A 28-year-old DOGE staffer is trying to seize a $500 million building and give it to the Trump administration free of charge, according to a report.
The building in question is the headquarters for the U.S. Institute for Peace, a congressionally funded but independent think tank that Elon Musk’s team has overtaken this month.
The Trump administration fired the the institute’s board on March 14, and after a tense standoff with the think tank’s staffers, DOGE’s goons forced their way into the Washington, D.C., building. Last week, most of the staff at the agency were fired.
Former officials at USIP have since sued Donald Trump and his team, asking the courts “to stop Defendants from completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute,” according to Wired. Documents filed by the defendants in the case show how Nate Cavanaugh, a young tech entrepreneur on Musk’s team, planned to take control of the USIP’s headquarters after he was placed in charge of the think tank last week.
In a letter to the acting administrator of the Musk-controlled General Services Administration (GSA), where Cavanaugh previously operated, he wrote that “it is in the best interest of USIP, the federal government, and the United States for USIP to transfer its real property located at 2301 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, D.C. 20037, to GSA and to seek an exception from the 100 percent reimbursement requirement for the building.”
Cavanaugh estimated that the building, with five floors covering around 150,000 square feet, had a “fair market value” of $500 million.
In a letter responding to Cavanaugh’s request, Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, who now leads the Office of Management and Budget, offered his approval “to set the amount of reimbursement at no cost for the transfer of the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) headquarters building.”
“The effort to transfer the building to GSA is part of the DOGE playbook to run agencies through a wood chipper. That’s what they’re trying to do,” George Foote, who was long an outside general counsel to USIP, told Wired. “They’re trying to kill the agency, which they have no right to do.”
The fired USIP staffers are trying to block the building transfer as part of their legal battle. Trump’s lawyers argue that that the executive branch has the authority to do what it wants with the agency and its assets.
“Taxpayers funded this $100 million building for a publicly-funded ‘research institute’ that has operated with no oversight and failed to deliver peace,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to the Daily Beast. “President Trump and his administration are making all publicly-funded agencies accountable to the American people.”
USIP is just the latest agency that DOGE has effectively eliminated—the list includes foreign aid organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Inter-American Foundation, and the U.S. African Development Foundation,
The USIP was founded in 1984 by legislation that was signed into law by Ronald Reagan. Until this month, it has pursued research and analysis into achieving global peace.
Construction of its headquarters was completed in 2011. It cost Congress $186 million to build. A page on the site for the firm that designed the building, Safdie Architects, says that the building “has become a national symbol of peace on the Capitol’s skyline, expressing lightness, transparency and openness.”
