An inactive government building in the United States capital may seem an unlikely place to sign a peace deal. But nearly nine months after the Donald Trump administration took control of the USIP’s headquarters in an extraordinary public confrontation and effectively shut it down, the center is now resurfacing, renamed in honor of Trump himself.
The morning before the signing ceremony between the Presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with Trump on Thursday (4), workers arrived at the building on the National Mall to install Trump’s name in large silver letters on both sides of the building’s exterior, placing his name to the left of where the institute’s name was already engraved on the facade.
The result was the renaming of the building as the Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace.
The White House confirmed Wednesday night that the institute had been renamed in honor of the president “as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can achieve for global stability,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.
“Congratulations, world!” She added.
Renaming the institute, which is decades old and celebrated by presidents like Ronald Reagan, and adding his name to the front, appears to be a continuation of Trump’s efforts to position himself as a great diplomatic negotiator and a renewed push for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Over the past year, Trump has claimed credit for ending a series of conflicts, including the three-decade war between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The White House has previously said that its work in the diplomatic field is more impressive than the work of the Peace Institute, which the White House described as a “bloated and useless entity.”
The institute’s headquarters has been empty since the federal government took control of the building last March, amid measures taken by the so-called Government Efficiency Administration, affiliated with billionaire Elon Musk, to dismantle the country’s institutions that work in the field of foreign policy.
In the weeks after seizing the building, the government fired most of the staff, dismantled the organization, and even dismantled an indoor facility bearing the institute’s name and logo, a dove and an olive branch.
“Renaming the institute building makes matters worse,” George Foote, a former attorney for the institute who is now part of a lawsuit against the federal administration, said in a statement Wednesday.
The building is an essential part of the court’s operation. The institute was created by Congress and receives federal money for its programs, but former employees have said it is not part of the executive branch and therefore not subject to the president’s authority.
The landmark, glass-roofed building, designed as a national symbol of peace, was built in 2012. The building, which was funded with a mix of private and federal funds, is located on land owned by the Navy, which transferred jurisdiction to the institute more than two decades ago.
A person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the government had rehired some employees before Thursday’s event.
After the institute’s former team went to court, the foundation temporarily regained control of the building in May, after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s takeover was a “dangerous usurpation of power” and restored both the building and the leadership that had been fired.
However, the government appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court returned the building to the federal executive while it analyzed the case. The institute’s current president, a senior State Department official who was removed from a position in the White House during Trump’s first administration, has not publicly presented any plans for the organization or the building.
Last month, the court rejected a final application by former employees of the institute to regain control of the building. But former employees, many of whom continue the institute’s international work independently, said they planned to protest what they called the theft of the building on Thursday during a signing ceremony hosted by Trump.
It is expected that any decision from the Court of Appeal regarding the fate of the institute and the building will not be made until next year.
“The rightful owners will ultimately prevail and return the USIP and the building to their legal purposes,” Foote said Wednesday.