This is so sad & unnecessary @TheDemocrats have been calling artists urging them to cancel and attacking the Center non-stop. It's a calculated campaign. He continued, And now they have mentally unstable people taking action and vandalizing the Center. We've seen serious death threats and constant harassment. Commonsense Democrats must speak up before this violence takes a life.
The Brentano String Quartet had finished their performance when a special guest dropped in backstage: the US supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We thanked her for everything she had done for our country, recalls violinist Mark Steinberg. It was a nice moment. The year was 2016 and the place was the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
The president announced on Truth Social that the recently renamed center will close on July 4 for two full years of renovations. No better way to celebrate 250 years as a nation than by shutting down our center for the performing arts! Most high schools, given the opportunity to shut down their performing-arts departments, don't view it as an exciting, patriotic celebration, and prefer to have a bake sale.
Translation: It has been brought to my attention that due to the name change (but nobody's telling me it's due to the name change), but it's been brought to my attention that entertainers are canceling left and right, and I have determined that since the name change no one wants to perform there any longer,
I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, he said in a post on his Truth Social platform. The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result! The closure will start on July 4, to coincide with the 250th Independence Day celebration.
Kennedy Center vice president Kevin Couch has stepped down just 12 days after being appointed to the role. During his short stint, Couch served as vice president of artistic programming at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, known as the Kennedy Center - the national cultural centre of the US. In December, Kennedy Center's board "unanimously" voted to rename the institution the Trump-Kennedy Center following Trump replacing the chairman with himself and removing existing board members.
The District of Columbia will close numerous streets near the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Thursday evening, including the north- and southbound lanes of Rock Creek Parkway from Virginia Avenue, Northwest, to Shoreham Drive, Northwest. The National Symphony Orchestra will present a Brahms and Scriabin program this evening, an event that would not typically prompt road closures. But the center will also also host a premiere of Melania, a documentary about Melania Trump, on Thursday evening.
A year ago just a year ago the Kennedy Center in Washington DC was a world-class centre for the performing arts. It had a resident opera company, respected artistic teams, and a run of the acclaimed musical Hamilton to look forward to. It had a bipartisan board that upheld the dignity of an organisation that, since it was conceived of in the mid-20th century, had been treated with courtesy and supported by governments of both stripes.
In the wake of a slew of artist cancellations, Kennedy Center leadership says it wants to book "performers who aren't political." Apparently, that ethos doesn't extend to its film programming, as the Washington, DC venue is set to host the premiere of a new Melania Trump documentary on January 29th. The film, simply titled Melania, will be released in theaters worldwide by Amazon MGM on January 30th, 2026, reportedly as part of a $40 million licensing deal.
Toby Morton, a TV writer and producer who has worked on the long-running and joyfully offensive sitcom, said he purchased the domain in August after predicting the president would change the name from the Kennedy Center to the Trump Kennedy Center after he installed himself as chair and stocked the board with loyalists. The name change has brought turbulence to the institution, with several performers abruptly pulling out of scheduled concerts in protest.
Recently, the Trump administration faced a similar situation. After Donald Trump purported to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, the jazz musician Chuck Redd withdrew from a planned Christmas Eve concert. The administration's response was somehow both more authoritarian and comic than the one in the movie. The Kennedy Center's president, Richard Grenell, announced that the Center intends to sue Redd for his impudence. Grennell's letter threatening legal action depicts Redd as a sad loser suffering "dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support" and "lagging" attendance whose withdrawal, paradoxically, is "very costly to a non-profit Arts institution."
Good morning. Gusty winds will make today's high of around 36 feel much colder. The strong breezes persist overnight, with snow flurries possible and a low near 26. You can find me on Bluesky, I'm @abeaujon.87 on Signal, and there's a link to my email address below. This roundup is available as a morning email newsletter. Sign up here. Here's some administration news you might have blocked out:
Screenshot via Comedy Central A prescient writer for the irreverent Comedy Central show South Park correctly predicted that President Donald Trump would slap his name on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, so he bought up Trump-Kennedy Center web domains to troll the president. Writer Toby Morton bought the trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com domains back in August and is now plotting how best to parody Trump's vanity, according to The Washington Post.
