Ousted board members of the U.S. Institute of Peace have filed an emergency motion in a federal court in Washington to block the carving of President Donald Trump’s name into the building’s facade.
The motion alleges that a contractor has already been selected to permanently engrave Trump’s name into the Constitution Avenue headquarters of the nonpartisan institution.
Lawyers for the agency and its former leadership warned in the filing that the administration is “unsatisfied with the relative impermanence of external lettering” on the building.
The filing further states that the administration appears to have “taken steps to prepare to carve” Trump’s name onto the front of the building.
Attorneys said they “understand that a formal request for the work has been made and a contractor has been selected,” raising the urgency of the appeal.
“The threatened carving would impose serious irreparable harm,” lawyers for the Institute of Peace wrote in the filing, pressing the court to act immediately.
Trump had his name bolted to the building last December, formally renaming it the Donald J. Trump US Institute of Peace after dismantling the independent agency.
The Institute of Peace was created by Congress in 1984 to work toward resolving international conflict and has long maintained it operates outside the president’s executive authority.
The administration, however, argues that the organization is an executive branch entity and therefore subject to presidential authority and direction.
The emergency petition carries echoes of a separate and ongoing dispute over efforts to attach Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center across Washington.
USIP board members were removed by the administration earlier as part of the broader Elon Musk-led DOGE initiative to shrink the size and scope of the federal government.
The federal appeals court has not yet publicly responded to the emergency request for relief filed by the ousted board members and agency lawyers.
