A stand-off pitting Elon Musk’s DOGE against the US Institute of Peace – a Congressionally mandated government nonprofit that is not in the remit of the executive branch – ended late Monday after DC Metropolitan Police ejected staff members, including the acting president of the group.

On Monday night, out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow characterized the so-called efficiency team’s actions as an armed “break-in”.

Related

As Donald Trump sows chaos, even his most loyal followers are speaking out against him
“Something is afoot,” one conservative commentator noted.

“There are legitimate legal disputes as to whether this DOGE group has any legal authority over some of these agencies that they’re trying to get into, so they can take over their systems and fire their staff and shut them down,” Maddow said. “Those disputes are legal disputes that need to be sorted out legally.”

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

She added: “You can’t just use guns to force your way in, in the meantime, as a means of settling that dispute.”

“DOGE just came into the building — they’re inside the building — they’re bringing the F.B.I. and brought a bunch of D.C. police,” Sophia Lin, a lawyer for the institute, told The New York Times by telephone on Monday as she and other officials were escorted out.

George Moose, who was fired as the institute’s acting president last week but is challenging his dismissal, accused Mr. Musk’s team of breaking in.

“Our statute is very clear about the status of this building and this institute,” he told reporters. “So what has happened here today is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive branch of a private nonprofit corporation.”

Describing events around the Peace Institute incursion, which started Friday and included the appearance of two FBI agents accompanying the DOGE team, Maddow summed up, “What that is, is an armed assault on the U.S. government.”

“If there’s a legal dispute as to whether or not you are allowed in a U.S. government building and you cast that aside and say, ‘we’ve got guns,’ and that’s the grounds on which we’re coming in… that is an armed assault on a U.S. government office. That’s a break-in, that’s ‘call the cops’ territory, that’s ‘barricade the doors’ territory.”

Last week, the Trump administration fired all of the institute’s board members save three, including standing members Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Peter A. Garvin, the president of the National Defense University. They then voted to fire Acting Director Moose and install Kenneth Jackson, a State Department official who was involved in dismantling USAID.

The administration claims they were acting on that change when they ejected Moose and the rest of the institute’s staff. A sign on the doors to the building Monday night read, “Closed until further notice.”

Moose filed a suit over the weekend challenging his dismissal, while Democracy Forward lodged another suit over the involvement of US Marshals in the DOGE team’s takeover of the US-Africa Development Foundation earlier this month. Both nonprofits were targeted for elimination by Trump in a February executive order.

As demonstrated numerous times in the past several days, the Trump administration isn’t waiting for the courts to weigh in before acting.

On Friday, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations of Venezuelan gang members from the United States. Despite a court order barring the action, Homeland Security officials sent a planeload of the Tren de Aragua members on its way to El Salvador anyway.

The president of El Salvador, a Trump ally, tweeted afterward, “Oopsie… too late.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.