By GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The staff was already jittery.

The raiders from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had disposed of the U.S. Institute of Peace board, its acting president and its longtime outside counsel. But until 9:30 p.m. on Friday, March 28, there was hope the damage might somehow be limited.

Then termination notices started popping up in personal emails. That was only the start.

After ending his sojourn in Washington, Musk left behind a wounded federal government. DOGE’s playbook was consistent: Show up physically, take over the facility and information technology systems, fire the leadership and replace it with DOGE associates. Dismiss the staff. Move so quickly that the targets and the courts have little time to react, let alone reverse whatever damage has already occurred.

Thousands of workers across the federal government saw the playbook in action over the last four months. But the Institute of Peace, a small, 300-employee organization, is unique: The blitz during its takeover has been, for the moment, reversed in court. The headquarters taken away in a weekend of lightning moves is back in the hands of its original board and acting president.

The question they must answer now is a point that U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell made during one hearing: Even a win “makes no promises” about how difficult or possible it will be to put the Institute of Peace back together. “A bull in a China shop breaks a lot of things,” the judge said.

Nearly three weeks since the judge delivered a win, the institute is slowly trying to reboot. But there are barriers, and winning might not mean full restoration. For other agencies and departments fighting their own DOGE battles, it is a cautionary tale.

Targeting an agency aimed at fostering peace

The Institute of Peace was created by Congress in the 1980s. President Ronald Reagan signed the bill into law in 1985. Described as an independent, nonprofit think tank funded by Congress, its mission has been to work to promote peace and prevent and end conflicts while working outside normal channels such as the State Department. When DOGE came knocking, it was operating in 26 conflict zones, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and Burkina Faso.

The institute was one of four organizations targeted by President Donald Trump’s Feb. 19 Executive Order 14217. The order said it was being enacted to “dramatically reduce the size of the federal government.”

The institute’s acting president, career diplomat and former Ambassador George Moose, and longtime outside counsel George Foote tried to explain to DOGE representatives that the institute was an independent nonprofit outside the executive branch.

That attempt was for naught. At 4 p.m. on March 14, most of the institute’s board was fired by email. The lone holdovers were ex officio — Cabinet members Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio and the National Defense University’s president, Vice Adm. Peter Garvin. Within minutes of the emails, DOGE staff showed up and tried to get into the building but failed over the next several hours during a standoff.

That, according to court documents, kicked off a weekend of pressure by the FBI on institute security personnel. DOGE returned the following Monday and got into the headquarters with help from the FBI and Washington police officers.

Foote thought the local officers were there to expel the DOGE contingent but learned quickly they were not. He, security chief Colin O’Brien and others were escorted out by local authorities. “They have sidearms and tasers and are saying you can’t go anywhere but out that door,” Foote said. “I had no choice. ‘You guys have the guns, and I don’t.’”

The board filed a lawsuit the following day and asked for a temporary restraining order. Howell expressed dissatisfaction with DOGE’s tactics but declined to restore the fired board members or bar DOGE staff from the headquarters.

By then a DOGE associate, Kenneth Jackson, had been named as acting president of the organization by the ex officio board members. Employees held out hope that the organization would not be disassembled because Jackson was asking questions as if he might do an assessment of the organization’s work, said Scott Worden, director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia programs.

The staff knew what he’d done as the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Now Jackson was at the Institute of Peace, but they were hopeful “we would have a process of explanation or review of our work,” Worden said.

Then came March 28. The notices came alphabetically. By the time it was finished, shortly before midnight, almost all the institute’s 300 employees had been let go.

The actions reverberated

The impact was “profound and devastating on a few levels,” Worden said. First, employees at the institute are not government employees so they got no government benefits or civil service protections. Insurance also was gone — critical for employees fighting health problems. Partners abroad also suddenly lost their support and contacts. It left “thousands of partners in a lurch,” he said.

The lawyers representing board members in their lawsuit asked for a court hearing as soon as possible to head off rumors of more mayhem to come. But when they walked into courtroom 26A of the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse at 10 a.m. on April 1, the headquarters and other assets were gone, too. It was, Howell said at the hearing, “a done deal.”

Over the weekend, as workers reeled, DOGE was making personnel changes of its own. Jackson had given way to DOGE representative Nick Cavanaugh, whose name was on the documents that allowed DOGE to take control of Institute of Peace assets and transfer the headquarters — built in part with private donations — to the General Services Administration.

Howell was incredulous that it had been accomplished in two days. In court, the Trump administration’s attorney, Brian Hudak, laid out the timeline, making clear that the newly named president of the institute had not only been authorized to transfer the property but also the request had gone through proper channels. For the second time, Howell refused to stop the actions.

Throughout hearings, Howell struggled with how to describe the institute — whether it was part of the executive branch and under the Republican president’s authority. That was central to the case. The government argued that it had to fall under one of the three branches of government and it clearly wasn’t legislative or judicial. Lawyers defending the government also said that because presidents appointed the board, presidents also had the authority to fire them.

The White House also maintained that despite decades of operation and an annual budget of around $50 million, the institute had failed to bring peace and was rightfully targeted.

Howell’s May 19 opinion concluded that the institute “ultimately exercises no Executive branch power under the Constitution but operates, through research, educational teaching, and scholarship, in the sensitive area of global peace.”

“In creating this organization,” the judge said, “Congress struck a careful balance between political accountability, on the one hand, and partisan independence and stability, on the other.”

She added that even if the organization was part of the executive branch, the law that created it set specific steps for firing the board members and none of those had been followed. Because the board was fired illegally, all subsequent actions — including replacing Moose, firing the staff and transferring the headquarters — were “null and void,” she said in her ruling.

The government filed a notice of appeal and asked Howell to stay her order. She said no. The government has requested a stay with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

What it looks like now

Two weeks later, about 10% of the people who would normally be inside the headquarters, about 25 people, are there, doing maintenance, getting systems running and trying to get to the institute’s funding.

Any physical damage comes more from inattentiveness than malice — food that spoiled, leaks that went unfixed, popup security barriers needing maintenance. Desks are empty but with paperwork and files strewn across them, left by the speed of the takeover.

O’Brien, the security officer, praised the General Services Administration and security managers who tried to keep the building going. But getting systems fully functioning will entail lots of work. “We’re the first ones to get behind the looking glass,” O’Brien said.

Foote said those returning continue to try to locate and access the institute’s funding. That includes funds appropriated for this fiscal year by Congress and the part of the endowment moved during the takeover. He said transferring funds within the federal government is “complicated.” The result: Workers are furloughed, and overseas offices will remain closed.

Nicoletta Barbera, acting director for the U.S. Institute of Peace’s West Africa and Central Africa programs, is one of the furloughed workers.

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“We had USIP representatives based in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger that, overnight, were left with no support system from anyone here in HQ,” she said. The programs were focused on preventing terrorism by supporting women and young people, to “identify signs of radicalization.”

Barbera said a recent attack in Burkina Faso ended with “hundreds of atrocities and deaths.”

“And I couldn’t just stop but think, what if I could have continued our work there during this time?” she said.

Moose has said the speed at which the organization gets back to work depends on numerous factors, including the appeals process. But, he said, there will likely be lasting damage — “the traumatic effects this has had on the people who have been impacted by it.”

“And, obviously, that includes our own … staff members,” Moose said, “but it also extends to the people with whom we collaborate and work all around the world. That’s going to be hard to repair.”

By SEUNG MIN KIM, KIRSTEN GRIESHABER and GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Germany’s new leader is meeting President Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday as he works to keep the U.S. on board with Western support for Ukraine, help defuse trade tensions that pose a risk to Europe’s biggest economy and further bolster his country’s long-criticized military spending.

Trump and Chancellor Friedrich Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump’s relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president’s first term.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks at the municipal congress of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB) in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday June 3, 2025. (Michael Kappeler/dpa via AP)

The 69-year-old Merz is a conservative former rival of Merkel’s who took over her party after she retired from politics. Merz also comes to office with an extensive business background — something that could align him with Trump.

On Thursday, Merz told reporters in Washington ahead of his meeting with Trump that “the meeting has been well prepared on all sides.” He said he wants to discuss the Ukraine war, tariffs and NATO spending.

“We will have to talk about NATO — we changed the constitution in Germany so that we can spend the means that need to be spent,” Merz said, adding that “we want to become the strongest conventional army in the European Union.” Before it took office, Merz’s coalition pushed plans through parliament to enable higher defense spending by loosening strict rules on incurring debt.

Still, Merz said he didn’t anticipate major breakthroughs on any of the key issues that he planned to discuss with Trump.

A White House official said topics that Trump is likely to raise with Merz include Germany’s defense spending, trade, Ukraine and what the official called “democratic backsliding,” saying the administration’s view is that shared values such as freedom of speech have deteriorated in Germany and the country should reverse course. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the discussions.

But Merz told reporters Thursday morning that if Trump wanted to talk German domestic politics, he was ready to do that but he also stressed Germany holds back when it comes to American domestic politics.

Merz will want to avoid an Oval Office showdown of the kind that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa experienced in recent months. Asked about the risk of a White House blow-up, Merz spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said on Monday that the chancellor is “well-prepared” for the meeting and that he and Trump have “built up a decent relationship, at least by phone” and via text messaging.

Keeping Ukraine’s Western backers together

Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, traveling to Kyiv with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving Zelenskyy in Berlin last week. He has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.

The White House official said Trump on Thursday will stress that direct peace talks must continue.

In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.”

Under Merz’s immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has vowed to keep up the support and last week pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any range limits.

Military spending

At home, Merz’s government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump’s first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, and Trump is now demanding at least 5% from allies.

The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that 5% mark.

Scholz set up a 100 billion euro ($115 billion) special fund to modernize Germany’s armed forces — called the Bundeswehr — which had suffered from years of neglect. Germany has met the 2% target thanks to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027.

Merz has said that “the government will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe.” He has endorsed a plan for all allies to aim to spend 3.5% of GDP on their defense budgets by 2032, plus an extra 1.5% on potentially defense-related things like infrastructure.

Germany’s economy and tariffs

Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump’s tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.

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Germany exported $160 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about $85 billion more than what the U.S. sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.

“Germany is one of the very big investors in America,” Merz told reporters Thursday morning. “Only a few countries invest more than Germany in the USA. We are in third place in terms of foreign direct investment.”

The U.S. president has specifically gone after the German auto sector, which includes major brands such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. Americans bought $36 billion worth of cars, trucks and auto parts from Germany last year, while the Germans purchased $10.2 billion worth of vehicles and parts from the U.S.

Trump’s 25% tariff on autos and parts is specifically designed to increase the cost of German-made automobiles in hopes of causing them to move their factories to the U.S., even though many of the companies already have plants in the U.S. with Volkswagen in Tennessee, BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and South Carolina.

There’s only so much Merz can achieve on his view that tariffs “benefit no one and damage everyone” while in Washington, as trade negotiations are a matter for the European Union’s executive commission. Trump recently delayed a planned 50% tariff on goods coming from the European Union, which would have otherwise gone into effect this month.

Far-right tensions

One source of strain in recent months is a speech Vice President JD Vance gave in Munich shortly before Germany’s election in February, in which he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy on the continent and said there is no place for “firewalls.”

That term is frequently used to describe mainstream German parties’ refusal to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, which finished second in the election and is now the biggest opposition party.

Merz criticized the comments. He told ARD television last month that it isn’t the place of a U.S. vice president “to say something like that to us in Germany; I wouldn’t do it in America, either.”

Moulson reported from Berlin. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

“Life of Chuck” is a peculiar movie with grandiose ambitions. It teases out a cosmic mystery about life and some guy named Charles Krantz ( Tom Hiddleston ) in a story told in reverse chronological order that gets smaller and smaller with each act. This is a story that begins with the apocalypse and ends with a middle school dance. Well, kind of. I’m not out to spoil (much) here.

It’s based on a novella by Stephen King (part of his “If It Bleeds” collection of stories) and adapted by filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who was also behind “Gerald’s Game” and “Doctor Sleep.” This, however, is not a horror movie, though there are spooky elements laden with ominous ambiguity. There are also big, joyful dance numbers, a fair share of cynical jokes, whimsical narration from Nick Offerman, earnest conversations about the end of the world and plenty of references to Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” — in particularly “I am large, I contain multitudes.” That is most movingly conveyed in a sweet scene with a teacher (Kate Siegel) and a middle school aged Chuck ( Benjamin Pajak ) on the last day of school.

“Life of Chuck” wants to make you think, feel, laugh and cry about the most mundane of characters: Krantz, a white, American, middle-aged accountant, whose life is modest and whose childhood was full of tragedy and loss. And while I certainly enjoyed elements of this odyssey in reverse, I was ultimately left feeling very little — especially about Chuck and the questionable end-of-film explanation that ties it all together.

This image released by Neon shows Karen Gillan in a scene from “The Life of Chuck.” (Neon via AP)

Hiddleston, it should be said, is not in “Life of Chuck” as much as one might expect for being the titular character. His presence looms large certainly — it’s why we’re here. But, in reality, Hiddleston as a performer is more of an ensemble player among a sea of recognizable faces.

In the third act, which opens the film, he’s everywhere — on billboards and television ads, cheerily smiling in a nondescript grey suit, coffee cup in one hand, pencil in another. “Charles Krantz. 39 great years! Thanks Chuck!” the signs read.

It’s the background until it’s all that’s left as the world appears to be ending. The internet has gone out. Parts of California have drifted into the Pacific. Environmental disasters rage. Suicides are skyrocketing. Hail Mary life decisions are being made. And poor Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is just trying to do his job as a school teacher. His parent-teacher conferences have become parent therapy sessions. Everyone — a maintenance guy (Matthew Lillard), a funeral director (Carl Lumbly) — seems to want to philosophize about what’s going on, and who the heck Chuck is. He has big conversations about the history of the universe with his ex-wife (Karen Gillan). And together they wait for the end.

In act two, a grown Chuck (Hiddleston) dances in the street in a joyful six-minute sequence. Compelled to move when he hears the beat of a street drummer (Taylor Gordon), he even pulls in a stranger to join him (Annalise Basso).

This image released by Neon shows Mia Sara, from left, Mark Hamill, and Cody Flanagan in a scene from “The Life of Chuck.” (Neon via AP)

In act one, he’s a kid ( Pajak ) who has lost both his parents and unborn sister in a car accident and is living with his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara, who it’s nice to have back on screen). It’s during this segment, which comprises nearly half the movie, that he learns to dance. First, it’s through his grandmother freestyling to Wang Chung and curating a movie musical marathon (including “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Cabaret, “Cover Girl” and “All That Jazz”). Then it’s at school, where little Chuck learns the perks of being a straight man who can dance. There’s also a possibly haunted cupola on the top floor of their house that’s causing grandpa lots of anxiety.

This is a film with a big heart that has already made a significant impact on some moviegoers. Last fall it won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an honor which has produced many best picture nominees and winners.

And it’s one where a second viewing might be rewarding, so you can more appreciate the thoughtful throughlines and the piece as a whole since you know what it’s building toward.

But I also suspect this particular flavor of sentimentality might not be for everyone. This critic felt a bit like the film was trying to trick you into caring about Chuck, while revealing very little about the man he became and explaining too much about the mystery. And yet it’s a nice message, with nice performances and might be that kind of affirming hug of a film that someone is craving.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.”

Film reviews can also contain multitudes.

‘Life of Chuck’

A Neon release in select theaters on Friday, June 6; everywhere on Friday, June 13.

Rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language.

Running time: 110 minutes.

Two and a half stars out of four.

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BALTIMORE (AP) — Crews were working Thursday morning to contain and clean up a 2,000-gallon diesel fuel spill in Baltimore’s harbor, according to state and city officials.

Initially, Johns Hopkins Hospital reported a contained 200-gallon diesel fuel spill at its East Baltimore facility on Wednesday morning, but a few hours later the fire department responded to a 911 call for a spill at a marina in Harbor East more than a mile away, officials said. The state, city and U.S. Coast Guard began coordinating a response to the spill. In an update around 7 p.m., Hopkins reported that 2,000 gallons had spilled, officials said.

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More than 100 people worked through the night to make sure that the situation was under control and contained, Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott stressed that there’s no evidence to suggest that the spill was affecting drinking water in the area.

A boom was deployed on the water quickly and later crews began to skim the heating oil product off the water, Fire Chief James Wallace said. They’ve begun to flush the storm drain system to push the product to the harbor where they have skimmers to capture it, he said. That effort will continue through the majority of the day on Thursday. Officials explained that the water appears red due to dye in the fuel.

“Very speedy response, solid coordination, partnership with our state and federal resources have put us into the position right now,” Wallace said. “That’s what’s going to drive the remainder of the day and actually the coming days.”

Officials expect the containment and cleanup efforts will disrupt traffic well into the day Thursday, and they encouraged people to avoid the area.