Trump Booed at Kennedy Center Despite Effort to Remake It in His Image

Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were booed at the prestigious national theater the president has spent months running into the ground.

While attending the opening night of Chicago at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Tuesday, Trump appeared to receive a mixed reaction from the audience.

One video posted by PatriotTakes on X showed Trump and Melania standing in the mezzanine at the Kennedy Center receiving some applause and some loud boos.

In a 31-second clip posted by Rapid Response 47, the boos are much less audible, until the last 10 seconds.

CNN reported that Trump received a “warm reception” compared to when he attended the opening show of Les Misérables in June, when he was protested by drag performers.

The Daily Caller’s Reagan Reese wrote on X that there had been two warring factions in the audience. “President Trump enters the Kennedy Center to loud cheers. Some boos, but the crowd drowned them out with more cheers,” she wrote.

Earlier this year, Trump announced that he planned to shutter the Kennedy Center for two years for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.”

Many have speculated that the planned temporary closure is an attempt by Trump to save face after his takeover of the institution—including renaming it the “Trump-Kennedy Center”—led to a sharp decline in ticket sales and multiple artists canceling shows.

The Trump administration is going to restore funding to Planned Parenthood, and conservatives are not happy.

Right-wing media outlet The Daily Wire reported Tuesday that the White House will continue Biden-era grants to the family planning organization for another year, but end them after that.

“The administration has issued the fifth and final year of Title X grants that were locked in place during the Biden presidency,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told the outlet. “The administration faced significant legal challenges in stopping any of these dollars from going out.”

Planned Parenthood has long been targeted by the right for its abortion and contraception services, even though it provides many other vital health programs, and the Trump administration’s decision immediately drew a backlash.

“This is an inexplicable slap in the face to the pro-life GOP base,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA Pro-Life America, told The Daily Wire. “Three out of 4 GOP base voters support defunding Planned Parenthood. One third of those voters say they’d be less enthusiastic about voting this November if the GOP abandons pro-life policies.”

Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America (who graduated from college more than two decades ago), complained on X Monday night that she and other abortion opponents were told that the funding would continue because “the rules require it.”

“Let’s talk about that,” Hawkins posted. “If we are going to claim we must follow ‘the rules’ to fund abortion vendors, then we should also enforce the law that prohibits mailing Chemical Abortion Pills. The Comstock Act is already federal law, and it makes it ILLEGAL to traffic dangerous abortion drugs by mail.

“The Trump Administration doesn’t get to ignore federal law when it comes to the predatory abortion industry and then reward the same industry with more taxpayer dollars!” Hawkins added.

The White House’s decision shouldn’t be mistaken as a friendly move toward reproductive rights. The Trump administration is in the midst of several court battles over its policies, and has appealed many losses to the Supreme Court.

Administration officials, who are staunchly anti-abortion, probably see one last year of Planned Parenthood funding as a small price to pay until they can ditch it altogether. In the meantime, though, it’s funny to see the president’s base fly into a rage even as he has successfully restricted abortion rights in many other ways.

The Army has suspended the aircrew that flew over Kid Rock’s house during a No Kings protest on Saturday.

Two Apache attack helicopters hovered outside the MAGA musician’s 27,000-square-foot Tennessee mansion, a replica of the executive estate that Rock has dubbed the “Southern White House.” In a bizarre exchange recorded by someone at Rock’s house, the “Bawitdaba” singer saluted the wayward copter.

“This is a level of respect that shit for brains Governor of California will never know,” Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, captioned the clip on X. “God Bless America and all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to defend her.”

A second video posted to Ritchie’s account revealed that two helicopters had passed by his wannabe presidential property.

The Army identified the aircraft as AH-64 Apache helicopters that were operating around Nashville. A military spokesperson told NBC News Monday that the aircraft flew from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to the Nashville area.

“Army aviators must adhere to strict safety standards, professionalism, and established flight regulations,” the Army said in a statement Monday. “An administrative review is underway to assess the mission and verify compliance with regulations and airspace requirements.”

The Army noted that it would take “appropriate action” if any violations are uncovered.

A spokesperson for the 101st Airborne Division told NBC News that the helicopters’ presence was “entirely coincidental” with the No King demonstrations taking place across the country on Saturday.

Ritchie, a country rapper from Detroit, has become an increasingly prominent figure in the MAGA scene in recent years. He played at the Republican National Convention in 2024, was present in the White House as Donald Trump signed an executive order to curb ticket scalping in March 2025, and headlined Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show in February.

He’s also gotten close with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., playing a prominent role in a series of agency-sponsored “Make America Healthy Again” adverts that featured Kennedy and Ritchie chugging milk and swimming in a pool with pants on.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project after a lawsuit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation—which argues that Trump acted beyond his authority when he demolished the East Wing to build said ballroom.

The Trust was awarded a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, suspending the project until the lawsuit is decided.

“The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote. “Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop!”

Enforcement of the ruling is paused for two weeks, while awaiting a probable appeal from the Trump administration—but Leon warned that “any above-ground construction over the next fourteen days that is not in compliance” with his ruling “is at risk of being taken down depending on the outcome of this case.”

Trump, incensed, took to Truth Social to rail against Leon’s decision.

“The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues me for a Ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World. I then get sued by them over the renovation of the dilapidated and structurally unsound former Kennedy Center, now, The Trump Kennedy Center (A show of Bipartisan Unity, a Republican and Democrat President!), where all I am doing is fixing, cleaning, running, and ‘sprucing up’ a terribly maintained, for many years,” Trump wrote. “Yet, The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Radical Left Group of Lunatics whose funding was stopped by Congress in 2005, is not suing the Federal Reserve for a Building which has been decimated and destroyed, inside and out, by an incompetent and possibly corrupt Fed Chairman.”

Trump’s ballroom was initially projected to cost $200 million, and the price has since ballooned to double that.

This story has been updated.

A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from defunding National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. 

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled that President Trump’s executive order last May to end federal funding for the two public broadcasting networks is illegal and unenforceable, saying that the First Amendment to the Constitution “does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.”

“It is difficult to conceive of clearer evidence that a government action is targeted at viewpoints that the President does not like and seeks to squelch,” Moss, who was appointed to the Washington, D.C., circuit by President Obama, wrote in his ruling. 

Trump and his fellow Republicans have long railed against PBS and NPR for what they perceive as bias towards liberals and Democrats. That’s not enough for the president to deny them federal funding, Moss said, because there is no legal precedent for it. 

“The Federal Defendants fail to cite a single case in which a court has ever upheld a statute or executive action that bars a particular person or entity from participating in any federally funded activity based on that person or entity’s past speech,” Moss wrote. “The First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type.” 

The heads of NPR (which sued the Trump administration last May) and PBS celebrated the decision. “Public media exists to serve the public interest — that of Americans — not that of any political agenda or elected official,” NPR’s president and CEO Katherine Maher said to the Associated Press. PBS President and  CEO Paula Kerger, called the executive order “textbook” viewpoint discrimination and retaliation. 

“At PBS, we will continue to do what we’ve always done: serve our mission to educate and inspire all Americans as the nation’s most trusted media institution,” Kerger said. 

Trump’s executive order cut off millions of dollars for PBS’s children’s programming from the Department of Education, resulting in layoffs for one-third of PBS Kids employees. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversaw the federal funding for PBS and NPR, was forced to close after Congress eliminated federal appropriations for the public outlets. 

The Trump administration will likely appeal the ruling, and it’s not clear how or if Congress will resume funding for PBS and NPR. Smaller and more rural communities with fewer news outlets were hit the hardest by the loss of public funding, as comedian John Oliver pointed out on HBO’s Last Week Tonight in November. Arkansas PBS even briefly considered ending its affiliation with the national PBS organization. Hopefully, this court ruling will spur a much-needed revival of public media funding in the U.S. 

This story has been updated.