Trump’s Biggest Claim About the Kennedy Center Just Blew Up

The demise of the Kennedy Center began with Donald Trump.

Tax documents obtained by Zeteo Friday disprove the president’s repeated claims that he “saved” the revered arts center from financial collapse, and instead illustrate that Trump’s intimate involvement in the building’s affairs last year triggered the beginning of its rapid decline.

Mere weeks after Inauguration Day 2025, Trump announced that he would remove multiple Kennedy Center trustees and install himself as board chairman—the first time in the nonprofit’s history that it would be helmed by a sitting president rather than a private citizen. In the following months, Trump worked to replace the center’s board with a group of MAGA loyalists, change its programming, and alter its internal organization.

But the Kennedy Center was not losing “hundreds of millions” or “sometimes hundreds of billions,” as Trump claimed on Wednesday, after a federal judge dealt his Kennedy Center plans another blow.

In 2024, the Kennedy Center reported more than $306 million in revenue and $558 million in net assets, according to that year’s tax return.

By September 30, 2025, the center recorded $517 million in revenue and $778 million in net assets, though its position was aided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended $257 million to buoy the institution. Behind the scenes, program revenue had declined by $16 million, and pledges and grants declined by $30 million, according to the center’s 2025 return obtained by Zeteo.

Three months later, Trump slapped his name on the building’s facade, an illegal decision that tanked ticket sales and donations at the performing arts center. Nonetheless, Trump’s revised Kennedy Center board asserted that adding Trump’s name to the building was the only way to ensure the space could avoid “certain fiscal collapse.”

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center could not be renamed to include “Donald J. Trump” on its exterior. He noted that Congress singularly arbitrates the name of the Kennedy Center, which was erected to memorialize the assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Cooper issued another directive Thursday, ordering the Trump administration to provide 30 days’ notice ahead of any construction at the Kennedy Center, “including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the Center’s main building.” The mandate came after Trump was spotted aboard Air Force One looking at a posterboard that read: “Kennedy Center DEMOLISH” above a picture of a demolition site.

A wildly inaccurate U.S. military intelligence report produced with artificial intelligence almost started World War III, CNN reported Friday.

In the spring, U.S. military officials launched an operation to intercept a Chinese ship they believed was transporting nuclear weapons materials in the Middle East. Service members prepared to board ships, and military aircraft were already in the air, multiple sources told CNN.

That’s when officials realized that the threat wasn’t real. It was AI-generated.

The claim had stemmed from a report that was produced with the help of a chatbot, but the AI program had inaccurately identified the materials the ship was carrying. CNN was unable to identify what the ship was actually carrying. It was not clear whether the chatbot was commercially available or the government’s own knock-off version.

One of the sources told CNN that the report was “entirely false” and had “almost started a war.”

The Trump administration has been eager to embrace the AI industry—a risky bet considering the technology’s tendencies to hallucinate answers to queries.

In July 2025, the government awarded Google a massive $200 million contract to support AI solutions at the Defense Department. Six months later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled out GenAi.Mil, the new “American-made” AI platform that will allow military members to “conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed”—and all without using their brains. It’s not clear whether this is the tool that falsely identified materials to make nuclear weapons.

In January 2026, Hegseth doubled down on the technology with an “AI Acceleration Strategy” at the DOD. A few months later, he promised that the U.S. military was using “every tool of AI” in the war against Iran.

Midterm-bound Republicans have opted to separate themselves from the president’s sinking ship, but MAGA world isn’t letting them off so easily.

A spate of far-right influencers flamed Florida Representative Maria Elvira Salazar after her campaign aired an advert denouncing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in the ad. “In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record.”

“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” she continued. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Florida County Commissioner Anthony Sabatini, a MAGA activist in his own right, wrote online that the White House should “deport her ASAP,” apparently forgetting that Salazar was born in Miami and is therefore a U.S. citizen.

Former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino derided Salazar as “anti-American.”

“Republicans, which side are YOU on—the side of the taxpayer or the side of those who wish to destroy our republic? Now’s your shot at making a difference,” he posted on social media.

Christian Ziegler, a GOP strategist, argued that Salazar “shouldn’t be allowed back into the White House” due to the ad.

“No meetings with the President. No meetings with WH staff. No Oval Office. No Congressional picnic. No Christmas parties or Egg Rolls,” Ziegler commented, insinuating that only loyalist MAGA drones should be allowed to interact with the president.

“Salazar has put the President in a position where he has to pick between being impeached—or—helping a pro-amnesty Republican get elected,” Ziegler added.

Self-described proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer extended her ire for Salazar’s messaging toward the president’s entourage, rhetorically asking, “Which political genius who works for our President did the vetting on Salazar?”

“To be honest, it is hard not to feel black pilled by so many of the incompetent people who work for the President,” Loomer continued in a post on X, using a nihilistic metaphor that originated in the incel community. “They go out of their way to sabotage, gatekeep and they seem to love giving access and endorsements to horrible candidates who hate the President and don’t even support his policies.

“They better hope Republicans show up this November or they will have made President Trump a lame duck President in his second term,” she wrote.

There’s been a “probable” measles exposure at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, or CHOP—more devastating news for what has been the worst year for measles in the United States since the often fatal, highly contagious virus was declared eradicated in 2000.

The likely exposure occurred September 11, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, or PDPH, and possibly impacted two neonatal intensive care units, an atrium, and the primary cafeteria.

“CHOP, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and PDPH are working closely to ensure potentially exposed infants receive a preventative antibody product to prevent or lessen severe disease and to take steps to prevent the further spread of measles,” the city health department said in a Thursday statement.

This comes amid intense scrutiny of the job Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing, as calls for his resignation have grown alongside measles cases. There have also been reports of RFK Jr. disputing the number of cases, personally requesting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remove two measles deaths from its tally earlier this month.

“Pennsylvania is experiencing the worst measles outbreak in the country. To date, we have 693 recorded cases of measles in 38 of our 67 counties. This disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000—yet decades later, we are seeing it surge due to lower vaccination rates,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro wrote Tuesday on X.

“This serious situation continues to be made worse by RFK Jr. playing games with public health and safety. It’s long past time for @SecKennedy to stop stoking vaccine skepticism and misinformation and compromising the serious mission of the nation’s public health agencies. It is also deeply concerning to learn that the Secretary personally intervened in an otherwise administrative process to direct the CDC to not report these Pennsylvania deaths, presumably because it doesn’t fit his phony narrative.”

Four Pennsylvanians have died of measles as of Wednesday: a 40-year-old unvaccinated woman, an 18-year-old unvaccinated teenager, and two infants. These were the first measles-related deaths in the state in 35 years.

The city health department does not expect vaccinated residents to be at risk.

The Department of Education can’t cut funding to teacher training programs that the Trump administration thinks promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, a federal court ruled Thursday. 

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley said that the administration’s 2025 decision to slash $600 million in grants from the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development program were “arbitrary and capricious,” saying the Education Department can’t even define the criteria for what makes a program “DEI.” 

“Rather than confining the Directive to actions that are traditionally understood to constitute discrimination, the record instead reflects that Defendants terminated grants with topics such as ‘acknowledging … racism’ and ‘anti-racism’—activities expressly undertaken to oppose discrimination,” Kelley wrote in her ruling, adding that the move would also hurt teacher preparation.

The cuts were halted by a federal court last year after Democratic-led states sued, but the Supreme Court allowed them to go ahead while a final decision was pending.

The policy was part of the administration’s early attacks on DEI, which President Trump’s appointees, including Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, have been fully supporting. During her confirmation hearings, McMahon tried to dodge questions about the classes schools would be allowed to teach under her reign, including those about African American history. 

There’s also the fact that Trump promised to end the Education Department during his 2024 presidential campaign.  After an executive order to dismantle the department was struck down in court, he pivoted to gutting the department with a mass layoff of career employees. For now, though, the department is still around, at least in name, and teacher training has survived in the short term.