Trump Official Gave Free Tickets to GOP Group to Heckle Black Artist

Kennedy Center interim president Rick Grenell sent in a group of gay conservatives to heckle and harass a Black performer during her concert because she was a “liberal.”

Prominent fingerstyle guitarist Yasmin Williams performed at the Kennedy Center on September 18 at a concert she had committed to before the Trump administration’s culture war on the iconic theater.

Washingtonian reported that Kennedy Center workers learned that 50 seats at Williams’s show had been saved for the Log Cabin Republicans, a nonprofit group that seeks to simultaneously “support LGBT issues and conservative values.” The center increased security in the venue as about 20 men in MAGA hats took their seats.

“They said they were concerned for my safety,” Williams told Washingtonian. “There were about 20 guys in suits, and some of them were wearing MAGA hats.”

In their newsletter, the “Bi-Weekly,” Log Cabin Republicans president Andrew Manik told his group that Williams was a “vocal opponent of President Trump,” and ordered them to “make sure the audience is filled with Patriots.” The email also said that some attendees would get tickets for free drinks.

The concert seats were reserved for them by Grenell, multiple Kennedy Center employees said, and one of his staffers directed the Log Cabin Republicans to them when they arrived.

Nevertheless, Williams took the stage.

“I’ve been grappling with whether I should do this show for a while, and I’m here!” she said as she began to strum her guitar. “I decided to do this show to support the people … who made the Kennedy Center the prestigious place that it was. Sadly, I have to say ‘was,’ because of the hostile takeover from the Trump administration. It seems to have tarnished the reputation of this place.”

“I don’t support the new board at all,” she continued. “Especially you, Rick Grenell, I am not a fan of yours at all.”

This was met with claps and a smattering of boos, and one attendee even yelled at Williams to give a shout-out to the recently deceased Charlie Kirk. Eventually, the group moved elsewhere and Williams continued her show.

This was the culmination of months of antagonism from Grenell. In April, Williams emailed the interim president asking him if Trump’s overhaul of the center would lead to any logistical changes. She described what he sent back as “absolutely insane.”

He told her that any artist who canceled a show out of protest “did so because they couldn’t be in the presence of Republicans,” asking Williams, “Who is the intolerant one?”

“Let me remind, YOU reached out to me unsolicited and accused me of being an intolerant. Don’t be a victim now. You asked,” he concluded.

While Grenell’s gambit with the Log Cabin Republicans is absolutely nefarious, the state suppression of art is incredibly commonplace in this administration, as its culture crackdown has reached the Smithsonian and national parks.

Despite video proof of the disruption, the Kennedy Center disputes the claims. “This is an absolutely ridiculous claim. There was no coordinated effort by the Kennedy Center. Grenell had no involvement. We did not even know they were coming,” Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told The Washington Post. “They did not heckle and frankly it is defamation of character for her to say that—she however bashed Grenell and the Center from the Kennedy Center stage. Republicans are patrons too and they are welcome at the Kennedy Center just like anyone else.”

A federal judge on Wednesday smacked down the Trump administration’s attempt to condition federal disaster relief on states’ immigration enforcement cooperation.

A coalition of 20 Democratic state attorneys general sued the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency in May, on the grounds that they had illegally imposed “immigration conditions on billions of federal dollars appropriated by Congress to support critical emergency services and infrastructure projects.”

To be eligible for federal funds, states were directed to comply with a number of conditions. For instance, they were to provide federal immigration agents “access to detainees” and “honor requests for cooperation, such as participation in joint operations, sharing of information, or requests for short term detention of an alien pursuant to a valid detainer.” They were also forbidden from operating “any program that benefits illegal immigrants or incentivizes illegal immigration.”

Judge William E. Smith of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island ruled in the states’ favor Wednesday, finding the administration’s conditions unconstitutional and in violation of federal law, and ordering them removed.

Smith deemed the immigration-related conditions “unlawfully ambiguous,” “overbroad,” and “unrelated to the underlying programs”—considering the grants “fund programs such as disaster relief, fire safety, dam safety, and emergency preparedness.” Tying the aid to immigration cooperation is also coercive, he said, since “states rely on these grants for billions of dollars annually in disaster relief and public safety funds that cannot be replaced by state revenues.”

This story has been updated.

Vice President JD Vance wants everyone to stop calling people who they disagree with Nazis—but some of us are old enough to remember when he called President Donald Trump “America’s Hitler.”

Speaking in Concord, North Carolina, Wednesday, Vance urged people to turn down the temperature following a deadly shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas.

“If you want to stop political violence, stop attacking our law enforcement as the Gestapo. If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi,” Vance said. “If you want to stop political violence, look in the mirror. That’s the way that we stop political violence in this country, and we’ve got to do it.”

One might refer Vance to a mirror. Just last week, he railed against a journalist who criticized Charlie Kirk’s legacy by calling them “soulless and evil.” That journalist immediately was doxed and received death threats. But looking back, Vance himself used “Nazi” rhetoric to describe his own boss.

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?” Vance reportedly wrote in a 2016 message to his then-roommate, Georgia state Senator Josh McLaurin.

What’s actually discouraging is just how quickly Vance changed his tune on Trump, transforming from a self-described “Never-Trump guy” into the number two man of Trump’s sweeping policy agenda targeting immigrants and dissenters. Vance once warned that Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.” Now that we’ve arrived in that place, he seems convinced someone else is to blame.

Meanwhile, Trump has never shown any interest in turning down the heat. The president has previously labeled his political opponents “vermin,” and those who disagree with him “the enemy within.” He called Democrats “evil,” “sick,” and “vicious” while feigning outrage over their “divisive” and “disgusting” rhetoric.

While delivering a eulogy at a memorial for Charlie Kirk over the weekend, Trump went off-script to say he wouldn’t embrace forgiveness as the right-wing activist’s own widow had done. “I hate my opponent. And I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry,” Trump said to laughter.

Donald Trump’s big mouth is starting to bite his allies: Even Ohio Representative Jim Jordan found it difficult to defend the president’s careless remarks regarding his administration’s growing attempts to censor the press.

In an interview with CNBC Wednesday, Jordan conceded that Trump’s language regarding his administration’s handling of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was tantamount to coercion.

“Congressman, can I just read you something? This is what the president of the United States says, and you tell me whether you think this sounds like coercion or not,” said Squawk Box host Andrew Ross Sorkin.

“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this,” Sorkin continued, quoting Trump. “Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Jordan, in turn, attempted to deflect the criticism, pointing out that Trump’s pressure ultimately was not successful, considering Kimmel’s triumphant return to some late-night broadcasters Tuesday night. But the Ohio Republican couldn’t defend the White House from a point-blank question.

“But that does sound like pressure from the government, right? There’s pressure, it may not be successful pressure, but it’s pressure from the government?” pressed Sorkin.

After a pause, Jordan relented: “I guess you could say maybe some.” He quickly clarified that he believed it boiled down to a “business decision.”

Other MAGA allies were less protective of the administration’s recent actions, which involved FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatening government action against any broadcaster that continued to air Kimmel after the comedian made a not untrue remark about Charlie Kirk’s assassin.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for one, likened Carr’s behavior to a “mafioso,” and recognized that opening the door to federal censorship would only end badly for Trump and his allies.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said; I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said on his podcast. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’—that will end up bad for conservatives.”

Trump’s MAGA influencer turned FBI Director Kash Patel is, once again, live-tweeting an active investigation.

A shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas on Wednesday killed two detainees and wounded a third. No ICE personnel were injured. Hours before the suspect’s identity was publicly reported, the FBI director took to X, publishing a photo of “evidence” related to the attack and speculating about the shooter’s motive, in a post with multiple grammatical errors and typos.

“While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical motive behind this attack (see photo below),” Patel wrote. The photo depicts a “recovered” shell casing bearing the phrase “ANTI-ICE.”

The suspect has since been identified in media reports as Joshua Jahn, who was found dead at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But the investigation is still ongoing.

And despite the seeming paucity of evidence on motive thus far, Patel saw it fit to label the incident a politically motivated “attack on “law enforcement.” It was “not a one-off,” he wrote, connecting it to a July attack at an ICE facility in the nearby Texas town “Prarieland [sic].”

The FBI director published the tweet less than five hours after the attack was first reported to police. Fourteen minutes later, he edited the post to fix two grammatical errors.

Observers on social media criticized the rashness of Patel’s post.

“Posting evidence during a very live investigation where you could plausibly have co-conspirators is very stupid and the head of the FBI should know better,” wrote Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State College of Law.

One would, apparently, be mistaken to expect Patel to have learned to exercise due restraint after drawing widespread criticism for his hasty, misleading communications in the immediate wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this month.