way into getting into the building.”
In her ruling, Howell was extremely critical of the use of law enforcement personnel to carry out Trump’s objectives with respect to USIP, writing that it “represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better.”
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Outside the headquarters building on Monday, former staffers noted that some damage had already been done to USIP’s reputation, existing programs, and relationships with their partners. Phelan noted that some staffers had already moved on to other jobs.
Asked why Americans should care about USIP, Barbera said, “If Americans believe in peace and security, they should believe in the United States Institute of Peace.”
“We support American values abroad, which are a belief that peace is cheaper than wars and more effective than fighting,” she said.
Under the USIP Act, most of the bipartisan board of directors is appointed by the president “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” According to the lawsuit filed by USIP, the termination emails sent to members of the board, including Trump’s former ambassador to Russia, from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel “did not state any justification for the purported terminations.”
In a four-page order accompanying the lengthy ruling, Howell declared that the removal of the members of the board was unlawful “and therefore null, void, and without legal effect.”
As such, she declared the “purported removal” of Moose as acting USIP president and “purported appointments of Kenneth Jackson and Nate Cavanaugh to the positions of president of USIP” were also invalid. Cavanaugh’s transfer of documents and financial and physical assets from USIP to the General Services Administration were also invalid, she said.
Howell ordered that the removed board members and Moose “shall continue to serve” in their respective roles.
The defendants in the lawsuit, with the exception of the ex-officio board members, are prohibited from “further trespass against the real and personal property belonging to the Institute and its employees, contractors, agents, and other representatives,” and also blocked from gaining or maintaining access to USIP’s “offices, facilities, computer systems, or any other records, files, or resources, and from acting or purporting to act in the name of Institute, and from using the Institute’s name, emblem, badge, seal and any other mark of recognition of the Institute,” she ordered.
The judge also ruled that Trump’s effort to shrink USIP such that it would only perform its “statutory minimums” was unlawful given that it wasn’t done with congressional approval.
“These 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,” Howell wrote in part.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
