Latest news with #UnitedStatesInstituteofPeace
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Musk's DOGE takeover of Institute of Peace brought roaches and rats to D.C. headquarters, court docs say
The head of the United States Institute of Peace says its Washington, D.C. headquarters near the Lincoln Memorial was left to rot after billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency took it over in March, leaving water damage, graffiti — and worst of all, an infestation of roaches and rats. After DOGE replaced the independent, fully government-funded nonprofit's board with MAGA loyalists and fired the entire staff, Musk's crew left it with a 'level of staffing… woefully insufficient to properly protect and maintain' the $500 million Moshe Safdie-designed concrete-and-glass structure, according to a May 23 affidavit filed in D.C. federal court by USIP President and CEO George Moose. 'Vermin were not a problem prior to March 17, 2025, when USIP was actively using and maintaining the building,' Moose's affidavit states. Moose's affidavit, which is part of a broader legal action by USIP in an attempt to regain full control of the organization, was first reported on Friday in the weekly Court Watch newsletter. The office, which is congressionally funded but is not part of the U.S. government, was established in 1984 by Ronald Reagan with a stated mission to advance international stability and conflict resolution. Still, shortly after he was sworn in for his second term as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order taking aim at USIP as 'unnecessary.' On Friday, March 14, Moose, a career diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Benin and Senegal in West Africa, was abruptly terminated by the White House. He went back to the office on Monday and was removed from the USIP offices by police and replaced by Kenneth Jackson, a DOGE administrator, a move Moose immediately vowed to fight. Speaking to reporters outside after he was shown the door, Moose dubbed USIP's unilateral annexation 'an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit corporation,' saying it had been 'very clear that there was a desire on the part of the administration to dismantle a lot of what we call foreign assistance.' On May 19, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the DOGE seizure of USIP was unlawful, and ordered Moose and his staff reinstated. In handing down her opinion, Howell said Trump's 'efforts here to take over an organization… represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better.' The following day, Moose became concerned after hearing from USIP employees that the building's condition had been allowed to deteriorate, his affidavit states. With the help of his attorneys, and following Judge Howell's order, Moose arranged to get back into USIP headquarters on May 21. 'When my team and I arrived, the only persons in the building were two security guards and a small cleaning crew,' he says in the affidavit. 'In my experience, that level of staffing is woefully insufficient to properly protect and maintain the building.' However, Moose told reporters that, at first glance, nothing immediately seemed amiss. 'We just did a quick walk-through – externally, visibly, things look to be in pretty good shape,' he said. 'I didn't see anything, any destruction, if you will, no damage that I can see that is visible.' Yet, the following day, a more thorough inspection turned up myriad problems, according to Moose's affidavit. 'On May 22, members of my staff, including our chief of security and our contract building engineer, spent the day surveying and documenting the condition of the building, to include photographs,' he stated. 'They reported evidence of rats and roaches in the building,' which he said was a first. Moose says in his affidavit that staff reported 'other deficiencies in the maintenance of the building, including the failure to maintain vehicle barriers and the cooling tower, water leaks, damage to the garage door, and missing ceiling tiles in multiple places in the building (which I have been told suggest likely water damage).' 'In addition,' the affidavit contends, 'I learned from my team that sometime in the past several days, before we regained control of the property and assumed control for security, someone had scrawled graffiti on one of the outside spaces.' This occurred, according to the affidavit, because 'the building ha[d] been essentially abandoned for many weeks,' during which time DOGE left USIP HQ with 'only a few security guards on site, with no perimeter patrols.' According to Moose's affidavit, he 'immediately resumed' his duties at USIP, and reached out to staff and board members to begin working there again. It says USIP has once again assumed control of their building, has engaged a private security firm to guard the premises, and has taken over responsibility for the building's maintenance. At the same time, Musk is leaving DOGE as his 130-day tenure as a 'special government employee' comes to an end. Trump and DOGE have appealed Howell's ruling. Moose did not respond on Friday to The Independent's requests for comment, nor did the attorneys representing him and USIP in court. Messages seeking comment from Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Carilli, DOGE's lawyer in the case, and the White House, also went unanswered.
Japan Today
19-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Judge bars Trump administration from shutting peace institute that sought to end violent conflicts
FILE - The headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace is seen, March 18, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) By GARY FIELDS A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with its dismantling of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an organization taken over in March by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the think tank, which was created and funded by Congress to focus on resolving violent conflicts around the globe, was taken over illegally by DOGE through 'blunt force, backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies.' The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed by the organization's former board members and president, had maintained that the Institute of Peace was established by law as an independent, nonprofit organization. The plaintiffs also argue that the firing of the board members did not meet any of the steps required by the law that created the organization. The moves also did not go before any of the four congressional committees that have oversight of the institute. In her ruling, Howell cited the uniqueness of the organization, saying the president 'second-guessed' the judgment of Congress and President Ronald Reagan in creating the institute 40 years ago, and the judgment of every Congress since. Trump issued the executive order in February that targeted the institute and three other agencies for closure in an effort to deliver on campaign promises to shrink the size of the federal government. The first attempt by DOGE to take over the headquarters led to a standoff. Members of Musk's DOGE group returned days later with the FBI and District of Columbia Metropolitan Police to help them gain entry. The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration March 18, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over its operations. The firing of the board was followed by a Friday night mass firing by email on March 28, which threw the workforce into turmoil. At the same time, DOGE transferred the administrative oversight of the organization's headquarters and assets to the General Services Administration that weekend. Since then, employees were allowed to retrieve personal items but computers, office tools and supplies and furniture were left behind. In reaching her opinion Howell concluded that the institute 'ultimately exercises no Executive branch power under the Constitution but operates, through research, educational teaching, and scholarship, in the sensitive area of global peace. In creating this organization, Congress struck a careful balance between political accountability, on the one hand, and partisan independence and stability, on the other.' As such, 'the Constitution makes clear that the President's constitutional authority only extends as far as Article II, but even Article II does not grant him absolute removal authority over his subordinates, under current binding caselaw precedent.' Howell said that because the removal of the board by the administration was illegal, all subsequent actions are null and void, including the firing of the staff and the transfer of the headquarters to the General Services Administration. The White House was not immediately available for comment. The administration has 30 days to appeal. The idea in creating the institute was for an organization that would operate outside normal channels to work to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts. At the time it was shuttered, the institute operated in more than two dozen conflict zones, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Howell had denied two requests by the plaintiffs for restraining orders — one to halt the firing of the board and another to stop the administration from taking over the institute's headquarters. That ruling came after she held a status hearing and learned that DOGE-installed leadership had already initiated and completed the transfer of the headquarters before the plaintiffs could even get to court. Howell equated the quick action to a bull in a China shop. Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Thalia Beaty contributed to this story. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top 5 most outrageous ways the government has wasted your taxes, as uncovered by Elon Musk's DOGE
As President Donald Trump celebrated his 100th day in office this week, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has cut at least $160 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. When Trump signed an executive order establishing the agency on his Inauguration Day, DOGE set an ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. According to the Office of Government Ethics, "special government employees" like Musk can work for the federal government no more than 130 days a year, which in Musk's case will fall on May 30. He has already started paring back his hours leading the controversial agency. Fox News Channel's "Jesse Watters Primetime" had the opportunity to see behind the curtain of Musk's infamous DOGE, which Democrats have railed against and Republicans have celebrated since Trump returned to the White House this year. The "DOGE boys" reminded Watters on Thursday of some of the most shocking savings secured by the department this year. Doge's Greatest Hits: Look Back At The Department's Most High-profile Cuts During Trump's First 100 Days Earlier this year, DOGE discovered the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) had transferred $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, a former Taliban member who was Afghanistan's former Chief of Protocol. DOGE announced on March 31 that the contract was canceled. Read On The Fox News App Halimi was detained by the U.S. and held at Bagram Air Base for a year beginning Jan. 2, 2002. He held several positions in Afghanistan's government following his release and was appointed as the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan in 2020. "A small agency called the United States Institute of Peace is definitely the agency we've had the most fight at. We actually went into the agency and found they had loaded guns inside their headquarters — Institute for Peace," a DOGE staffer told Watters. "So by far, the least peaceful agency that we've worked with, ironically. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter that in most agencies." USIP did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry. Elon Musk Looks Back On 100 Days Of Doge, Previews Future Of The 'Long-term Enterprise' Fox News Digital reported earlier this year that the nation's schools spent $200 billion in COVID-relief funds on expenses "with little oversight or impact on students," such as Las Vegas hotel rooms and buying an ice cream truck, according to DOGE's audits. Granite School District in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms for an educational conference at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas casino, while Santa Ana Unified in California spent $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a report by Parents Defending Education and shared by DOGE. Granite School District has since denied "any impropriety for having our educators participate" in the Las Vegas conference. The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck. "They were basically partying on the taxpayers' dollars," Musk told Watters on Thursday. Caesars Palace, Mlb Stadium, An Ice Cream Truck: Doge Reveals How Schools Spent Billions In Covid-relief Funds Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus and who has collaborated closely with Musk to identify waste to cut, revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) "authorized a whopping $20 million to create a 'Sesame Street' in Iraq." Ernst said that under the Biden administration, USAID awarded the $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq" in an effort to "promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups." DOGE received a hand from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report in March revealing that federal agencies wasted $162 billion in "improper payments," which was actually a decrease of $74 billion from the previous fiscal year. GAO's analysis revealed that of the 16 government agencies reporting improper payments, 75% of the waste found was concentrated in five programs: $54 billion from three Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Medicare programs; $31 billion in HHS Medicaid; $16 billion from the Department of the Treasury's earned income tax credit; $11 billion from the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and $9 billion from the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund. On the campaign trail and since taking office, Trump has made it clear he aims to slash diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) spending in the federal government, while making the case that a system of meritocracy should be the focus. DOGE has announced over the last few months that it has cut hundreds of millions in DEI contracts. Earlier this month, DOGE announced it had worked with the U.S. National Science Foundation to cancel 402 "wasteful" DEI grants, which will save $233 million, including $1 million for "Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation." The Department of Defense could save up to $80 million in wasteful spending by cutting loose a handful of DEI programs, the agency announced last month. The Defense Department has been working with DOGE to slash wasteful spending, DOD spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to social media. Parnell listed some of the initial findings flagged by DOGE, much of it consisting of millions of dollars given to support various DEI programs, including $1.9 million for holistic DEI transformation and training in the Air Force and $6 million to the University of Montana to "strengthen American democracy by bridging divides." The Trump administration announced earlier this month it is slashing millions of dollars in DEI grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of its overall DOGE push. And in February, the Department of Education said it is canceling more than $100 million in grants to DEI training as part of DOGE's article source: Top 5 most outrageous ways the government has wasted your taxes, as uncovered by Elon Musk's DOGE
Fox News
02-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Top 5 most outrageous ways the government has wasted your taxes, as uncovered by Elon Musk's DOGE
As President Donald Trump celebrated his 100th day in office this week, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said it has cut at least $160 billion in waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. When Trump signed an executive order establishing the agency on his Inauguration Day, DOGE set an ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. According to the Office of Government Ethics, "special government employees" like Musk can work for the federal government no more than 130 days a year, which in Musk's case will fall on May 30. He has already started pairing back his hours leading the controversial agency. Fox News Channel's "Jesse Watters Primetime" had the opportunity to see behind the curtain of Musk's infamous DOGE, which Democrats have railed against and Republicans have celebrated since Trump returned to the White House this year. The "DOGE boys" reminded Watters on Thursday of some of the most shocking savings secured by the department this year. Earlier this year, DOGE discovered the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) had transferred $132,000 to Mohammad Qasem Halimi, a former Taliban member who was Afghanistan's former Chief of Protocol. DOGE announced on March 31 that the contract was canceled. Halimi was detained by the U.S. and held at Bagram Air Base for a year beginning Jan. 2, 2002. He held several positions in Afghanistan's government following his release and was appointed as the Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs in Afghanistan in 2020. "A small agency called the United States Institute of Peace is definitely the agency we've had the most fight at. We actually went into the agency and found they had loaded guns inside their headquarters — Institute for Peace," a DOGE staffer told Watters. "So by far, the least peaceful agency that we've worked with, ironically. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter that in most agencies." USIP did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry. Fox News Digital reported earlier this year that the nation's schools spent $200 billion in COVID-relief funds on expenses "with little oversight or impact on students," such as Las Vegas hotel rooms and buying an ice cream truck, according to DOGE's audits. Granite School District in Utah spent their COVID-relief funds on $86,000 in hotel rooms for an educational conference at Caesars Palace, a ritzy Las Vegas casino, while Santa Ana Unified in California spent $393,000 to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, according to a report by Parents Defending Education and shared by DOGE. Granite School District has since denied "any impropriety for having our educators participate" in the Las Vegas conference. The cost-cutting department also revealed that schools spent $60,000 of COVID-relief funds on swimming pool passes, while a California district used its funds to purchase an ice cream truck. "They were basically partying on the taxpayers' dollars," Musk told Watters on Thursday. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus and who has collaborated closely with Musk to identify waste to cut, revealed that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) "authorized a whopping $20 million to create a 'Sesame Street' in Iraq." Ernst said that under the Biden administration, USAID awarded the $20 million to a nonprofit called Sesame Workshop to produce a show called "Ahlan Simsim Iraq" in an effort to "promote inclusion, mutual respect and understanding across ethnic, religious and sectarian groups." DOGE received a hand from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report in March revealing that federal agencies wasted $162 billion in "improper payments," which was actually a decrease of $74 billion from the previous fiscal year. GAO's analysis revealed that of the 16 government agencies reporting improper payments, 75% of the waste found was concentrated in five programs: $54 billion from three Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Medicare programs; $31 billion in HHS Medicaid; $16 billion from the Department of the Treasury's earned income tax credit; $11 billion from the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; and $9 billion from the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Restaurant Revitalization Fund. On the campaign trail and since taking office, Trump has made it clear he aims to slash diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) spending in the federal government, while making the case that a system of meritocracy should be the focus. DOGE has announced over the last few months that it has cut hundreds of millions in DEI contracts. Earlier this month, DOGE announced it had worked with the U.S. National Science Foundation to cancel 402 "wasteful" DEI grants, which will save $233 million, including $1 million for "Antiracist Teacher Leadership for Statewide Transformation." The Department of Defense could save up to $80 million in wasteful spending by cutting loose a handful of DEI programs, the agency announced last month. The Defense Department has been working with DOGE to slash wasteful spending, DOD spokesman Sean Parnell said in a video posted to social media. Parnell listed some of the initial findings flagged by DOGE, much of it consisting of millions of dollars given to support various DEI programs, including $1.9 million for holistic DEI transformation and training in the Air Force and $6 million to the University of Montana to "strengthen American democracy by bridging divides." The Trump administration announced earlier this month it is slashing millions of dollars in DEI grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of its overall DOGE push. And in February, the Department of Education said it is canceling more than $100 million in grants to DEI training as part of DOGE's efforts.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - The hidden patterns in Trump's executive orders
The breadth of President Trump's onslaught of executive orders is wearying even to the most experienced officials, journalists and analysts — likely by design. Although many of the proposals contained in Project 2025 have yet to be implemented, the White House's initiatives go far beyond even that capacious document. Indeed, dramatic changes in long-accepted policies and institutions are emerging from the Oval Office daily. It is difficult to generalize about such a wide range of initiatives, but a few patterns have emerged. Recognizing these patterns can allow us to better assess what we are seeing and target our attention appropriately. First, although the Trump administration often begins an initiative with one or more executive orders, few of the orders themselves merit close examination. With a few exceptions — such as the orders purporting to terminate birthright citizenship, invoking the Alien Enemies Act and eliminating federal employees' unions — the orders are peppered with language directing subordinates to follow the law. This does not mean that these initiatives are empty or harmless. Instead, the lawlessness is carried out by underlings relying on often-absurd interpretations of law to justify their actions. For example, the executive orders against particular agencies — the first of which attacked the Inter-American Foundation, the United States African Development Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace — state that the administration is only eliminating the agencies' 'non-statutory components and functions' of the agencies. This might sound reasonable. Who could object to stopping the Department of Agriculture from building aircraft carriers? But the administration's interpretations of what are 'statutory functions' is indefensible. With the Inter-American Foundation, the administration contends that the statute requires the foundation only to have a president, a board and an office. This ignores a substantial list of purposes that statute directs the 'Foundation shall carry out' through its activities — to say nothing of appropriations for a far more robust agency, including one that Trump himself recently signed. Thus, the illegality generally arises not in the executive orders themselves but in their implementation. These orders are trumpets rallying the president's base. They should put us on guard that a new aspect of the government is slated for destruction or politicization. But they are rarely worth scrutinizing much in themselves. Various scorecards about how many executive orders have been enjoined by courts miss this point. Second, the Trump administration has made clear that its primary agenda is not these specific changes but rather a radical expansion of presidential power. Many things it has done unlawfully could have been done within the law with very little effort. The administration has impounded funds for numerous programs, violating many permanent authorizing statutes as well as annual appropriations. The president likely could have accomplished the same thing through a request that Congress rescind the money under the Impoundment Control Act. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and that law prohibits filibusters of presidential rescission requests. Similarly, the 'fork in the road' email, which offered seven months' paid leave for federal employees who resigned, was unlawful. Among other reasons, statutes limit administrative leave to two weeks per year and cap buy-outs at $25,000. Moreover, the Office of Personnel Management, which sent the emails, had no authority to commit the various departments that employed the federal workers affected. Agencies may, however, prepare buy-out plans identifying overstaffed functions; upon OPM's approval, the administration could have implemented a more thoughtful and targeted version of staffing reduction. Here again, the administration seemed more interested in asserting the president's ability to disregard federal law. The same could be said for the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. If the administration actually had evidence that the individuals deported were Venezuelan gang members, regular immigration law provides a plethora of powerful weapons. But the point was not to deport these individuals, but rather to establish that the president can issue a completely preposterous finding — that gang members' presence in the U.S. is an 'invasion' conducted by the Venezuelan government — and make it stick. The third pattern concerns the Trump administration's remarkable disdain for court orders. Shortly after the administration announced a broad freeze on federal funding, a federal district court entered a temporary restraining order that it 'shall not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate [its] compliance with awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance.' In numerous instances, federal agencies continued to withhold funds; in some, they newly froze funds after the temporary restraining order. When called on this noncompliance, administration officials said 'that they are just trying to root out fraud' with these continued freezes — a complete non sequitur given the terms of the order. The court accordingly found the administration in violation of its order. Similarly, a federal district court promptly enjoined the administration from 'suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing the obligation or disbursement of appropriated foreign-assistance funds.' A week later, the court found that the administration had 'continued their blanket suspension of funds pending review of agreements, the very action that the TRO enjoined.' Administration officials asserted 'that they have been making good faith efforts to comply.' They also asserted that they could continue the enjoined freeze on other grounds, what the court characterized as an impermissible search for 'post-hoc rationalization for the enjoined agency action.' Repeated additional orders to comply with the prior orders and resume funding have been largely ineffective. Many nonprofits in impoverished areas around the world have collapsed due to the lack of funding. Whether or not one agrees with particular actions the administration has taken, this rampant disregard for duly-enacted statutes and court orders cannot be reconciled with the checks and balances at the heart of our constitutional order. Trump won the last election after disavowing the radicalism of Project 2025. He has no mandate for this lawlessness. You can't make America great again by rejecting the core values that have held the country together for almost 250 years. David A. Super teaches at Georgetown Law. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
