Federal Judge Voids Trump and DOGE Effort to Dismantle Agency: ‘Gross Usurpation of Power’
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Judge Beryl Howell with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down yet another attempt by President Donald Trump’s administration to reshape the federal government on Monday, issuing an order ruling that the administration’s DOGE-led “unilateral actions” were a “gross usurpation of power” that properly belonged to Congress.
The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) was established by Congress as “independent nonprofit corporation” in a 1984 bill signed by President Ronald Reagan that explicitly spelled out the intention for USIP to operate independently and enacted statutory prerequisites for a president to remove any of USIP’s board members.
Over the past four decades, Congress has continued to fund USIP “through appropriations bills signed by seven different Presidents from both major political parties, including the current President during his first term in office,” wrote Howell in her 102-page opinion.
But then in “a drastic and abrupt change of course,” Trump signed an executive order in which he “unilaterally decided” that USIP is “unnecessary,” Howell continued. This entailed “rushed” actions that were undertaken with “blunt force, backed up by law enforcement,” including removing board members, having DOGE staff “forcibly take over USIP headquarters in mid-March” and replacing the board members, “hand[ing] off USIP’s property for no consideration” to the General Services Administration (GSA), and “abruptly terminat[ing] nearly all of its staff and activities around the world.”
The Trump administration took these actions “without asking Congress to cease or reprogram appropriations or by recommending that Congress enact a new law to dissolve or reduce the Institute or transfer its tasks to another entity,” a violation of the president’s constitutional duties under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution.
Howell ruled that the restrictions passed by Congress that limit a president’s power to remove USIP board members “are squarely constitutional,” making these actions by Trump and his administration “unlawful and ultra vires.” Therefore, all the actions taken by DOGE since then “were thus effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void.”
The judge’s opinion concluded:
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. Outside of Article II, he has little constitutional authority to act at all. The President’s efforts here to take over an organization outside of those bounds, contrary to statute established by Congress and by acts of force and threat using local and federal law enforcement officers, 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.
