President Donald Trump is casting about for a home for his “Board of Peace,” and you get one guess as to where in Washington he might put it.
Did you guess the U.S. Institute of Peace building? You did, right? Because for someone like Trump, the notion that he could install his merry band of small-bore autocrats in a building that already has “peace” in the name is probably irresistible.
And when you add to that the fact that Trump had the building illegally renamed “The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” at the end of last year, this felt inevitable. Extremely stupid, but inevitable, especially since he apparently already slapped the terrible Board of Peace logo on a picture of the building when he unveiled his little project in Davos.
Paraguay's President Santiago Pena, President Donald Trump, and Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani during a signing of the Board of Peace charter on Jan. 22.
This is only possible because the racist tweens at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency staged a forcible takeover of the USIP building in March 2025. At the same time, Trump removed most of the USIP board. And in May, a lower court ruled that the firings were illegal, which got stayed by a very Trump-friendly panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
However …
A stay pending appeal is not a final ruling; it just holds the lower court’s ruling in abeyance while litigation otherwise continues. There’s no final ruling on whether Trump gets to dismantle USIP, and there’s certainly no ruling that he can now shoehorn whatever he wants into the USIP building.
Trump also doesn’t have the right to rename the building—or the agency. Nonetheless, we now have a building named after our very own fascist so he can apparently hold a little political jamboree with his fellow travelers that comprise his low-rent Model U.N.
Of course, if Trump is going to move his little fascist buddies in there, he will have to do a bit of cleanup. After DOGE took over, the place has pretty much been abandoned, but it’s also barred USIP staff or anyone else from entering.
So when USIP workers got back in for a brief moment in May, they were greeted with evidence of rats, roaches, and likely water damage.
Actually, you know what? That sounds perfect for the sort of leaders willing to pay the board—well, pay Trump—$1 billion for a seat on the board where they sham vote but Trump can veto everything. Trump can also unilaterally take action without their votes, eject members if he wants, and choose his own successor.
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So welcome, all of you peaceful and noble Board of Peace countries, more than half of which scored below 50% on the most recent Economist Intelligence Democracy Index.
Welcome, authoritarian regimes like Belarus and Uzbekistan! And welcome, human rights violators like Bahrain!
Autocrats gotta stick together, right? Can’t have the stupid U.N. with all of its stupid rules about democracy and climate change and bodily autonomy telling them what to do.
Hopefully some of the rats and roaches will stick around to give these folks some company in their big, new stolen building.
