Nearly all of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s staff members in the United States were fired on Friday, a sharp escalation of the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE team’s efforts to eliminate the government-funded independent nonprofit, according to current and former staff members and termination notices obtained by The New York Times.
The late-night firings of about 100 workers at the organization dealt it a severe blow as Trump officials have sought to exert control over the nonprofit and to dismantle it. Earlier this month, the administration and Mr. Musk’s team gained access to the institute’s building in a dramatic showdown, with the help of private security and local law enforcement.
The White House did not answer questions about whether the administration planned to entirely eliminate the institute, which was created by Congress 41 years ago to support diplomatic solutions to global conflicts. But a spokeswoman suggested that President Trump saw no purpose to the institute’s work.
“President Trump ended the era of forever wars and established peace in his first term, and he is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars,” the spokeswoman, Anna Kelly, said in a statement on Saturday. “Taxpayers don’t want to spend $50 million per year on a publicly funded ‘research institute’ that has failed to deliver peace.”
Dozens of U.S.-based staff members received a late-night email to their personal addresses from an acting head of human resources telling them their employment had ended as of Friday. The Times reviewed the emails, which asked staff members to sign a separation agreement with restrictions on seeking legal recourse over their firings.
The Trump administration first targeted the institute in a February executive order that called for the institute’s work and its staff to be reduced to its “minimum presence and function required by law.”
According to court documents in a lawsuit filed this month disputing the takeover, George Moose, the institute’s former acting president who was ousted this month, said he learned in a February meeting with Trump officials that the administration defined the staffing minimum as only a board of directors and a president.
Not included in the firings were the institute’s dozens of international staff, who are based in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and four senior management officials who oversee those regions, according to current and former staff. On Wednesday, a DOGE employee sent an email to regional managers saying that the Trump-backed team installed at the institute aimed to relocate international staff by April 9.
The April 9 date suggested that the administration’s efforts to eliminate the institute were ramping up. According to staff who were informed of the meetings, two of the institute’s leaders had been meeting in recent weeks with Mr. Jackson as a way to mediate between the two sides after the administration’s takeover of the building and systems left employees locked out of their offices and work emails.
But on Saturday, one of those officials, Terry Jones, who was formerly the leader of human resources for the institute, posted on LinkedIn that he was “unexpectedly” searching for a new job. The emails with termination letters that staff received on Friday were signed by a new acting head of human resources.
Many of the institute’s staff said they did not plan to sign the separation agreement and were exploring their legal options to get their jobs back, especially because they felt ousted by a president who has waved away the traditional diplomacy the institute advocates and left open the possibility of using military force in negotiations with allies.
“The dismissal of U.S. Institute of Peace employees in the dark of night is unconscionable and deeply troubling,” said George Foote, a lawyer who formerly represented the institute and who is helping to lead the suit against the Trump administration. “The institute’s employees are fiercely dedicated to their important work, and they don’t deserve to be treated with such disrespect.”
While some federal workers have been reinstated in court decisions after DOGE cuts, favorable rulings from judges have not necessarily prevented Mr. Musk’s team from sending agencies “into the wood chipper.”
Though the institute’s current and former leaders argued in a lawsuit this month that the nonprofit is not a federal agency, it was not enough to persuade a federal judge to temporarily block the institute’s takeover. The Trump administration continues to insist that the institute is part of the executive branch and falls under the president’s authority.
Mary Glantz, who was a senior adviser at the institute on Russian and European affairs before she was fired on Friday, said that while her work for the institute brought her close to other government agencies, it had a distinct value.
“I fell in love with the job because it was a chance to think creatively about how to focus purely on the question of peace,” Ms. Glantz said. “It’s not something any other part of our national security system really focuses exclusively on.”
