The head of Wilson Centre, a well-known foreign policy think tank, resigned on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the actions at the Centre.
Republican President Mark Green's resignation and Musk's visit from a team at the Department of Government Efficiency showed that the President of the Executive Order signed last month was signed by the Trump administration.
Some leadership staff and senior government employees, including Green, have been banished, according to people who spoke about the terms of anonymity to avoid retaliation by political appointees in the Trump administration after members of the Doge team visited the center Monday and Tuesday. The center's dozens of federal employees are about a third of the workforce and will be placed on administrative leave.
The obvious outrage at the Wilson Center is the latest attempt by the Trump administration, bringing in federally funded institutions that have historically been independent under the control of administrative branches, in a much lower form. Musk and his task force have led efforts to cut down these agencies and various federal agencies.
Those familiar with Greene's resignation said he was offered the option: step down or fired. Green, a Wisconsin House member, Tanzania ambassador and head of the U.S. International Development Agency, which is now repealed during Trump's first term, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Wilson Center spokesman Ryan McKenna said Wednesday that the center had not commented on Green's resignation or Doge's visit. The White House declined to comment.
After calling for the centre to be reduced “to the minimum presence and function required by law,” Greene wrote in an email to members of the center and friends that the leader “is looking at the order and creating plans to follow.” He did not say whether the Centre would oppose the executive order.
Members of the Centre's board of trustees have been fired in recent weeks. On Tuesday evening, the board was listed as vacant on the centre website. Trump announced in January that he had fired one of his own appointees, Brian Hook. Bill Haslam, former Republican governor of Tennessee, has also been fired, a Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper reported.
Joe Asher, who was appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to chair the board in 2023, said last month that he and other Biden appointees had been fired by Trump.
“We were asked to resign early in the week,” he wrote.
He added that board members praised the centre as “first class” under Green's leadership.
In his email, Greene noted that when it was created in 1968 as a memorial to Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President, Greene, the Congress gave the Center a “special charter and mission.” Wilson won the Nobel Prize in 1919 for his role in establishing the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, in the wake of World War I.
The Wilson Center describes itself as “congress-chartered, scholarship-driven, fierce and nonpartisan.” Wilson himself was a Democrat, but the Center is not alongside political parties and has historically been run by members of both parties and bipartisan committees. It receives federal funds for the work, but also asks and accepts private donations to run fellowships and scholarship slates. They go primarily to academic researchers, but some are to journalists working on a residential book project, including a New York Times reporter.
The fellowship and scholarships appeared to continue on Wednesday, but their long-term fate is unknown. Donors may decide to terminate their financial support, depending on the composition of the new board and the direction of the centre.
The center is located in the Ronald Reaganville, downtown Washington. The building was also the home of USAID's headquarters until Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other aides to Trump demolish the agency and ended the lease there.
Congress created the Wilson Center, honoring the US president, Trump took over in February in a similar way to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Center. After he destroyed the committee, Trump was elected to its chairman. He has since shared his vision of rebuilding cultural institutions.
Green's predecessor, Jane Herman, is a Democrat who served as president of the Wilson Center until 2021, lamented news of Green's resignation and the administration's decision to target the Center on Tuesday.
“It has extraordinary scholarships and extraordinary influence around the world,” Herman said. “It's strictly nonpartisan, and the appeal for me – I left Congress early in the ninth semester, because I wanted to go somewhere that's a bipartisan problem solver focusing on international issues.”
Lala Jakes Reports of contributions.
