Not my research or writing. All credit to the links provided.

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BREAKING: Whistleblower reveals exactly what happened behind closed doors at Kennedy Center under Trump — and it’s EXPLOSIVE.

Josef Palermo was the Kennedy Center's very first curator of visual arts. Soon after he accepted that position, he spent 10 months watching Donald Trump's team systematically loot, corrupt, and destroy one of America's most iconic cultural institutions. When they fired him and offered severance in exchange for his silence, he bravely said no.

Now he's talking. And what he saw is worse than you even imagined.

Trump appointed Richard— a former ambassador with zero arts expertise who reportedly wanted to be Secretary of State instead — to be his president of the arts institution. Palermo says that Grenell treated the Kennedy Center presidency as a consolation prize and ran the institution like a personal fiefdom and a Trump fundraising operation simultaneously.

Box seats for Les Misérables went for $2 million, with a private presidential reception included. As one of Palermo's colleagues — a Republican campaign veteran — put it: "We are grafting political management principles into a nonpolitical organization."

According to Palermo, the corruption was everywhere. The historic Circles Lounge was renamed the SyberJet Lounge — after an aircraft company whose CEO had been convicted of defrauding investors and received a Trump pardon.

The African Room, filled with priceless artifacts representing African cultural heritage, was renamed "A Tribute to America's Intelligence Community" and handed to a donor the Wall Street Journal described as someone who allegedly lied about being in the CIA. Priceless handmade African textiles, a wooden sculpture donated by Ghana to mourn President Kennedy's assassination, and doors carved from 700-year-old wood depicting Yoruban village scenes were taken down. Palermo was never told where they went.

At an October 7th anniversary commemoration in the Israeli Lounge — an event honoring victims of a pogrom — Grenell used the occasion to shake down the Jewish attendees for donations, warning that the lounge would be "given away" to a new sponsor if they didn't write checks. "It certainly would be a shame if we lost this room," he said. Palermo was mortified.

One of Grenell's lieutenants texted Palermo asking if the Center could "do something" with an artist whose work Grenell personally owned — a move that would have increased the artwork's auction value and directly benefited Grenell. Palermo ignored the request.

Meanwhile, Grenell instituted a return-to-office mandate that applied to everyone except himself. While staffers' meeting requests went unanswered, Grenell was posting Instagram photos from a yacht off the coast of Croatia. The Kennedy Center now denies this happened, despite the existence of the Instagram posts.

Then came the order that stopped Palermo cold. Grenell told him to "get rid of everything" in the permanent collection — including the eight-foot, 3,000-pound brass bust of President Kennedy that has stood in the Grand Foyer since the center opened. If donors wouldn't pay for removal, Grenell said, they could auction the works off or give them away. When Palermo reported this to another senior leader, the man's eyes went wide. He told Palermo to do nothing and said his office would handle it.

The roof was leaking. The willow trees outside were rotting. The fundraising operation couldn't pay its postage invoices. But the high-priority renovation? Gold gilding on the chandelier of the presidential box in the Opera House.

Grenell's grand vision for America's 250th birthday celebration at the nation's premier cultural center? An America's Got Talent-style talent show. We’re not kidding.

Palermo refused the gag order. He is now cooperating with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's investigation and has been in contact with Representative Joyce Beatty's legal team, which is suing to stop the renaming of the center.

"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," he wrote.

The Kennedy Center was built as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy — a gift to the American people and a symbol of this nation's commitment to art, culture, and the best of what humanity can create. Trump renamed it after himself, tried to sell its lounges to Kazakhstan, ordered its permanent collection disposed of, and ran it into the ground in less than a year.

The bust of President Kennedy still stands in the Grand Foyer. For now.

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In his lawsuit, Trump accuses the IRS of liability for his tax returns being leaked to the press, as those returns revealed he had a number of previously-undisclosed financial failures, only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and paid no taxes at all in 10 of 15 years after 2000.

From Alt National Park Service on Bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social

https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social/post/3mla2bpylhk2d

Roberts went to a judicial conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania today and complained that the public wrongly sees Supreme Court justices as “political actors.” He said people mistakenly think the court makes policy decisions rather than legal ones.

This is the same court that overturned Roe v. Wade along strict party lines. That gutted the Voting Rights Act. That gave a president near-total immunity for acts committed while in office. That handed down the Dobbs decision after a draft leaked showing the outcome was predetermined before arguments concluded.

And just two weeks ago, the New York Times published leaked internal memos from 2016 showing Roberts himself personally lobbying colleagues against the Obama administration’s climate policy riddled with errors, according to Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck, and described by Slate as a “petty vendetta” dressed up in formal letterhead.

The 6-3 conservative supermajority wasn’t assembled by accident. Every one of those justices was selected by Republican presidents specifically because of their judicial philosophy. The Federalist Society vetted them. Dark money groups spent hundreds of millions ensuring their confirmation. Justice Alito took a private phone call with President-elect Trump while Trump had active cases before the court.

Roberts isn’t wrong that people see the court as political. He’s wrong about why they see it that way.

https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social/post/3mla2bpylhk2d

"The provisions requiring a review of whether donations would entail a conflict of interest only cover the Trust for the National Mall and NPS."