WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Government Efficiency fired over 300 employees of the United States Institute of Peace on March 28, 2025, prompting court-ordered reinstatements and subsequent re-firings in ongoing legal battles.

The Department of Government Efficiency, led by then-Trump adviser Elon Musk, instigated purges of federal agencies with the mission of rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. The United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded independent nonprofit, became a symbol of the disruption caused by DOGE operations.

"Nobody was prepared for the complete destruction. And for what?" said Thea Price, a former program operations manager who returned from maternity leave one day before her first firing. After her second firing, Price and her husband lived on their personal reserves and applied for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

DOGE staffers entered the USIP building early in 2025, triggering a dispute over control of the institute. The staffers visited the headquarters multiple times and eventually took control of the building. Most members of the USIP board and the acting president were fired.

On the evening of March 28, 2025, termination notices were sent to USIP employees' personal emails. Within two hours, most of the 300-plus staffers were terminated.

USIP leaders and employees filed a lawsuit arguing that the institute is independent of the Executive Branch. A federal judge ruled that President Trump had acted outside his authority, restoring control of USIP to its previous leadership and reinstating employees with back pay.

In June 2025, an appeals court stayed the decision to reinstate USIP workers. After the appeals court stay, USIP staff were fired again.

The Government Accountability Office has not been able to determine how much was saved or lost by the DOGE reform efforts. "We don't know how much DOGE has saved," said Dominik Lett, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute. "Who is getting fired matters. How they're getting fired, will there be lawsuits?"

"What DOGE did is it cut so big and so deep and so randomly that when the Cabinet secretaries came in, and Elon Musk was gone, they realized that they had to bring some of these people back," said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kamarck found that about 25,000 people fired under DOGE operations were rehired because they were deemed essential.

The USIP case is currently suspended pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a related personnel case that could expand presidential control over agencies historically considered independent of the executive branch. More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration challenging DOGE's actions, including grant cancellations, mass firings, buyouts, restrictions on access to sensitive U.S. Treasury data and payment systems, and closure of federally funded programs.