Latest news with #Trumpified
New York Post
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Trumpified' Kennedy Center is for ALL Americans — and the elites are raging
The elitist artsy set is up in arms about President Donald Trump's brash takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The 'Trumpified' Washington, DC institution 'should get blown up,' Broadway legend Patti LuPone declared this week. Performers claim to fear 'Trump's politics and his meddling with the arts,' The Washington Post reported — but what they really hate is that the new attitude at the capital's premiere performance center opens it up to regular Americans. Advertisement It's about time the Kennedy Center was politically neutralized, welcoming audiences across the ideological spectrum. Certainly, the insiders should know that the arts have been failing to capture the imagination of the American public — and shows have been failing to recoup their costs — in part because their leftist partisanship has been a turn-off to at least half their potential audience. But the artists who've monopolized the Kennedy Center's stages for years are howling. Advertisement Robert DeNiro, at the Cannes Film Festival, complained about the center's 'philistine' coup in progress. Lin-Manuel Miranda yanked his musical 'Hamilton' from a scheduled run on its stages. Eleven of the 12 principal cast members in 'Les Misérables' say they'll go on strike rather than perform for Trump during their June 11 performance. LuPone, DeNiro, Miranda and the boycotting 'Les Mis' actors are clearly not up on their Hamlet. Advertisement 'The play's the thing / Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,' the prince of Denmark famously said — and these luminaries should know their Shakespeare. Refusing to engage now that the Kennedy Center's leadership opposes their leftist politics only exposes their own ignorance, elitism and superiority complexes. If they really wanted to effect change in the man they so despise, the best thing they could do is perform for him — as Hamlet wisely advised. Advertisement No, the truth is they simply think their hearts and their arts are too pure for the likes of Trump and his supporters. They're mad that the Kennedy Center's hallowed halls aren't just for them and their ethos anymore — that Americans who like a bit of circus with their bread no longer have to feel excluded. Trump's leadership change, while heavy-handed, shunts liberal activism back into the wings where it belongs. Sure, anyone could walk up and buy a ticket, but when it came to the arts in America, we all know full well who has been on the VIP list and who was meant to crouch among the groundlings. Despite the hand-wringing, Trump's first Kennedy Center season will see the same number of Broadway touring shows as in years past — including big New York hits like 'Spamalot,' 'Chicago,' 'Back to the Future,' 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'The Outsiders,' and 'Moulin Rouge!'. But two of them are non-union shows — a cost-cutting move that also opens the door for actors and stage techs who haven't had the chance to gain a coveted spot in the Actors Equity Union (it's not easy to get one). 'We want more options, not fewer,' said Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell, who notes the change in leadership also means no more drag story hours for kids. The Kennedy Center will play a major role next year in the celebration of America's 250th birthday, too, and the NEA granting requirements for that momentous occasion have already changed: They now ask artists to submit projects celebrating America, not tearing her down. Advertisement Anti-Trump artists liked having all of American theater for themselves. They enjoyed shutting out colleagues who didn't agree with them politically, and reveled in making traditionalist audience members feel uncomfortable. Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Those performers, writers and producers thought it was their job to 'educate' audiences with leftist politics — but it isn't, and it never was. Advertisement It's their job to entertain and tell honest stories in beautiful forms. When regional theater began in the 1950s with funding from the Ford Foundation, the goal was to take professional shows out to the rest of the country, to bring them the Broadway experience — not to force-feed them political diatribes. That's what Trump intends to do: Bring a return to fun to the American stage, with transportive, transformative works that allow audiences to let go of day-to-day troubles and experience the wonder of theater. Advertisement And what none of these complainers seem to realize is this: If their stages hadn't been occupied by leftist activism that shut out regular Americans, there'd be no cause for the correction they're seeing now. Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.
New York Post
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Broadway's Patti LuPone says Trump-led Kennedy Center ‘should get blown up'
Broadway veteran Patti LuPone lashed out at President Donald Trump for his overhaul of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and called for the building to 'get blown up,' in an interview published Monday. In February, Trump fired several Kennedy Center board members, including the president and chairman, and replaced them with pro-Trump figures, who then named the president as chairman. In a post to Truth Social announcing the changes, Trump vowed to make the performing arts center 'great again,' by removing board members who did not share his administration's 'vision for a Golden Age in arts and culture.' Trump said that drag shows 'targeting' children were one example of programming at the Kennedy Center that would end under his leadership. 4 Broadway star Patti LuPone called for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to 'get blown up,' after President Donald Trump's overhaul of it in an interview. Variety via Getty Images His actions stirred backlash in the theater and film world, with multiple artists resigning from their roles or canceling upcoming performances at the Kennedy Center in protest. LuPone, 76, slammed the Trump takeover in new comments to New Yorker writer Michael Schulman. 'She's even angrier at the rest of the country,' Schulman wrote. 'She told me, more than once, that the Trumpified Kennedy Center 'should get blown up.'' LuPone also told the outlet that she wished that the Trump administration would 'Leave New York alone.' She has been an outspoken critic of Trump over the years. 4 Trump fired several Kennedy Center board members and replaced them with pro-Trump figures, who then named the president as chairman. REUTERS 4 Trump walks down the stairs at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on March 17. REUTERS Ahead of the 2020 election, LuPone said she was considering moving to Ireland if Trump won. On the Tony Awards red carpet in 2017, she said that she would not perform for Trump if he came to one of her shows, 'because I hate the mother—.' Richard Grenell, president of the Kennedy Center, slammed LuPone's comments in a statement to Fox News Digital. 4 LuPone in 'Hollywood.' Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection 'The far left has morphed into violent extremists. This is completely unacceptable – from the same people who claim to be for tolerance and diversity. Everyone should condemn these radicals,' Grenell said. LuPone did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told Fox News Digital, 'President Trump cares deeply about American arts and culture, which is why he is revitalizing historic institutions like the Kennedy Center to their former greatness.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ted Cruz says he doesn't mind that his $1,000 investment account plan for babies is now called 'Trump accounts'
The GOP renamed "MAGA accounts" to "Trump accounts." If approved, $1,000 will go to any baby born between 2024 and 2028. Sen. Ted Cruz — the person who came up with the idea — says he doesn't mind the Trumpified name. First, they were called "MAGA accounts." Now, they're "Trump accounts." As part of their "One Big Beautiful Bill," Republicans on Capitol Hill want to establish new investment accounts for American children. Under the plan, babies born after January 31, 2024 and before January 1, 2029 — essentially, the last three years of President Donald Trump's term — will receive $1,000 for the account from the federal government. The original name was an acronym for "Money Account for Growth and Advancement" — the same initials as Trump's political movement. In a last-minute change before the House passed their version of the "Big Beautiful Bill" on Thursday, "MAGA" was replaced with "Trump." While the president stands to get the credit, it was Sen. Ted Cruz's idea to create "Invest America" accounts. The Texas Republican says he doesn't mind. "What I care is that they remain in there," Cruz told BI, referring to the provision's inclusion in the larger bill. "I think it doesn't matter what they're called. What it matters is what they do." In terms of political branding, it's further than other recent presidents have gone. President Joe Biden, for instance, chose not to sign COVID-19 stimulus checks like Trump did — though he later said it was "stupid" not to do so. Other government-backed programs have taken on the name of their creators. The Affordable Care Act, championed by President Barack Obama, is commonly known as "Obamacare," though that was initially a Republican epithet. And Sens. William Roth and Claiborne Pell have also found their names written into the tax code. "That is not unusual," Cruz said. "You have things like Roth IRAs that were named after Senator Roth. You have things like Pell Grants that were named after Senator Pell. You have things like Obamacare that were named after President Obama." It's unclear exactly why the accounts were named after Trump, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. Cruz had pitched the idea as a way to give kids a stake in the free market from an early age, allowing them to potentially reap financial benefits down the line while making them less likely to support socialism. "It enables every newborn child in America to experience the enormous benefits of compounded growth, and to accumulate significant resources with the passage of time," Cruz said. "It creates a generation of new capitalists." According to the bill, individuals with "Trump accounts" will be able to use the savings for things like higher education and first-time home purchases starting at age 18. Money taken out of the account for those purposes will be taxed as long-term capital gains, while money withdrawn for other purposes is taxed as regular income. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
DC Statehood is Going Nowhere. Is It Time to Think About Joining Maryland?
To protect the District of Columbia, it might be necessary to eliminate the District of Columbia — and merge it into the neighboring state of Maryland. It's an idea that many people think makes eminent practical sense in the name of running the city. Yet it's only in the air right now because of dramatic political reversals in the age of Donald Trump. Exactly four years ago this week, the House of Representatives passed a bill to make D.C. America's 51st state, bringing the nation's capital tantalizingly close to a civil rights-era dream. Today, by contrast, the city is reduced to begging Congress for permission to spend its own money to balance the books. Mayor Muriel Bowser this week announced plans for drastic budget cuts. It was just the latest humiliation. Since January, Trump has mused about a takeover and Hill Republicans have sought to end democratically elected local government altogether. Desperate to preserve some shred of home rule for their 700,000 citizens, D.C.'s leadership has placated the GOP on everything from ripping up a Black Lives Matter street mural to investigating anti-DOGE graffiti as a hate crime. The fear is epic: When the president posted a bizarre AI video depicting a Trumpified Gaza, one city source told me, colleagues worried they'd be next. In this environment, no one is talking seriously about statehood. Or, at least, they're not talking about 51st statehood. But the alarm over democracy and self-government has spurred a taboo-breaking and weirdly refreshing conversation about returning the 68-square-mile federal city to the 7th state: Maryland, which ceded the land to the fledgling United States back in 1790. Retrocession, as the idea is called, would be a 21st-century version of something that happened in the 1840s, when the rest of the original District of Columbia rejoined Virginia. Today, those 30-odd square miles are known as Arlington and Alexandria. And their fully enfranchised residents never have to worry about culture warriors from Georgia or Utah screwing around with their traffic rules, abortion rights or school budgets. For years, rejoining Maryland has been taboo among local die-hards. According to dogma dating back to the Civil Rights Movement, statehood is the one true way to rectify the mistreatment of a historically disenfranchised city — and snag a couple of Senate votes, too. But the current sense of crisis is such that one of the House's foremost Democratic D.C. supporters recently shocked the local establishment by pronouncing himself retrocession-friendly. 'I saw Mayor Bowser and I said if you guys want to think about coming back to Maryland for this period, you will definitely be safer in the Free State than you will be under the brutal thumb of MAGA colonialism,' Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a D.C. native and longtime statehood proponent, told me last month. Coming from a progressive icon, it was a jarring departure. How big a departure? Up to now, the people who championed retrocession were usually Republicans trying to slow the march to statehood. Hardline conservatives like former Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert embraced the idea. South Dakota Republican Dusty Johnson sponsored a retrocession bill in 2021, which not coincidentally was when the Democratic-led House OK'd statehood. Johnson's bill was given short shrift by Democrats, who derided it as evidence of how close they were to actually making D.C. a state. Raskin said Bowser 'took [his suggestion] under advisement,' and said it's up to locals to decide their strategy. The mayor's office told me this week that she still thinks D.C. should become its own state. That keeps her in line with the overwhelming majority of District officials. The Trump-era atmosphere of capitulation doesn't yet include openly compromising on the eternal dream. 'I strongly oppose this approach,' D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a statement. 'Unlike retrocession, D.C. statehood has strong support. Retrocession has no constituency in Maryland or in D.C.' That's too bad. Like Norton's preferred solution, retrocession would end the cycle of paralyzing budget impasses by ejecting attention-seeking national pols from hometown decision-making. But the idea might also be better than statehood when it comes to the day-to-day interests of those same residents once the feds are out of the picture. It's about services, not symbolism: Would you rather live in a place that has to create a real university system or judiciary based on a population only a bit larger than tiny Vermont or Wyoming — or join a decently sized state that does that stuff pretty well already? Don't take it from me. Take it from one D.C. local who's been quixotically banging the Maryland drum for ages: David Krucoff, a third-generation Washingtonian and onetime doomed GOP candidate for a city council seat. Krucoff, who calls himself a 'centrist political reformer' and blasts his own party's meddling with local affairs, says the lack of support for a Maryland merger is a function of Democratic pathologies. At the national level, he thinks the party is obsessed with using D.C. as a vehicle to add a pair of Senate seats. And locally, he says, activists have been so focused on the symbolic prize that they shun a much more achievable alternative. 'The orthodoxy in the Democratic Party is about going for what they consider the great, as opposed to what many perceive as the good, and in the process getting nothing,' he said. Not that Krucoff thinks merging with the state next door is just a second-best option. 'It's the only way we get economies of scale' that would save city taxpayers from having to stand up a prison system or fully replicate state functions. 'D.C. has about 90 agencies within its government, and most of them do functions that states do, as opposed to what cities do,' he said. 'Cities and counties mainly work on schools and public safety. So if we had to do less things that states do, we'd save some money. And of course Maryland would benefit from D.C. taxpayers, who are very well off, contributing to the Maryland economy.' According to 2022 data from the D.C. Policy Center, per capita revenue in the District is about $30,000 a head, while local and state revenue in Maryland comes to just over $14,000 a head. Those numbers would change a bit if the capital stopped being federal territory, and Washington will always have much higher spending needs. But they still make the city a pretty attractive acquisition for a neighboring state. To hear Krucoff tell it, a Vatican-like federal district would continue to exist after the merger, pared down to just the unpopulated monumental core around the National Mall. The rest of the city would follow the path 'Virginia D.C.' took nearly 180 years ago: First, Congress would pass enabling legislation. Then, District voters would OK it in a referendum. Finally, the state government would formally accept the new territory. Just like that, he says, D.C. would become Douglass County, Maryland — named for the Maryland-born abolitionist who became one of Washington's most revered residents. No one in this new county would have to worry again about federal budget mishaps interrupting local garbage collection. There are, of course, a few obstacles, even beyond the old establishment that has spent a generation imagining D.C. as the first urban state. For one, there's Congress. Republican enthusiasm for getting D.C. off the federal books tends to wane as the danger of statehood recedes. Tellingly, none of the old enthusiasts for retrocession have introduced measures to do so this year, with a GOP trifecta in place. For another, there's Maryland. State Republicans, who have a hard enough time carrying the deep-blue state, see adding a heavily Democratic city as a non-starter. But the idea also isn't very popular with Maryland Democrats. Baltimore-area pols, already concerned about the balance between their region and the Washington suburbs, worry that adding D.C. would further erode their power base. Just about any ambitious elected official who imagines becoming a governor or a speaker or a senator doesn't want to import a new source of competitors. There's a reason political mergers — between countries, counties or even villages — are so rare. Everyone with power has something to lose. In the case of D.C., that would include large chunks of the District bureaucracy, who'd understandably worry that their state-level jobs would become redundant. And it might even include me. I think what Raskin and Krucoff say makes a lot of sense. But as a D.C. native, I still cringe when I imagine myself driving around with Maryland tags. It's an irrational and stupid impulse — and just the sort of personal emotion that causes political movements to rise and fall. 'Maybe we can get a special carve-out,' Krucoff said. 'We can get a tag that says 'Douglass County' or something.' The initials would still be D.C.
Politico
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Politico
DC Statehood is Going Nowhere. Is It Time to Think About Joining Maryland?
To protect the District of Columbia, it might be necessary to eliminate the District of Columbia — and merge it into the neighboring state of Maryland. It's an idea that many people think makes eminent practical sense in the name of running the city. Yet it's only in the air right now because of dramatic political reversals in the age of Donald Trump. Exactly four years ago this week, the House of Representatives passed a bill to make D.C. America's 51st state, bringing the nation's capital tantalizingly close to a civil rights-era dream. Today, by contrast, the city is reduced to begging Congress for permission to spend its own money to balance the books. Mayor Muriel Bowser this week announced plans for drastic budget cuts . It was just the latest humiliation. Since January, Trump has mused about a takeover and Hill Republicans have sought to end democratically elected local government altogether . Desperate to preserve some shred of home rule for their 700,000 citizens, D.C.'s leadership has placated the GOP on everything from ripping up a Black Lives Matter street mural to investigating anti-DOGE graffiti as a hate crime . The fear is epic: When the president posted a bizarre AI video depicting a Trumpified Gaza , one city source told me, colleagues worried they'd be next. In this environment, no one is talking seriously about statehood. Or, at least, they're not talking about 51st statehood. But the alarm over democracy and self-government has spurred a taboo-breaking and weirdly refreshing conversation about returning the 68-square-mile federal city to the 7th state: Maryland, which ceded the land to the fledgling United States back in 1790. Retrocession, as the idea is called, would be a 21st-century version of something that happened in the 1840s, when the rest of the original District of Columbia rejoined Virginia. Today, those 30-odd square miles are known as Arlington and Alexandria. And their fully enfranchised residents never have to worry about culture warriors from Georgia or Utah screwing around with their traffic rules , abortion rights or school budgets . For years, rejoining Maryland has been taboo among local die-hards. According to dogma dating back to the Civil Rights Movement, statehood is the one true way to rectify the mistreatment of a historically disenfranchised city — and snag a couple of Senate votes, too. But the current sense of crisis is such that one of the House's foremost Democratic D.C. supporters recently shocked the local establishment by pronouncing himself retrocession-friendly. 'I saw Mayor Bowser and I said if you guys want to think about coming back to Maryland for this period, you will definitely be safer in the Free State than you will be under the brutal thumb of MAGA colonialism,' Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a D.C. native and longtime statehood proponent, told me last month. Coming from a progressive icon, it was a jarring departure. How big a departure? Up to now, the people who championed retrocession were usually Republicans trying to slow the march to statehood. Hardline conservatives like former Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert embraced the idea. South Dakota Republican Dusty Johnson sponsored a retrocession bill in 2021, which not coincidentally was when the Democratic-led House OK'd statehood. Johnson's bill was given short shrift by Democrats, who derided it as evidence of how close they were to actually making D.C. a state. Raskin said Bowser 'took [his suggestion] under advisement,' and said it's up to locals to decide their strategy. The mayor's office told me this week that she still thinks D.C. should become its own state. That keeps her in line with the overwhelming majority of District officials. The Trump-era atmosphere of capitulation doesn't yet include openly compromising on the eternal dream. 'I strongly oppose this approach,' D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a statement. 'Unlike retrocession, D.C. statehood has strong support. Retrocession has no constituency in Maryland or in D.C.' That's too bad. Like Norton's preferred solution, retrocession would end the cycle of paralyzing budget impasses by ejecting attention-seeking national pols from hometown decision-making. But the idea might also be better than statehood when it comes to the day-to-day interests of those same residents once the feds are out of the picture. It's about services, not symbolism: Would you rather live in a place that has to create a real university system or judiciary based on a population only a bit larger than tiny Vermont or Wyoming — or join a decently sized state that does that stuff pretty well already? Don't take it from me. Take it from one D.C. local who's been quixotically banging the Maryland drum for ages: David Krucoff, a third-generation Washingtonian and onetime doomed GOP candidate for a city council seat. Krucoff, who calls himself a 'centrist political reformer' and blasts his own party's meddling with local affairs, says the lack of support for a Maryland merger is a function of Democratic pathologies. At the national level, he thinks the party is obsessed with using D.C. as a vehicle to add a pair of Senate seats. And locally, he says, activists have been so focused on the symbolic prize that they shun a much more achievable alternative. 'The orthodoxy in the Democratic Party is about going for what they consider the great, as opposed to what many perceive as the good, and in the process getting nothing,' he said. Not that Krucoff thinks merging with the state next door is just a second-best option. 'It's the only way we get economies of scale' that would save city taxpayers from having to stand up a prison system or fully replicate state functions. 'D.C. has about 90 agencies within its government, and most of them do functions that states do, as opposed to what cities do,' he said. 'Cities and counties mainly work on schools and public safety. So if we had to do less things that states do, we'd save some money. And of course Maryland would benefit from D.C. taxpayers, who are very well off, contributing to the Maryland economy.' According to 2022 data from the D.C. Policy Center, per capita revenue in the District is about $30,000 a head, while local and state revenue in Maryland comes to just over $14,000 a head. Those numbers would change a bit if the capital stopped being federal territory, and Washington will always have much higher spending needs. But they still make the city a pretty attractive acquisition for a neighboring state. To hear Krucoff tell it, a Vatican-like federal district would continue to exist after the merger, pared down to just the unpopulated monumental core around the National Mall. The rest of the city would follow the path 'Virginia D.C.' took nearly 180 years ago: First, Congress would pass enabling legislation. Then, District voters would OK it in a referendum. Finally, the state government would formally accept the new territory. Just like that, he says, D.C. would become Douglass County, Maryland — named for the Maryland-born abolitionist who became one of Washington's most revered residents. No one in this new county would have to worry again about federal budget mishaps interrupting local garbage collection. There are, of course, a few obstacles, even beyond the old establishment that has spent a generation imagining D.C. as the first urban state. For one, there's Congress. Republican enthusiasm for getting D.C. off the federal books tends to wane as the danger of statehood recedes. Tellingly, none of the old enthusiasts for retrocession have introduced measures to do so this year, with a GOP trifecta in place. For another, there's Maryland. State Republicans, who have a hard enough time carrying the deep-blue state, see adding a heavily Democratic city as a non-starter. But the idea also isn't very popular with Maryland Democrats. Baltimore-area pols, already concerned about the balance between their region and the Washington suburbs, worry that adding D.C. would further erode their power base. Just about any ambitious elected official who imagines becoming a governor or a speaker or a senator doesn't want to import a new source of competitors. There's a reason political mergers — between countries, counties or even villages — are so rare. Everyone with power has something to lose. In the case of D.C., that would include large chunks of the District bureaucracy, who'd understandably worry that their state-level jobs would become redundant. And it might even include me. I think what Raskin and Krucoff say makes a lot of sense. But as a D.C. native, I still cringe when I imagine myself driving around with Maryland tags. It's an irrational and stupid impulse — and just the sort of personal emotion that causes political movements to rise and fall. 'Maybe we can get a special carve-out,' Krucoff said. 'We can get a tag that says 'Douglass County' or something.' The initials would still be D.C.
