A senior State Department official who was fired as a speechwriter during President Donald Trump 's first term and has a history of incendiary statements has been appointed to lead the embattled U.S. Institute of Peace.
The move to install Darren Beattie as the institute's new acting president is seen as the latest step in the administration's efforts to dismantle the embattled organization, which was founded as an independent, non-profit think tank. It is funded by Congress to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts across the globe. The battle is currently being played out in court.
The State Department confirmed the appointment in a statement to the Associated Press on Saturday.
Beattie, who currently serves as the under secretary for public diplomacy at the State Department and will continue on in that role, was fired during Trump's first term after CNN reported that he had spoken at a 2016 conference attended by white nationalists. He defended the speech he delivered as containing nothing objectionable.
A former academic who taught at Duke University, Beattie also founded a right-wing website that shared conspiracies about the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and has a long history of posting inflammatory statements on social media.
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” he wrote on October 2024. “Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
A State Department official confirmed Beattie's appointment by the USIP board of directors, which currently includes Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “(W)e look forward to seeing him advance President Trump’s America First agenda in this new role,” they said.
The USIP has been embroiled in turmoil since Trump moved to dismantle it shortly after taking office as part of his broader effort to shrink the size of the federal government and eliminate independent agencies.
Trump issued an executive order in February that targeted the organization and three other agencies for closure. The first attempt by the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly under the command of tech billionaire Elon Musk, to take over its headquarters led to a dramatic standoff.
Members of Musk’s group returned days later with the FBI and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police to help them gain entry.
The administration fired most of the institute's board, followed by the mass firing of nearly all of its 300 employees in what they called “the Friday night massacre.”
The institute and many of its board members sued the Trump administration in March, seeking to prevent their removal and to prevent DOGE from taking over the institute's operations. DOGE transferred administrative oversight of the organization’s headquarters and assets to the General Services Administration that weekend.
District Court Judge Beryl A. Howell overturned those actions in May, concluding that Trump was outside his authority in firing the board and its acting president and that, therefore, all subsequent actions were also moot.
Her ruling allowed the institute to regain control of its headquarters in a rare victory for the agencies and organizations that have been caught up in the Trump administration’s downsizing. The employees were rehired, although many did not return to work because of the complexity of restarting operations.
They received termination orders — for the second time, however, — after an appeals court stayed Howell's order.
Most recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied the U.S. Institute of Peace’s request for a hearing of the full court to lift the stay of a three-judge panel in June. That stay led to the organization turning its headquarters back over to the Trump Administration.
In a statement, George Foote, former counsel for the institute, said Beattie's appointment “flies in the face of the values at the core of USIP’s work and America’s commitment to working respectfully with international partners” and also called it “illegal under Judge Howell’s May 19 decision.”
“We are committed to defending that decision against the government’s appeal. We are confident that we will succeed on the merits of our case, and we look forward to USIP resuming its essential work in Washington, D.C. and in conflict zones around the world,” he said.
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