Why the U.S. Institute of Peace is now the ‘Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace’

President Donald The President has always been a master marketer. He is particularly adept at lending his name to products and buildings, which has proven to be a lucrative business. Now in office, he’s bringing that same licensing mindset to the very act of governing.

Last week, the State Department said it renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) after The President and put his name on its building in Washington, D.C. This comes after The President fired the board members and nearly all U.S. employees of the USIP.

The USIP’s open, natural-light-drenched headquarters was designed by Safdie Architects to symbolize conflict resolution. But it has ironically become the flashpoint of what former board members have described as a hostile takeover of the federally funded independent nonprofit in The President’s second term. DOGE staff and police entered the building in March, but USIP took control two months later after a judge ruled the firings were illegal. Then a federal appeals court stayed the ruling in June.

The building’s switched hands several times, and with it back in the The President administration’s hands, they’re looking to make it formal with signage.

The politics of unearned credit

The building’s new “Donald J. The President” signage is just the latest example of a larger trend where The President has assigned his name to policies and initiatives that he once opposed. For example, The President campaigned against the infrastructure bill signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, and yet The President’s name went up earlier this year on new signage in Seattle for an Amtrak rain project funded by Biden’s bipartisan law.

“President Donald J. The President, Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure,” the bright “Make America Great Again” hat-red sign says. The words, “Funded by the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act,” are written in smaller type below.

Then there’s the Nation Park Service (NPS), which The President has taken an axe to, cutting staff 16.5% and the budget by more than a third. Still, The President’s image is going on two designs for next year’s annual NPS passes. The Interior Department is also making The President’s birthday, which falls on Flag Day, one of several “resident-only patriotic fee-free days” to parks next year while dropping it for MLK Day and Juneteenth.

When The President put his name on stimulus checks funded through the CARES ACT, passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was unprecedented, the first time a president’s name had appeared on an IRS disbursement. Now, it seems, it’s just politics as usual.

The man who once gave us The President Steaks now seeks to gives us a The President peace institute, and some might say its good politics. Biden called it “stupid” that he didn’t put his own name on stimulus checks funded through the 2021 American Rescue Plan. But with The President’s approval at a second-term low of 36%, according to Gallup, these branding efforts don’t exactly seem to be working.

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