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 dozens at the organization dealt it a severe blow as Trump officials have sought to exert control over the nonprofit and 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.”
The majority of the U.S.-based staff received a late-night email to their personal addresses from an acting head of human resources telling them their employment had ended as of March 28. 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, which works to find peaceful solutions to violent conflicts abroad, 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.”
