Judge Denies Emergency Relief For Fired USIP Members After Armed DOGE Takeover

While a federal judge Wednesday expressed disgust with DOGE’s armed takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace, she ruled against the fired board members’ request to be immediately reinstated. 

Judge Beryl Howell of the D.C. District Court will instead let the firings stand for now, requesting that the parties come up with a schedule to move the case forward quickly. 

She found that the fired board members were not likely enough to succeed on the merits or be found to have suffered irreparable harm, pointing both to the uniqueness of the agency — a charitable corporation set up by Congress to operate independently — and the precedent set by the D.C. Circuit in Dellinger v. Bessent. In that case, the D.C. Circuit Court nullified a temporary restraining order from the lower court, which had restored the fired head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. 

She delivered her ruling from the bench, and it may have come as a surprise to the lawyers before her. She’d spent much of the two-hour hearing lambasting DOGE for taking over the USIP building and expelling its staff with armed law enforcement, threats of criminal investigation and unannounced home visits by the FBI.

“This conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigations, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies — the Metropolitan Police Department, Department of State security police, the FBI — to carry out Executive Order 14217 — all of that targeting, probably terrorizing, the employees and the staff at the Institute when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals,” she said, her first remarks to Brian Hudak of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. “Why? Why those ways here? Just because DOGE is in a rush?”

Later, she asked Hudak if he was “offended” at how the takeover was executed, saying that she was offended on behalf of the American citizens who had been treated “so abominably.” 

While DOGE’s takeover of USIP echoes its takeover of other small agencies oriented towards foreign aid and peacemaking, it has distinct, sinister notes. The board members were fired abruptly, by email, without any attempt to fulfill the statutory requirements for their removal, much the same as at other agencies. The members of the administration who serve as “ex-officio” members of the board quickly installed their own president. But the use of law enforcement in the USIP takeover sets it apart.  

With mounting incredulity, Howell pressed the lawyer for the fired board members for details on FBI agents arriving “unannounced” at the home of the Institute’s security chief, as DOGE sought ways into the building. She gaped at DOGE’s ultimate strategy for gaining entry: threatening all the federal contracts of the Institute’s ex-security contractors, who still had a key that they ended up using to access the building. She counted up the total number of armed law enforcement on the premises: “That’s a lot of law enforcement at a charitable corporation’s building to enforce this executive order, wouldn’t you say?” she asked the attorneys. As she mulled granting the fired board members’ request for reinstatement and tossing DOGE off the premises, she half-joked that it could spark an “armed battle.” 

DOGE hasn’t softened its methods, despite losing some other illegal-firing battles in the lower courts. Indeed, calls to impeach judges who rule against the administration — often amplified by Elon Musk — have only grown louder on the right, with President Trump calling for the impeachment of a “radical left lunatic of a judge” who temporarily stopped his expulsion of Venezuelan migrants under war powers not used by a president since World War II. In a rare move, Chief Justice John Roberts released a statement rebuking the calls for judicial impeachment. 

Still, if actual lower court losses haven’t stopped DOGE, it’s hard to see how Howell’s ruling allowing the firings to stand, no matter how sternly delivered, will slow its razing of the federal government — rendering one of her lines of questioning Wednesday an academic one: 

What are legal ways the administration could shrink the federal government “without using the force of guns and threats by DOGE against American citizens and those who served our country for years?”