Ousted U.S. Institute of Peace board members filed an urgent motion in a D.C. federal appeals court Thursday to block President Donald Trump from carving his name into the face of the organization’s downtown headquarters.

The leaders of the institute, who were axed last year in Trump’s effort to dismantle the nonpartisan think tank, said the administration has imminent plans to etch the president’s name into the building, according to the emergency motion. The move would cause “irreparable harm” to the institute’s mission as an independent nonprofit, the filing argued.

The Institute of Peace became a target of the Elon Musk-led effort to drastically downsize the federal government shortly after Trump returned to the White House last year. Thursday’s filing was the latest in a lawsuit brought by the institute’s ousted board members and president in March 2025, shortly after staff members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency seized the building on Constitution Avenue with the help of district police and the FBI. The lawsuit seeks to stop the Trump administration from taking control of the organization’s operations.

The administration will maintain control over the institution while the litigation plays out. The headquarters has been moved under the purview of the State Department, which has mostly used the building as an event space.

In December, the administration bolted Trump’s name in silver letters above the building’s engraved title. The move came after the State Department said it had renamed the institute to the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” to “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.”

The former board members said in Thursday’s filing that the president is “unsatisfied” with the impermanent nature of the lettering and alleged that a contractor has already been chosen to engrave Trump’s name into the building. The filing did not say why there is reason to believe the engraving is imminent. A spokesperson for the board members’ lawyers did not immediately return MS NOW’s request for comment.

“The building — which was largely funded by private donations to USIP as a tax exempt nonprofit corporation — is a work of expressive architecture designed to be ‘symbolic of USIP’s independent mission,” the filing said. “Alteration of the design to impose a different message would cause irreparable harm.”

The institute has argued the organization is an independent creation of Congress that falls outside of the president’s executive authority. The Trump administration has countered that the institute is an executive branch organization, over which the president has full authority.

According to the filing, lawyers for Kenneth Jackson, the DOGE official installed as the acting president of the institute after its takeover, told the former board members that they were not aware of any “imminent” plans to engrave Trump’s name on the building. But Jackson’s counsel “did not confirm that no such action would be taken pending the outcome of this litigation,” the filing said.

In response to the emergency filing, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly called the institute a once “bloated, useless entity that blew $50 million per year while delivering no peace,” adding that renaming the independent institute after Trump is “a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”

The fight over the lettering is similar to another playing out blocks away at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump threatened to demolish the center unless a federal judge allows him to permanently etch his name into its marble facade.

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