Nicolai Haugsted
Trump accused of planning permanent change to landmark as lawyers demand immediate intervention
Donald Trump’s name has already found its way onto the front of the United States Institute of Peace. Lawyers fighting his administration’s takeover of the organization now fear bolts and lettering may no longer be enough.
Former leaders of the congressionally created institute filed an emergency motion Thursday asking a federal appeals court to prevent the administration from carving Trump’s name directly into the stone facade of its Washington headquarters while their wider legal battle remains unresolved.
Such an alteration, they argue, would cross a line that could prove considerably harder to undo than removing a sign.
From bolted-on letters to carved stone
Trump’s name appeared on the building in December 2025 in large silver lettering, after his administration announced that the institution would be known as the Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.
Lawyers representing the ousted leadership now say they have reason to believe something much more permanent is being prepared.
According to their emergency filing, the administration appears to have “taken steps to prepare to carve” Trump’s name into the facade. The lawyers describe the existing letters as comparatively temporary and argue that engraving the president’s name into the structure would inflict “irreparable harm.”
No public confirmation has established that carving is imminent. The White House and State Department did not immediately answer questions from The New York Times on Thursday about whether such work was planned.
Arguments over the lettering are merely the latest chapter in a dispute stretching back to the early months of Trump’s second term.
Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 targeting USIP as part of his administration’s drive to shrink parts of the federal government. Staff connected to Elon Musk’s government-efficiency operation later moved against the organization, and most USIP employees were fired. A struggle for control of its headquarters followed.
USIP’s ousted leadership has maintained that Congress created the institute as an independent organization and that the president therefore lacked authority to take control of it.
A federal district judge sided with the institute in May 2025, ruling that the administration’s takeover was unlawful. The legal fight subsequently moved into the appeals process, leaving the status of the institution and its property contested.
Lawyers say the architecture itself carries a message
Thursday’s filing goes beyond an argument over whose name belongs above the door.
USIP’s former leaders say the headquarters was largely financed through private donations and designed deliberately to represent the institute’s independent peace-building mission.
Their motion accuses Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio of continuing to undermine that independence despite the ongoing litigation.
“Unsatisfied with the relative impermanence of external lettering, Appellants apparently now intend to carve President Trump’s name into the façade of USIP’s privately owned headquarters building while this litigation is pending,” the filing says.
Lawyers also describe the headquarters as “a work of expressive architecture” intended to symbolize USIP’s “independent mission.”
Changing the stone itself, they argue, would therefore amount to more than another branding exercise.
Timing makes the USIP dispute particularly striking.
Across Washington, a separate legal battle has been raging over Trump’s attempts to attach his name to the Kennedy Center. A federal judge previously ruled that federal law reserves the performing arts center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy and ordered Trump’s name removed.
Trump and the center’s Trump-aligned board have continued exploring other ways of recognizing him at the site, while the building has now been closed for what officials describe as necessary renovations. A judge ruled this week that the administration must provide 30 days’ notice before undertaking major alterations, amid concerns that the structure could even face demolition.
USIP’s former leadership is trying to secure judicial intervention before chisels — assuming that is indeed the administration’s plan — ever reach the stone.
