What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center; The Atlantic, April 16, 2026

Josef Palermo, The Atlantic; What I Saw Inside the Kennedy Center

I spent 10 months working at the institution because I thought I could help protect it. What I observed there is far worse than the public knows.

"Trump had come in promising that “for the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” On the inside, my colleagues and I instead saw cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center going dark...

When Grenell instructed me to “get rid of” the center’s permanent art collection because we needed new art to adorn the building’s walls after its renovation, I was taken aback by his cavalier attitude. If the donors of the works didn’t want to pay for their removal, he said, we could put them up for auction or give them away. My mind raced immediately to the eight-foot, 3,000-pound brass bust of President Kennedy standing in the Grand Foyer. Designed by the sculptor Robert Berks, it is surely the most significant item in the center’s collection. When I reported the order to another top leader, his eyes grew wide; he told me not to do anything, and said his office would handle it. I can only hope that the bust—and all the other works—will be safe when the center closes its doors.

In a final indignity, those of us who lost our jobs would be eligible for another month of severance benefits (including health-care coverage) only if we signed a separation agreement with confidentiality and nondisparagement provisions. I rejected this offer because I believe Americans deserve to know about the desecration of our nation’s cultural center. This is also why I have begun participating in the ongoing investigation led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and been in touch with Representative Joyce Beatty’s legal team to share information that may help her lawsuit. (She is suing the center in an attempt to stop its renaming.) There must be a firewall put in place by Congress to prevent this kind of hostile political takeover of the Kennedy Center from ever happening again. I hope that more of my former colleagues come forward too, even if anonymously."

Trump 100 days: delusions of monarchy coupled with fundamental ineptitude; The Guardian, April 29, 2025

David Smith  , The Guardian; Trump 100 days: delusions of monarchy coupled with fundamental ineptitude

"The portraits of Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan and other past presidents gaze down from a past that the 47th seems determined to erase. Trump is seeking to remake the US in his image at frightening speed. The shock and awe of his second term has challenged many Americans’ understanding of who they are.

In three months Trump has shoved the world’s oldest continuous democracy towards authoritarianism at a pace that tyrants overseas would envy. He has used executive power to take aim at Congress, the law, the media, culture and public health. Still aggrieved by his 2020 election defeat and 2024 criminal conviction, his regime of retribution has targeted perceived enemies and proved that no grudge is too small.

Historically such strongmen have offered the populace a grand bargain: if they will surrender some liberties, he will make the trains run on time. But Trump’s delusions of monarchy have been coupled with a fundamental ineptitude.

His trade war injected chaos into the economy, undermining a campaign promise to lower prices and raising the spectre of recession; his ally Elon Musk wreaked havoc on the federal government, threatening health and welfare benefits for millions; his foreign policy turned the world upside down, making friends of adversaries and turning allies into foes...

In 2021 Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, told the Guardianthat history would remember Trump as by far the worst president ever on the basis of his first term. “I was wrong,” he acknowledged last week. “This is the worst presidency in American history.

“The ignorance was actually our ally in the first Trump term. He didn’t know what he was doing and now, unfortunately, while he still doesn’t know what he’s doing, he knows more than he did. Trump believes he is infallible. He’s going to burn out with the public long before the end of this term.”"