Washington, D.C. A federal court filing released Monday says that an official with ties to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has been put in charge of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally formed and funded think tank that Trump wants to shut down.
The filing says that two board members of the Institute of Peace have given their permission for Nate Cavanaugh to take over as acting president. It says that they told him to give the institute’s property to the General Services Administration, which is in charge of managing federal property and ending hundreds of leases at DOGE’s request.
The court document asks U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington to either stop the action or set up a status meeting as soon as is “practicable” to talk about the problems. Howell told everyone involved in the case to come to a status meeting with her on Tuesday.
Lawyers for the defendants said in a move that they were against the request that Howell had turned down a previous request for provisional relief from the plaintiffs. “The Court’s order let the Institute’s new leaders do their jobs, which included following the President’s Executive Order, and the US is still not required by law to stop doing anything in that area.” Now, the plaintiffs are upset that the Institute and its new leaders are doing those things to carry out the President’s order.
This comes after almost all 300 workers of the institute were fired on Friday night. Only a few people, including coworkers who are abroad and were given until April 9 to return to the U.S., say they were not notified. These people include regional vice presidents, who run the areas where they work.
The Associated Press talked to two former employees who asked to remain anonymous because they were afraid of retaliation. They said they were reached by private emails because they had been locked out of the institute’s system and hadn’t been able to go back to work since the tense standoff earlier this month, during which DOGE members were accompanied by police. Of course, they had until April 7 to get rid of their things.
In February, the Republican president signed an order to close the institute and three other agencies. The institute’s job is to avoid and solve conflicts. The president, board members (who are chosen by the president and approved by the Senate), and the institute’s president were all fired. Later, there was a fight between workers who wouldn’t let DOGE members into the institute’s offices, which are close to the State Department. The DOGE staff got in with some help from the Washington cops.
Howell told the DOGE representatives to behave better, but he didn’t bring the board members back to work or let the workers go back to their desks.
The plaintiffs’ court filing acknowledges Howell’s past acts of turning down a temporary restraining order. It says, “They are asking for relief now just to keep things the same in terms of the Court’s power to grant relief if it decides that the removal of a vast majority of the Institute’s directors was illegal.”
