Kennedy Center Votes to Shut Down After Trump’s Brutal Loss in Court

President Trump’s handpicked board of trustees for the Kennedy Center voted Tuesday to immediately close the famed venue for renovations, shortly after a federal court blocked Trump’s latest attempt to put his name on the building.

The board claims that the center is in serious trouble, financially and structurally, pointing to a partial ceiling collapse earlier this month and alleging possible bankruptcy. The board argues that the only way to keep the center running and the building intact is to allow Trump to take over and have his name added to the building’s facade.

The board’s vote happened just minutes after U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that Trump cannot place his name on the building—or circumvent his ruling by trying to rename the plaza. The historic theater will now be closed indefinitely to all visitors.

“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

This is the third time since February that the center’s board has voted to close the building. They’re trying to shutter the venue ostensibly for repairs, but as Cooper noted in his ruling, emergency repairs are already allowed.

Trump is so set on getting his way that he has threatened to demolish the center if he isn’t allowed to put his name on it. His board of trustees continue to insist that the venue will collapse if he can’t take it over, despite the fact that his involvement directly led to artists canceling their performances, ticket sales plummeting, and fundraising drying up.

One would think that after repeatedly losing in court, Trump would get the message and stop trying to forcibly take over and slap his name on the center, but his ego won’t allow that. Trump thinks that if he can’t have his own center for the performing arts in the nation’s capital, it shouldn’t exist at all.

This story has been updated.

GOP Senator Mitch McConnell returned to Capitol Hill on Monday, after a 92-day absence, with large, dark bruises on his hands.

This is not the first time the 84-year-old senator has been seen with bruises like this. Similar questions about his bruised hands were raised in 2020, when the senator’s team assured the public there were “no concerns” about the injury. They haven’t commented on it this time either, even as McConnell returns from a three-month paid leave of absence after being found unconscious on the floor of his D.C. home in June. On top of the bruising, McConnell is bound to a wheelchair, and appears gaunt and mentally out of it. And upon his return, his team made sure to only have him conduct interviews in a section of the Senate building that didn’t allow camera recordings.

McConnell’s bruises look similar to the ones Donald Trump has been spotted with throughout his second term, with the president’s most recent flare up occurring during Labor Day weekend. While Trump has blamed the bruising on his intake of “big aspirin” or on his frequent hand-shaking, the White House has been incredibly secretive about that ordeal, as has McConnell’s team—even as the two senior citizens clearly have some other kind of health issue making their hands discolored.

FBI Director Kash Patel all but confirmed that the bureau’s agents will be deployed to voting locations this November.

As Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, multiple Democratic senators asked him whether the FBI would be at polling stations for the midterm elections. After trying to dodge their questions, he eventually admitted they would be there.

Senator Richard Blumenthal tried multiple times to get Patel to commit to saying that zero agents would be at the polls, to which Patel said that agents would be at the bureau’s field offices on Election Day, refusing to offer any guarantees.

“On Election Day, the FBI will follow the law. If there’s a reason to go there because there’s been a violation of law, we will, otherwise we won’t,” Patel said.

Senator Peter Welch also asked Patel about agents being sent to polling locations, specifically noting that Michigan’s Republican nominee for governor, Representative John James, said that Patel had told him that the FBI would have a presence in the state leading up to Election Day.

Patel replied that there were election crimes coordinators in all of the bureau’s 56 field offices. Welch was taken aback, saying, “I thought you weren’t going to be sending people to the polls.”

“When did you hear that? It’s just another lie,” Patel said, accusing Welch of lying for a campaign sound bite. When Welch pressed Patel, he repeated his line about election crimes coordinators, adding, “Election integrity is of paramount importance. This FBI will not shy away from that effort.”

“Do you pledge that you will not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November?” Welch asked.

“I have pledged unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies,” Patel said.

All of this raises questions as to whether President Trump plans to send federal law enforcement to polling places for the midterms, and what their orders will be. He has compliant lackeys in the form of Patel’s FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s bloated budget. Trump frequently accuses his political opponents of cheating and rigging elections against him. Based on how he acted in the 2020 presidential elections that he lost, those accusations seem more like confessions.

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could not inscribe “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” on the side of the building—almost certainly dashing Trump’s hopes to get his name placed somewhere on the historic cultural institution.

“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

Last month, the Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board voted to close the center and put Trump’s name back on it, circumventing a law stating “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas” by putting “restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” somewhere on the building.

Trump also could not skirt his order by renaming the grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” the judge ruled.

He declined to decide on the addition “endowed by The Trump Kennedy Center Fund,” because the center’s board said they would only do so if the endowment actually raised $100 million.

It seems like Trump’s useless, narcissistic change to the center should be done for good—even as Justice Department lawyers argue that not putting his name on the center would actually be worse for the venue.

“An order blocking the Board from appropriately recognizing President Trump will cause donors to flee, financial contributions to dry up, and structural rehabilitation to stop,” DOJ lawyers wrote. “There will simply not be the expertise or funding necessary to rebuild and renovate this decimated structure.”

This story has been updated.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is stoking the flames of Donald Trump’s $5,000 giveaway.

Speaking with reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday, the chief House Republican not only suggested that the government handouts could actually happen but said the process will “take time.”

Johnson opted not to elaborate when asked if the checks could be sorted out through the House’s reconciliation process.

“I’m not going to get into the details of all that because, again, we haven’t had the time to process that,” Johnson said. “It’s a big idea.… We’ve begun some of that process right now.”

“I spoke to the president about this late last night,” he continued. “He is very animated right now, as the vice president was this morning.”

It’s been six days since Trump announced his grand plan to dole out $5,000 to every American should Republicans win in the midterms. Only, the sudden and unexpected promise did not come with any details on how the checks would actually be distributed, or how the government could afford it.

Despite Trump’s repeated commitments to “drain the swamp” and “get rid of the debt,” the national debt has more than doubled since he first entered office—moving from $19.97 trillion in 2016 to more than $40 trillion today. During Trump’s first term, the debt grew by $7.8 trillion, and through the first year and a half of his second term, the sum has grown by another $3.8 trillion.

Trump’s last attempt to bribe Americans with money, stimulus checks during the Covid-19 pandemic, helped with his popularity but cost the country a lot in the end. The pandemic-era relief effort extended up to $1,800 to qualifying single adults, totaling $814 billion, according to IRS data collected by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

But those congressionally approved checks were significantly smaller than Trump’s current offer, which was unveiled just seven weeks before contentious midterm elections. And this time, American voters seem more skeptical that the president will actually follow through on his word.

“Personally, I think it’s just a publicity stunt and I don’t think that it’s ever gonna happen,” a voter named William told Fox News Digital Tuesday. “It’ll need to go through Congress, and I don’t think with the midterm elections … the possibility of that happening is just so far down the road.”

Daniel from Maryland told the network that he wasn’t sure if the U.S. “[has] the money for that.”

“And I think if we did, it should be going a couple different other places than that, for sure,” he added.