United States Institute of Peace
Based on Wikipedia: United States Institute of Peace
A Building with a View of War Memorials
There's a certain irony in the location. The United States Institute of Peace sits at the northwest corner of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., its gleaming white headquarters positioned within sight of both the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It's as if the building itself is meant to whisper a question: What if we could prevent the next wall of names?
For four decades, this independent, nonprofit institution funded by Congress attempted to answer that question. It trained diplomats and mediators. It brokered peace agreements in war zones. It served as neutral ground where sworn enemies could sit across tables from one another and talk.
Then, in 2025, President Donald Trump decided it needed to go.
The Long Road to a Peace Academy
The idea of a national peace academy predates the institute by many years. The United States has operated military academies since 1802, when Thomas Jefferson established West Point. The Naval Academy followed in 1845, the Coast Guard Academy in 1876, and the Air Force Academy in 1954. Each institution trains young Americans in the arts of warfare.
But what about the arts of peace?
The question surfaced repeatedly throughout American history, but it took until the 1980s for it to gain serious traction. Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii, a decorated World War II veteran who had fought with the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team, championed the cause. He was joined by Senator Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon, and Representative Dan Glickman of Kansas.
Their argument was straightforward: if the United States invests billions in teaching people how to fight wars, shouldn't it invest something in teaching people how to prevent them?
President Jimmy Carter, in the final years of his administration, formed a commission to study the idea. Matsunaga chaired it. The commission recommended creating a peace academy, and in 1984, that recommendation became law when President Ronald Reagan signed the Department of Defense Authorization Act.
It's worth pausing on that detail. The United States Institute of Peace was created not through a standalone peace bill, but as part of a defense authorization act. Its birth certificate, in other words, was a military document. This would prove significant later.
What the Institute Actually Did
The statutory language describing the institute's mission is bureaucratic but revealing. The law calls for USIP 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."
In practice, this meant many things.
The institute conducted research on conflict resolution. It operated training programs for diplomats, military officers, and civil society leaders. It maintained field offices in conflict zones—at its peak, the institute was active in seventeen countries. It convened workshops and conferences where adversaries could meet on neutral ground.
The institute also served as home to several blue-ribbon commissions mandated by Congress. The most famous of these was the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel formed in 2006 to assess the deteriorating situation in Iraq and recommend a path forward. The group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton, produced a report that significantly influenced American policy.
Why did Congress choose the Institute of Peace to host such a sensitive deliberation? Because of its political neutrality. Neither party controlled it. Its board included members appointed by presidents of both parties. It was, in theory, a rare space in Washington where partisan considerations could be set aside.
The Triangle of Death
The institute's most dramatic success came in 2007, in a region of Iraq that American soldiers had grimly nicknamed "the Triangle of Death."
Mahmoudiya, located in Iraq's western Al Anbar Governorate, was among the most dangerous places on earth. Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias battled each other and American forces. The U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division was struggling to maintain any semblance of order.
Division commanders asked USIP for help.
What followed was a delicate diplomatic operation. Institute experts worked to bring together Sunni tribal leaders, representatives of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, and senior American military officers. These were people who, in other circumstances, might have been trying to kill one another.
They met. They talked. They reached an agreement.
The results were measurable. Attacks declined. Casualties dropped. The American military presence in the area shrank from a brigade of about 3,500 soldiers to a battalion of roughly 650.
General David Petraeus, the senior American commander in Iraq, called the turnaround "striking." He described the institute as "a great asset in developing stronger unity of effort between civilian and military elements of government."
A Building of Their Own
For most of its early history, the Institute of Peace operated out of leased office space in downtown Washington. It was a tenant, not a landmark.
That changed in 1996, when Congress authorized the Navy to transfer a portion of its Potomac Annex facility—a parcel known as Navy Hill—to become the site of a permanent USIP headquarters. The location was extraordinary: directly across the street from the National Mall, at 23rd Street and Constitution Avenue.
Construction took years. The building finally opened in 2011.
The headquarters is distinctive. Its undulating white roof, designed by the architect Moshe Safdie, is meant to evoke a dove. The building incorporates conference facilities, a public education center, and office space for the institute's staff of around 300 people.
The total cost exceeded $180 million, funded through a combination of federal appropriations and a special allowance for private fundraising. Under normal circumstances, the institute was prohibited from accepting private donations—a restriction designed to prevent outside influence. Congress lifted that restriction specifically for the headquarters construction.
The Money Question
How much does peace cost?
The institute's annual budget has typically been modest by federal standards. For fiscal year 2023, Congress appropriated $55 million. Institute leadership requested $65 million for fiscal year 2026.
To put these numbers in perspective: the United States Department of Defense operates on a budget exceeding $800 billion annually. The Institute of Peace's entire budget amounts to roughly one-hundredth of one percent of Pentagon spending. It's a rounding error. It's what the military spends in a few hours.
This didn't prevent the institute from attracting criticism about waste.
In February 2011, Representatives Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, and Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York, co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal attacking the institute as an example of wasteful spending. The House of Representatives voted to eliminate all USIP funding.
The institute's defenders pushed back. General Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine who had commanded all American forces in the Middle East, wrote in the New York Times: "Congress would be hard-pressed to find an agency that does more with less." Funding was eventually restored.
A Question of Independence
The Institute of Peace occupies an unusual position in the federal government. It is established and funded by Congress. It is, in that sense, a government entity. But it is also, by statute, an independent nonprofit corporation. Its board of directors, not the executive branch, controls its operations.
This independence was intentional. The founders wanted an institution that could work on sensitive international issues without becoming a tool of whichever administration happened to be in power. They wanted continuity across presidencies. They wanted the institute to be trusted by foreign governments and civil society groups who might be suspicious of anything too closely tied to American political leadership.
The board structure reflects this design. Fifteen members serve on the board. Twelve are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate—a process that typically ensures bipartisan representation. No more than eight members may belong to the same political party. The remaining three seats are held ex officio by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense (or their designees), and the president of the National Defense University.
Board members serve four-year terms and may continue serving until a successor is confirmed. The president of the institute is appointed by the board, not by the president of the United States.
This structure created a buffer between the institute and presidential control. It also created a legal tripwire that would be tested four decades later.
The Executive Order
On February 19, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting a handful of government entities, including the United States Institute of Peace. The order stated that "the non-statutory components and functions" of these entities "shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law." It instructed them to "reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law."
What did this mean?
The language was careful. The order acknowledged that some functions might be "statutorily required"—that is, mandated by law in ways the president couldn't simply override. But it directed the targeted entities to minimize everything else and to report to the Office of Management and Budget on what, exactly, the law required them to do.
The Institute of Peace's leadership interpreted this as an existential threat.
The Takeover
Events moved quickly after the executive order.
In March 2025, President Trump announced that he was firing all twelve appointed members of the USIP board of directors. The three ex officio members—designees of the State Department, Defense Department, and National Defense University—would remain. Trump also announced that he was firing the institute's acting president, George Moose, and replacing him with Kenneth Jackson.
There was a problem with this approach.
Under the statute that created the Institute of Peace, the president's power to remove board members is limited. Section 4605(f) of Title 22 of the United States Code specifies that the president may remove USIP board members only with the approval of either a majority of the board itself or several congressional committees.
Trump had not obtained either approval.
The administration proceeded anyway. The Department of Government Efficiency, known by the acronym DOGE—a reference to the cryptocurrency that Elon Musk, who led the department, had championed—gained access to the USIP building. DOGE personnel arrived to install Jackson as president and to take control of operations.
USIP's leadership, the people who had been fired, filed a lawsuit arguing that the takeover was illegal.
Judge Howell's Ruling
The case landed before Judge Beryl Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Howell was a Clinton appointee who had previously served as chief judge of the district court. She had a reputation for careful, independent reasoning.
Initially, Howell declined to issue a temporary restraining order. This allowed the administration to continue its takeover while the legal dispute was pending. On March 28, the Trump administration fired more than 200 USIP staffers—most of the remaining employees. A DOGE staffer named Nate Cavanaugh was appointed as the institute's president. Cavanaugh transferred ownership of the headquarters building to the General Services Administration, the federal agency that manages government property.
Then, on May 19, 2025, Howell issued her full ruling.
She found for the institute.
The logic was straightforward. Because the removal of the board by the administration was illegal—lacking the required approval of the board or Congress—all subsequent actions were null and void. The staff firings were invalid. The transfer of the building was invalid. The appointment of new leadership was invalid.
The institute had won.
The Appeals Court
The victory was short-lived.
The Trump administration appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and on June 27, 2025, a three-judge panel reversed Howell's ruling. The court's reasoning centered on the nature of the institute's work.
The Institute of Peace, the appeals court found, "wields substantial executive power in foreign policy decisions." Its work—training diplomats, brokering peace agreements, operating in foreign countries—touched on the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs.
"The president's inability to control the institute's exercise of these 'significant executive power[s]' undermines his ability to set and pursue his foreign policy objective," the court wrote.
This was a significant legal conclusion. The court was essentially saying that an agency engaged in foreign policy work could not be insulated from presidential control, regardless of what Congress had written into the statute. The independence that had been the institute's founding principle was, according to the appeals court, constitutionally impermissible.
A New Name
With the legal barriers removed, the transformation was complete.
On December 3, 2025, the White House announced that the headquarters building would be rebranded as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The president's name was affixed to the facade of the building—the building designed to evoke a dove, the building positioned within sight of memorials to war.
The announcement came with news that the renamed institute would host the official signing ceremony of a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The administration was, in other words, immediately putting the captured institution to use as a backdrop for its own diplomatic achievements.
What Was Lost
The Institute of Peace had trained more than 65,000 professionals over its four decades of existence. It had operated programs in conflict zones around the world. It had provided neutral ground for adversaries to negotiate. It had helped broker the agreement that stabilized Iraq's Triangle of Death.
All of this ended in a matter of months.
The staff was scattered. The institutional knowledge was lost. The relationships with foreign governments and civil society groups—relationships built over years, dependent on the institute's reputation for independence—were severed.
What replaced it?
A building with a new name. An agency under direct presidential control. A venue for signing ceremonies.
Whether this represents an improvement or a loss depends on what you believe the purpose of such an institution should be. If you think the president should have direct control over all aspects of foreign policy, including peacemaking and conflict resolution, then the transformation was a correction of a constitutional error. If you think that some work requires independence from political pressure—that mediators need to be trusted by all sides, not just the side currently in power—then something valuable was destroyed.
A Spin-Off Survives
There is a footnote to this story.
In 2014, the Institute of Peace spun off a separate organization called the PeaceTech Lab. This 501(c)(3) nonprofit was created to advance the institute's mission through technology—bringing together engineers, data scientists, and peacebuilding experts to develop tools for conflict management.
The PeaceTech Lab's CEO, Sheldon Himelfarb, has proposed the creation of an Intergovernmental Panel on the Information Environment, modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The idea is to establish an international scientific body to study and address the spread of disinformation—what Himelfarb calls "the fake news crisis."
Because the PeaceTech Lab is a private nonprofit rather than a government entity, it was not subject to the executive order that dismantled its parent organization. It continues to operate.
The Bigger Question
The story of the United States Institute of Peace raises a question that extends far beyond one agency.
The American system of government has long included independent agencies—entities created by Congress, funded by taxpayers, but insulated from direct presidential control. The Federal Reserve sets monetary policy without taking orders from the White House. The Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission enforce regulations without being directed by the president. These arrangements were designed to protect certain functions from political pressure, to ensure that some decisions would be made on technical or professional grounds rather than partisan ones.
But the constitutional basis for such independence has always been contested. Presidents have long chafed at agencies they cannot control. And the Supreme Court, in recent years, has shown increasing skepticism toward independent agency structures.
The D.C. Circuit's ruling on the Institute of Peace fits this pattern. The court held that an agency exercising "significant executive power" in foreign policy could not be structured to resist presidential removal. If this principle is applied broadly, it could threaten the independence of many agencies whose work touches on executive functions.
The Institute of Peace, in other words, may have been a test case. A small agency. A modest budget. Not many defenders. If the administration could establish the precedent of presidential control there, the precedent could be applied elsewhere.
Or perhaps it was simpler than that. Perhaps it was just a building with a good view, a name that could be changed, a staff that could be dismissed. Perhaps it was a target of opportunity rather than a legal strategy.
The dove-shaped roof still rises above Constitution Avenue. The president's name is now attached to its facade. The memorials to war remain visible in the distance, their walls inscribed with names of the dead. And the question that the building was meant to answer—what if we could prevent the next wall of names?—remains, as ever, unanswered.