Since Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, Washington has experienced significant upheaval in its institutions. The United States Institute of Peace underwent a DoGE takeover that involved federal police occupying the building, taking over its board of directors and seizing control of its assets and operations. The majority of people who had worked there prior was fired or nudged toward resignation – with their severance conditional on a promise not to sue their old employer. It was renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.

In May 2025, the District Court ruled the takeover unlawful, which was appealed, pausing the decision’s impacts until further proceedings. In May of this year, it was reported members of the State Department were moving into the building, despite the ongoing legal dispute. Cockburn notes that regardless of what ends up happening in court, damage has been done to the institute’s work and its assets (which were largely privately funded), given that they have been under ambiguous control for months.

Up the river, the Kennedy Center also finds itself in the middle of an ongoing legal battle, following the hollowing out of the institution and the hampering of its operations.

Josef Palermo, who was hired as the Kennedy Center’s curator of visual arts and special programming after Trump took over, wrote for the Atlantic in April: “About a year elapsed between the moment President Trump took over the Kennedy Center in early 2025 and his declaration this past February that he’d decided to shut down the nation’s cultural center for two years. In between, we had seen artist cancellations, shrinking audiences,........

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