Trump-led board reportedly votes again to close Kennedy Center for renovations
The board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has once again voted to move forward with Donald Trump’s controversial plan to temporarily close the building for renovations, the New York Times (paywall) is reporting, citing two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings.
The decision will be subject to approval by a federal judge. In May, US district judge Christopher Cooper issued a temporary block on Trump’s demand to close the arts institution for two years of renovations, which was due to start in July after the board – mostly handpicked by the president – voted unanimously in favor. But Joyce Beatty, a Democratic US representative of Ohio who sits on the board, sued over the decision.
Cooper shut down the plan on the basis that “in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center”.
“More specifically, the Board based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions,” Cooper went on.
He called the decision to halt operations during the renovation “ill-informed and seemingly preordained”.
According to the New York Times’s report, the board voted today “to close the Kennedy Center’s main building, while keeping a newer addition to the campus, known as the Reach, open for limited programming and to operate as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy.”
Ahead of the meeting, the board was presented with a 163-page plan for a $250m “renewal” project that includes structural repair work, new marble floors, $11.8m in “acoustical improvements” and a plan to temporarily move the famous 3,000-pound bronze bust of Kennedy to another building on campus.
Board members were provided with a comparison of two scenarios for renovations by an outside consultant. Both the consultant and the construction management firm, JLL, raised safety and cost concerns that they say would arise from keeping the building open during a phased renovation.
The proposal by JLL says the project would address chronic leaks, replace outdated equipment and redesign parts of the interior. Changes include new furniture, a new coffee shop, electronic ticketing kiosks and $7m in public restroom renovations. The target for reopening would be summer of 2028.
Judge Cooper said in his order that the board had a legal obligation to maintain the facility as a memorial to President Kennedy. Under the plan, memorial materials would be moved to a newer addition to the campus during the closure.
It was unclear immediately after the meeting, which was held virtually and was not public, whether the center intends to pursue the exact plan laid out in the report following the judge’s review.
The Kennedy Center has until next week to share its plan with Cooper, who will review his decision to consider whether the board carried out sufficient due diligence ahead of the vote.
We’ve reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.
Key events
Arizona senator Mark Kelly mocks Trump for meddling in aircraft carrier design
Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and US Navy test pilot, is not impressed by reports that Donald Trump ordered a massive change in the construction of aircraft carriers on Thursday, forcing the Navy to scrap modern electromagnetic catapult systems to launch fighter jets, and install old-fashioned steam-powered catapults.
Writing on social medial, Kelly commented:
I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships. Donald Trump should stick to what he knows best — ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit.
Sam Levin
Newly disclosed records reveal the US government extensively spied on prominent leftwing organizations and on protesters as part of a vast operation into groups opposing the immigration crackdown in Minnesota earlier this year.
Internal investigative reports show the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent undercover agents to community meetings in the Twin Cities and New York, infiltrated Signal chats and obtained financial records of mainstream unions and left-leaning nonprofit groups.
Nearly 30 internal law enforcement reports were released on Thursday as part of a criminal case the Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed against 15 Minneapolis protesters. The defendants are accused of a “conspiracy” to “impede” US immigration officers during the Trump administration’s surge in the region.
The DHS investigative reports were disclosed by the government and submitted to the court by an attorney for one of the defendants. The records show that in January, DHS launched an inquiry called “Operation Puppet Master” to identify a “network of conspirators” organizing against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The operation came as community organizing against ICE was swelling in the region in response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
A DHS report from February said the agency was looking into people who were “providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators”. The records suggest agents launched elaborate spying efforts targeting activists, protesters and mainstream progressive organizations opposing the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
“I was shocked at the scope and the apparent lack of investigative discipline involved, but not totally surprised,” said Kevin Riach, an attorney for one of the indicted protesters, who filed the tranche of records in federal court.
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese says he urged Trump to lift tariffs in phone call
Speaking to reporters in Canberra, Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is currently describing the details of what he called “a very productive and wide-ranging call” with Donald Trump overnight in which he says he urged the US president to lift tariffs imposed on Australia.
Albanese said he asked Trump to exempt Australia from a newly announced 12.5% tariff based on a supposed failure to crack down on forced labor.
“The ask that I made of the president is that he consider full exemption” Albanese said.
“I informed him about our record when it comes to dealing with issues such as modern slavery, the strengthening that we have put forward as well, to look and hold companies accountable for the supply chain process as well,” the prime minister added.
“The president has a different position on tariffs, that he has expressed on a number of occasions over a number of years,” Albanese said. “We believe very much that tariffs are not in the interest of either the country that is having them imposed on them or the country imposting them.”
“I did ask that Australia’s position, as a friend of the United States, be considered”, Albanese said before adding that Trump said he would give it some thought.
The prime minister salso aid that he had expressed Australia’s view that an end to the US-Israel war on Iran was important, and said that Trump had provided him an extensive update on the war, but refused to divulge any details of that briefing. He also said that Australia supports the aim of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Albanese added that Trump thanked him for the work of more than 180 Australian firefighters dispatched to the US to help fight wildfires.
Trump orders US Navy to spend billions to install steam catapults in new aircraft carriers – reports
After nearly a decade of publicly complaining about the fact that US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic catapult systems to launch fighter jets, instead of the steam-powered catapults of old, Donald Trump has reportedly directed the US Navy to remove the modern launch systems from its aircraft carriers and install the old-fashioned steam catapults he prefers, according to the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.
The Journal reports that Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his brainwave to Time magazine.
“You know the catapult is quite important. So I said, ‘What is this?’ ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system’”, Trump said, recounting a conversation he said he had in 2017 with a US Navy officer. “It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said–and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers – I said, ‘What system are you going to be’– ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You[’re] going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good’”.
A review of Trump’s public remarks shows that he has repeated this tale of his supposed response to a Navy official he met in 2017 every year since then.
In 2018, Trump brought it up during a Thanksgiving day phone call with a naval officer docked in Hong Kong. In 2019, he regaled Republican donors at a fundraiser with the story. In 2020, even as the nation was grappling with a pandemic, the tale became a regular part of Trump’s campaign speeches. In 2021, he told the story at the CPAC convention. In 2022, he used in a campaign speech in Texas. He repeated it on the campaign trail in Iowa in 2023. At one of his final campaign events before the 2024 election, Trump told Tucker Carlson the same story.
After he returned to office in 2025, Trump brought up steam catapults during the swearing in of Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence and then again in a speech to sailors stationed in Japan.
“We built an aircraft carrier for $19 billion, which is crazy. The price is crazy,” Trump recalled last month at the Army War College in Pennsylvania. “It had all sorts of modern day things that were all- instead of using steam for the catapults, they used electric.”
“So when I went to the ship, because I came into office and the ship was way over budget, built in Newport News,” Trump said. “I said, ‘I want to meet the catapulter’, and a man came over, along with four of his assistants. And I said, ‘What’s better: electric catapult or steam?’ He’s been there for 25 years. He said, ‘Steam is better, sir. We can fix it with a hammer and a blowtorch. When the electric goes bad, I have to send to MIT to get geniuses over here.’ I said, ‘Steam is better?’ ‘Yes, sir it’s better’”.
According to the Journal senior Navy and industry leaders “have resisted the move due to the enormous expense of tearing out such a complex system that was integral to the design” of the latest aircraft carriers.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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The board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has once again voted to move forward with Donald Trump’s controversial plan to temporarily close the building for renovations, the New York Times reports, citing two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings. The decision will be subject to approval by a federal judge. In May, US district judge Christopher Cooper issued a temporary block on Trump’s demand to close the arts institution for two years of renovations, which was due to start in July after the board – mostly handpicked by the president – voted unanimously in favor.
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Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has said that concerns about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln are “completely misrepresented”. This comes after several reports about food shortages and an intensifying mental health crisis on the vessel, that has now been deployed for more than 200 days, after it was redirected to the Middle East to assist with the military operation in Iran. More here
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Emily Moreno, the ex-wife of the embattled congressman Max Miller, has sued her former husband and his lawyer for uploading a picture of their infant daughter to a publicly accessible Dropbox folder as part of their custody battle. The complaint argues that Miller “recklessly published and disclosed to the world a nude image” of their daughter. The photos were part of a tranche of evidence that Miller’s team compiled in response to the domestic abuse allegations the lawmaker is facing following his divorce. More here
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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump administration that alleged Harvard University failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. In his ruling today, US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston said the Trump administration’s lawsuit, filed in March, had not plausibly shown an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus. Stearns said the government’s allegations focused largely on incidents amid protests over Israel’s war in Gaza during the 2023/24 school year, with only a handful of later incidents alleged in March 2025 that were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ongoing civil rights violations.
Trump praises international trade court decision that backs president scrapping ‘de minimis’ tariff exemption
Donald Trump has welcomed the court of international trade’s ruling that supports his decision to end the de minimis tariff exemption. A policy which allows people and businesses to avoid paying duties on packages and shipments below $800 that are shipped the US.
The president called it a “BIG WIN”, branding the exemption one of “the most DESPICABLE loopholes in American Trade Policy”.
An Michigan-based auto parts manufacturer filed the suit, arguing that it should be refunded for the tariffs it paid when Trump ended the exemption – in light of the supreme court’s decision this year which struck down the president’s sweeping tariffs under International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
The trade court, however, ruled that IEEPA “authorizes the president’s recission of the de minimis exemption”.
The Kennedy Center board also reportedly voted to inscribe the Donald Trump’s name on the facade of its building, despite a federal order for his name to be removed from the signage.
The New York Times reports that the board voted to add an inscription beneath the signage of the institution’s name –which stands as a memorial to John F Kennedy Jr – that reads: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J Trump.”
In May, the US district judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the building’s facade after the president had it added last year. Cooper ruled that the addition had been illegal, as only Congress had the authority to change the institution’s name. The center removed Trump’s name in June, but is appealing the decision.
Marina Dunbar
A Guatemalan immigrant detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at a Newark, New Jersey, facility suffered a medical emergency and later died after being hospitalized, according to the Trump administration.
José Chajón-Raxón is the third immigrant to die after being held at Delaney Hall, an ICE detention center that reopened in May 2025 amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
A nurse responded when Chajón-Raxón experienced a medical emergency and “witnessed Chajón-Raxón experiencing seizure-like activity”, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Medical personnel were called, and he was transported to a hospital, the DHS said in a statement shared with the Guardian.
ICE agents had arrested Chajón-Raxón before bringing him to Delaney Hall on 18 July, the agency said. Four days later, Chajón-Raxón was “released from ICE custody on July 22”, according to the agency, which did not provide further details about the circumstances of his release.
Key questions about what happened next remain unanswered in the DHS account. The department did not say what occurred after Chajón-Raxón arrived at the hospital, whether he left the hospital before his death or exactly when he died.
“Per ICE policy, when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths that may occur. This is common sense,” the DHS statement said.
The case comes after a policy shift announced earlier this year under which the agency stopped reporting deaths occurring within 30 days after a person is released from custody. That change reversed a policy put in place by the Biden administration in 2021.
Leavitt’s resignation creates a list of possible successors for top position
Leavitt’s surprise resignation as the White House press secretary may trigger a sharp-elbowed race inside Trump world for one of the administration’s most prominent positions.
Several names have circulated since Donald Trump announced that Leavitt would be stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with her family. Here are a list of just some of the possible contenders.
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Stephen Cheung – Cheung currently serves as the White House communications director, and has worked closely with Leavitt throughout the second Trump administration. When he praised the outgoing press secretary for her tenure on Wednesday, Leavitt joked on social media that the pair had survived “many, many news cycles” together.
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Alina Habba – Habba is a loyal ally of the president who previously served as his personal lawyer before becoming the short-lived the US attorney for New Jersey. A federal judge ultimately ruled her appointment was unlawful. But Habba has been one of the president’s most vocal defenders on conservative outlets. According to the New York Post, citing sources within the administration, Habba is an early frontrunner to replace Leavitt.
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Anna Kelly – Kelly already works at the White House as the principal deputy press secretary, working under Leavitt. She was previously a spokesperson for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and before that she serves as national press secretary for the Republican National Committee.
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Katie Miller – As the wife of top White House aide and immigration policy architect Stephen Miller, she has a front row seat to the administration’s movements. And as an influential conservative podcast host, Miller has spent a lot of time interviewing cabinet officials and right-wing media figures. Prior to launching her podcast, Miller was a communications director for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). She was vice-president Mike Pence’s press secretary from 2019-2021.
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Taylor Budowich – Budowich is a former White House deputy chief of staff, who worked alongside Miller and Dan Scavino, who left the White House last year to join the private sector. Alongside Leavitt, Budowich was one of the defendants in the case brought by the Associated Press after the outlet was banned from the press rotation for refusing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.
Todd Blanche urges justice department to work as ‘one team’ in first speech as attorney general
Todd Blanche, the newly confirmed attorney general, called on the justice department to work as “one team” with “one mission” in his first speech at the department headquarters in Washington DC, after his swearing-in ceremony this week.
Blanche secured his nomination narrowly last week, after some Republican senators said his decisions while serving as acting attorney general gave them little confidence he would act independently. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins – two moderate lawmakers – cited Blanche’s decision to greenlight a $1.8bn so called “anti-weaponization fund” to compensate Donald Trump’s allies – as part of their decision to vote against his confirmation.
“Everything that I do will not be the right path or the right decision,” Blanche said today. “But I do promise you this: I promise you that I will work as hard as any of you. I promise that I’ll listen to you. That I will listen to the ideas that you have, or adjustments that we need to make, and if we need to make them, I will make them.”
Critics have said that Blanche’s takeover will only contribute to the justice department’s politicization in the second Trump administration, as the president continues to target his perceived political enemies.
The new attorney general told the workforce – which includes the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that the department has he is proud of the department’s work tackling violent crime and illegal drug trafficking.
“It’s easy to focus on the negative or the news story that is critical of something we’re doing or something that we’ve done, or questions something that we’re doing or something that we’ve done,” Blanche said. “But do not forget that we have accomplished a tremendous amount of good, positive work in the past year and a half.”
Trump-led board reportedly votes again to close Kennedy Center for renovations
The board of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has once again voted to move forward with Donald Trump’s controversial plan to temporarily close the building for renovations, the New York Times (paywall) is reporting, citing two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings.
The decision will be subject to approval by a federal judge. In May, US district judge Christopher Cooper issued a temporary block on Trump’s demand to close the arts institution for two years of renovations, which was due to start in July after the board – mostly handpicked by the president – voted unanimously in favor. But Joyce Beatty, a Democratic US representative of Ohio who sits on the board, sued over the decision.
Cooper shut down the plan on the basis that “in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center”.
“More specifically, the Board based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions,” Cooper went on.
He called the decision to halt operations during the renovation “ill-informed and seemingly preordained”.
According to the New York Times’s report, the board voted today “to close the Kennedy Center’s main building, while keeping a newer addition to the campus, known as the Reach, open for limited programming and to operate as an active memorial to John F. Kennedy.”
Ahead of the meeting, the board was presented with a 163-page plan for a $250m “renewal” project that includes structural repair work, new marble floors, $11.8m in “acoustical improvements” and a plan to temporarily move the famous 3,000-pound bronze bust of Kennedy to another building on campus.
Board members were provided with a comparison of two scenarios for renovations by an outside consultant. Both the consultant and the construction management firm, JLL, raised safety and cost concerns that they say would arise from keeping the building open during a phased renovation.
The proposal by JLL says the project would address chronic leaks, replace outdated equipment and redesign parts of the interior. Changes include new furniture, a new coffee shop, electronic ticketing kiosks and $7m in public restroom renovations. The target for reopening would be summer of 2028.
Judge Cooper said in his order that the board had a legal obligation to maintain the facility as a memorial to President Kennedy. Under the plan, memorial materials would be moved to a newer addition to the campus during the closure.
It was unclear immediately after the meeting, which was held virtually and was not public, whether the center intends to pursue the exact plan laid out in the report following the judge’s review.
The Kennedy Center has until next week to share its plan with Cooper, who will review his decision to consider whether the board carried out sufficient due diligence ahead of the vote.
We’ve reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.
White House says it’s losing $19-$26bn a year in revenue as countries dodge tariffs
The White House has said in a new report that countries are routing their exports through third countries to avoid US tariffs, estimating that there are tax revenue losses of $19bn to $26bn annually, the Associated Press reports.
The report specifically highlights that China responded to new tariffs in 2018 by transshipping, sending their goods to other nations ranging from Mexico to Malaysia for packaging and limited assembly. That pattern made it look like US imports from China had dropped, but enabled Beijing to continue growing its manufacturing sector in ways that could challenge US factories and employment.
Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, told reporters on a conference call that China is laundering its exports through more than 40 countries, though he claimed that the issues raised in the report were really more about other nations enabling the avoidance of tariffs.
“For years, the great transshipment scam has let communist China launder its exports,” he said.
The report comes ahead of a planned visit next month by Chinese president Xi Jinping, whom Donald Trump described in flattering terms during his own visit to Beijing in May.
Navarro said that other nations such as India could also transship to avoid new tariffs and said that new trade frameworks pursued by the Trump administration are going to contain provisions that ensure trade partners that engage in the practice will be penalized.
The report includes a range of estimates for the scale of transshipments to avoid tariffs, citing government and private sector numbers to estimate roughly $34.2bn to $303bn of goods transshipped each year. It used a central figure of $75bn worth of goods being transshipped to estimate how much in tax revenues have been lost.
To address the challenge, Navarro said that US Customs and Border Protection has started to use artificial intelligence in a prototype program to stop transshipments. When an importer has been found to have falsified the origins of a good, its imports can be retroactively tariffed going back roughly a year, he said.
Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit alleging Harvard failed to protect Jewish students
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump administration that alleged Harvard University failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.
In his ruling today, US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston said the Trump administration’s lawsuit, filed in March, had not plausibly shown an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus.
Stearns said the government’s allegations focused largely on incidents amid protests over Israel’s war in Gaza during the 2023/24 school year, with only a handful of later incidents alleged in March 2025 that were “too isolated and episodic” to support a claim of ongoing civil rights violations.
The judge said the lawsuit did not adequately allege failures by the university after the government told Harvard in June 2025 that it was not complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It bans discrimination based on race, color and national origin in programs that receive federal funding.
The White House and Harvard did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Linked to Hegseth’s recent comments about the conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the USS George Washington will be sent to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, as part of a previously scheduled rotation plan. The outlet cites unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
Pete Hegseth downplays conditions on USS Abraham Lincoln after reports of food shortages and a mental health crises on board
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has said that concerns about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln are “completely misrepresented”.
This comes after several reports about food shortages and an intensifying mental health crisis on the vessel, that has now been deployed for more than 200 days, after it was redirected to the Middle East to assist with the military operation in Iran.
“We make sure every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment,” Hegseth told reporters in Panama, where he was attending a military demonstration. “Some deployments are longer than others, and I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere conditions with less port calls – it’s incredible.”
Two leading specialist military papers, the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes, are reporting that there have been multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as poor conditions and mental stresses on the Lincoln reach the breaking point.
On Wednesday, Democrats on the Senate armed services committee wrote to Hegseth and the acting secretary of the US Navy, Hung Cao, for more information abut what action is being taken to improve conditions on board.
“There have been widespread reports of shortages of basic supplies, water contamination, plumbing issues, deteriorating mental health, deck safety concerns, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages in route to the ship to be lost in transit for months,” Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, wrote. The senator noted that the USS Abraham Lincoln has not made a port call in over 200 days – setting a record for consecutive days at sea.
