In recent weeks, Elon Musk has turned his ire toward “government-funded nongovernmental organizations.” Now we’re starting to see the long arm of the Department of Government Efficiency reach to pocket check NGOs. Late on Monday, the United States Institute of Peace saw DOGE employees, reportedly flanked by FBI agents and Washington, D.C. police officers, force their way into the independent nonprofit and escort out employees, according to the New York Times.
DOGE has been trying to get into the USIP building since last week but got turned away when a USIP lawyer informed them that the organization was an independent agency that does not fall under the jurisdiction of the executive branch. DOGE returned Monday and made multiple attempts at breaching USIP before finally getting in, according to an official from the organization who spoke to NBC Washington.
The Times had this detail on what led to DOGE finally getting in, which should serve as a stark reminder of where law enforcement is aligned: according to the publication, USIP employees called the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to report DOGE employees for trespassing. When the cops showed up, they escorted USIP employees from the building and let DOGE in.
The standoff technically started weeks before Musk’s gang of “efficiency” enforcers showed up. On February 19, Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to “reduce the scope of federal bureaucracy” and named the U.S. Institute for Peace as one of its entities for elimination.
Last week, per the Times, the White House sent the majority of the USIP’s independent board an email informing them that they were being fired. The remaining three board members—Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and President of the National Defense University Peter Garvin—voted to remove CEO George Moose from the agency and replace him with Kenneth Jackson. Moose holds that his firing is illegal and is challenging it. He also argued that DOGE has no jurisdiction at USIP to begin with, telling NBC Washington, “What has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit.”
USIP has been in action since 1984 when it was created by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, tasked with researching and promoting diplomatic solutions to conflicts. The reason that it is funded by Congress, which appears to be one of Musk’s big objections to it and other organizations like it, is to help USIP maintain its independence and not feel beholden to influence from outside donors. And look, it’s far from a perfect organization, but it’s also not exactly the kind of thing that you’d target if your true goal was to reduce waste and inefficiency. It’s the kind of thing you’d target if you have a political agenda to upend any institute that may house dissenting opinions to your administration.
USIP was seeking $55 million in funding for the entirety of its operations during the upcoming fiscal year. How much will the deployment of law enforcement to facilitate the takeover of the agency, the ongoing legal battles that will come from the abrupt firing of USIP’s CEO and staff members, and the additional spending on military conflicts that will result from this? Hope it’s less than $55 million or we’re going to have to have a conversation about the definition of efficiency.
