All posts tagged "Kennedy Center"

President Donald Trump's role as Kennedy Center chairman undercuts his board's bid to hide evidence in federal court, a legal analyst argued.

Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News broke down the latest filing in Rep. Joyce Beatty's (D-OH) lawsuit against the Trump-installed board in a Tuesday episode of "Legal AF."

Beatty has asked a federal judge to strip the board of presidential communications privilege, which it has invoked to withhold its chairman's communications. Klasfeld said that position collapses because Trump calls the shots as chairman, not just as president....

Donations to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts dropped so sharply after its board voted to add President Donald Trump's name to the building that reporters asked a tax expert to explain how those figures were even possible.

Records and internal presentations obtained by CNN show that gifts fell 42 percent from January to April compared with the previous three months and donation pledges over the same period fell by more than 100 percent – a drop-off so staggering that reporters sought an expert for clarification.

"A tax expert told CNN that a decline of that size is possible if earlier pledges were withdrawn," reporters wrote....

Former Kennedy Center employees allege that the very leak problem now being used to justify shutting down the arts institution was actually canceled from repair months ago by the same official now citing it as an urgent safety emergency.

A lawyer representing the unidentified former staffers sent internal documents and a letter to Congress on Thursday, part of growing scrutiny over President Trump's control of the Washington cultural institution, The New York Times reported. The center's main building has remained closed, with officials attributing the shutdown to worsening structural problems they say prior leadership never properly fixed.

Center executive director Matt Floca, appointed by Trump, defended the closure, saying newly discovered damage justified the sudden urgency....

President Donald Trump's Justice Department filed court papers contradicting his warning that the Kennedy Center could be demolished without his name on it.

The status report by the Department of Justice, filed in federal court on Wednesday, attributed the shuttered venue's closure to a series of safety hazards and indicated the building could reopen once those problems are fixed, The Washington Sun reported.

The DOJ's account is far more limited than the picture Trump has painted. The president has tied the landmark's future to whether his name ends up engraved on it, warning the center could be "ripped down" if he isn't recognized on the building....

A former Kennedy Center official flagged a "very unusual" omission in a newly surfaced federal tax filing as President Donald Trump threatens it.

A Friday article by The Atlantic dug into the 990 form for the Kennedy Center that covered the fiscal year that began in October 2024 and ended last September, spanning the final months of the arts complex's previous leadership and roughly seven months after Trump seized control.

The 990 noted, however, that the institution's annual audit had not been completed by the time of filing. Experts pointed the gap out to The Atlantic....

The push to shut down the Kennedy Center is a cover story meant to hide financial mismanagement tied to President Donald Trump, an attorney said.

In a Friday episode of Bulwark Takes, Nathaniel Zelinsky argued that Trump's demanded renaming and shutdown are a tell for a greater problem the president caused. Zelinsky is the lead counsel for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) in her legal fight over the future of the Kennedy Center.

"We think that the real reason they need to shut down or want to shut down is to hide the financial mismanagement that is the direct result of his name going on the Kennedy Center," Zelinsky said. "So we think these two things, the renaming and the shutdown, are intimately linked."...