Nobody Wants To Perform There? Close The Kennedy Center for ‘Renovations’. For two years:
President Trump said Sunday he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center performing arts center for two years starting in July for construction, his latest move to upturn the storied venue since returning to the White House.
Trump’s announcement on social media follows a wave of cancellations by leading performers and groups since the president ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building. Trump made no mention in his post of the recent cancellations.
His proposal, announced days after the premiere of Melania, a documentary of the first lady, was shown at the center, he said was subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which has been stocked with his hand-picked allies. Trump himself chairs the center’s board of trustees.
“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in his post.
I leave it to experts in Aberrant Psychology to explain the pathology behind his need to capitalize. One thing I know for certain–this will result in $$’s going into Trump’s pocket.
Speaking of which–Absolute Corruption:
An investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates acquired nearly half of the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, a $500 million stake, four days before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, according to a report Sunday by The Wall Street Journal.
The deal, signed by the president’s son Eric Trump, gave the Emirati-backed firm a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the Trump-linked crypto venture co-founded by family members of the president and Steve Witkoff, his top envoy to the Middle East, The Journal reported.
The business partnership between the Trumps and Emirati-linked investors raises fresh questions about the president’s potential conflicts of interest. The Journal cited sources and company documents that showed the buyers — lieutenants of Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a United Arab Emirates royal, the country’s national security adviser and manager of its largest wealth fund — paid up front, with $187 million going to Trump family entities and at least $31 million going to Witkoff family entities.
The White House sought to tamp down any concerns over conflicts.
“President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public – which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media. President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement Sunday.
Right.
Texas Election–The Anecdotal Verges On The Empirical:
Democrats scored a stunning upset Saturday in a special election runoff for Texas state Senate, according to Decision Desk HQ, giving the party a major boost ahead of the November midterms.
Fort Worth Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a machinist and Air Force veteran, defeated Southlake Republican Leigh Wambsganss to fill the vacant state Senate District 9.
The district favored President Trump — who endorsed Wambsganss earlier Saturday — by 17 points in 2024. The race went to a runoff after none of the candidates were able to clinch a majority in the November election.
So. Trump wins the district by 17 points in 2024. The Democrat wins the Special Election by 14 points in early 2026. A 31% swing. Look for more Rethug retirees, including quite a few in local races, in the weeks ahead.
The horrible killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the resulting national outrage have given congressional Democrats perhaps their best chance so far to rein in President Trump’s misuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal law enforcement agencies. But they are totally squandering this opportunity. They have coalesced around a lackluster list of reforms that fully addresses neither the current situation in Minneapolis nor the broader problem of Trump essentially creating a fascist national police force.
…Senate Democrats say they won’t agree to long-term funding for ICE and the broader DHS unless three core Democratic demands are met: a requirement that ICE agents wear body cameras and proper identification and not masks; a new code of conduct for how agents use force and independent investigations if they are accused of violating those rules; and the end of roving patrols by ICE officers and requirements that they have warrants and work with state and local police.
(These proposals) should have been joined by a long list of substantive demands. Most immediately, there is no way that Democrats should sign onto DHS funding until Customs and Border Protection and ICE personnel are completely gone from Minneapolis. The killings of Renee Nicole Good and Pretti and the siege of Minneapolis are the immediate cause of this crisis. Trump fully withdrawing forces from the city would be an important acknowledgment that his administration’s policies in the Twin Cities have been autocratic and deadly. The Senate Democrats’ demands are so meager that ICE and CBP could likely remain in Minneapolis even if the party’s conditions are met.
Second, Democrats should be doing much more to stop ICE from terrorizing communities and creating a climate of fear for not only illegal immigrants but legal ones too. Banning ICE from enforcement actions at houses of worship, day cares, courts, and hospitals is essential. A proposal from House Democrats to bar ICE from detaining American citizens should have been included in the Senate proposal too.
Third, Democrats should use this funding fight to limit Trump from using CBP and ICE as a national police force and, really, a standing army. Democrats should insist that Customs and Border Protection agents, whose job is to defend the border, are never be sent to nonborder areas like Chicago and Minneapolis.
Finally, as long as ICE and CBP exist and Trump is in office, he will use them in dictatorial ways. So while Democrats can’t abolish these agencies, they can try to shrink them. Democrats must demand substantial cuts to the ICE and CBP budgets, at least 10 percent.
For once, Democrats had the hammer on ICE and the national fascist police force. Instead, they started with a series of weak ‘demands’ that will no doubt be whittled down in negotiations:
“By starting negotiations without challenging the premise that ICE should be the 13th largest army in the world, by refusing to go after the source of their power—their obscene budgets—congressional Democrats begin ‘negotiations’ in an already right-wing, weakened framework,” says left-leaning writer and podcast host Adam Johnson. “Their unwillingness to meaningfully and substantively rein in the power of Trump’s DHS by seeking to slash their $170 billion-plus budget shows they are unable, or unwilling, to meet the moment.”
Hey, at least Chris Coons is standing up–for 200,000 more cops. I can’t even…
What do you want to talk about?