EDITORIAL NOTE
Josef Palermo’s firsthand account of his 10 months inside the Kennedy Center was published by The Atlantic on April 17. This article revisits that account because the legal battle over Donald Trump’s control of the Kennedy Center exploded again last week, putting the institution’s governance right back in front of a federal judge. Where Palermo makes allegations or describes events that the Kennedy Center disputes, I’ll tell you that. (The Atlantic)
There’s something almost perfect about the fact that we’re arguing over Donald Trump’s name again.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper spent nearly two hours questioning lawyers over the Kennedy Center board’s latest plan to put Trump’s name back on the building. Cooper ruled in May that the board had exceeded its authority when it renamed the institution, and Trump’s name was subsequently removed. The board came back in August with another idea: keep John F. Kennedy’s name, add “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” underneath it, and rename the grounds President Donald J. Trump Plaza. (Reuters)
By Thursday night, the Justice Department had agreed to hold off until at least October 8 while Cooper considers what the hell to do with this latest maneuver. DOJ insists this isn’t another renaming. Rep. Joyce Beatty’s lawyers call it defiance of the earlier court order. (ABC News)
That’s the fight everybody can see.
The uglier story is what happened behind the doors.
The Man Who Ran Toward the Fire
Josef Palermo wasn’t some career Trump antagonist waiting around for a chance to throw a grenade. He joined the Kennedy Center after Trump’s takeover even though he hadn’t voted for him, believing the institution was too important to abandon. Palermo became its first curator of visual arts and special programming and went in hoping he could still build something worthwhile. (The Atlantic)
Ten months later, he was out.
When Palermo was laid off in March, he said employees could receive an additional month of severance benefits if they signed confidentiality and nondisparagement provisions. He refused. A few weeks later, he published his account of what he says he saw happening inside the Kennedy Center and began cooperating with an investigation led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse while also communicating with Beatty’s legal team. (The Atlantic)
Maybe we should have paid more attention.
When a Cultural Institution Starts Looking Like a Political Fundraiser
Palermo says one of the clearest changes was the way Trump’s connection to the Kennedy Center became part of the fundraising pitch. That wasn’t merely his impression. A Les Misérables fundraiser offered a $2 million package that included a performance box, a VIP reception, and a photo opportunity with Trump. (The Washington Post)
One of Palermo’s colleagues, a veteran of Republican campaigns, described what was happening this way: “We are grafting political management principles into a nonpolitical organization.” (The Atlantic)
That sentence does a hell of a lot of work.
Political fundraising works on access, proximity, and influence. Cultural institutions survive on donors too, obviously, but a national memorial shouldn’t begin feeling like somebody slipped a campaign finance operation into the orchestra pit.
And then they started messing with the rooms.
Apparently History Has a Sponsorship Rate
The Kennedy Center’s historic lounges weren’t random cocktail rooms. Many were gifts connected to international cultural diplomacy, spaces carrying decades of history and symbolism. Palermo says the new leadership began treating those spaces as sponsorship opportunities. (The Atlantic)
At an October 7 memorial exhibition in the Israeli Lounge, Grenell told a predominantly Jewish audience that donors needed to help pay for the room’s renovations or the space could eventually go to another sponsor. Jewish Insider independently reported his pitch months before Palermo published his account, including Grenell’s warning that “it certainly would be a shame if we lost this room.” (Jewish Insider)
That’s fundraising with all the subtlety of a guy standing outside your restaurant admiring how flammable the curtains look.
The Circles Lounge became the SyberJet Lounge after an aircraft manufacturer paid for naming rights. Its CEO had previously been convicted of defrauding investors and received a Trump pardon in 2025. The African Room was transformed into a space honoring America’s intelligence community, while its historic African textiles, sculpture, and carved wooden doors were removed. (The Atlantic)
Here’s where the original viral version of this story went too far: those African artifacts weren’t simply “missing.” Palermo said nobody told him where they had gone, but a current staffer told The Atlantic they were in the Kennedy Center archives, and a spokesperson said they had been moved there for safekeeping during construction. That distinction matters. (The Atlantic)
The underlying story is disturbing enough. We don’t need to bullshit it up.
Then the Ethical Lines Started Getting Awfully Fuzzy
Palermo also described a request from one of Grenell’s top deputies concerning an artist whose work Grenell personally owned. According to Palermo, the deputy asked whether the Kennedy Center could “do something with him.” Palermo believed displaying that artist could increase the value of the work and potentially benefit Grenell financially, so he ignored the request. (The Atlantic)
That doesn’t prove a corruption scheme. Palermo himself framed it as a potential ethical breach, and that’s where the evidence stops.
But Jesus Christ, we’re talking about the Kennedy Center.
If the president of a national arts institution owns an artist’s work, somebody on his staff shouldn’t be nudging the curator about featuring that artist. You shouldn’t need an ethics seminar and a 47-page compliance manual to figure that one out.
“Get Rid of Everything”
Then Palermo says Grenell gave him the order that stopped him cold.
Palermo told PBS that Grenell instructed him to oversee removing artwork from the Kennedy Center before its renovation. In his Atlantic account, Palermo said Grenell told him to “get rid of everything” in the permanent collection because new art was wanted for the reopening. If donors wouldn’t pay to remove their works, Palermo said Grenell suggested they could be auctioned or given away. (PBS)
Palermo immediately thought about the enormous brass bust of John F. Kennedy in the Grand Foyer.
The Robert Berks sculpture is eight feet tall and weighs roughly 3,000 pounds. Palermo reported Grenell’s directive to another senior leader, who, according to Palermo, looked stunned and told him not to act on it. (The Atlantic)
That bust is still there.
Think about the obscenity of the image for a second. A building created by Congress as a living memorial to an assassinated president, while its own visual arts curator says he was being told to start clearing the permanent collection that surrounds Kennedy’s gigantic bronze likeness.
And people want to talk about the fucking sign.
There Was Money for Gold
Palermo’s account gets almost comical around the edges, except none of this is particularly funny.
He described a leaking roof, visibly rotting willow trees outside the Grand Foyer and financial trouble serious enough that a colleague told him the Kennedy Center hadn’t paid invoices from the company handling its fundraising postage. Meanwhile, he says one of the renovation priorities was adding gold gilding to the chandelier in the presidential box. (The Atlantic)
Two former colleagues also told Palermo that Grenell had tasked them with planning an America’s Got Talent-style talent show for the country’s 250th anniversary. That was apparently one proposed vision for celebrating America at its national cultural center. (The Atlantic)
Maybe the winner could’ve gotten naming rights to the coatroom.
This Week Made the Old Story New Again
The temptation here is to treat Palermo’s story as April news that we somehow missed.
I don’t think that works anymore.
Last week, the board was once again in court defending another plan to put Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center. Justice Department lawyers have argued that Trump’s involvement is important to fundraising for the renovation and warned in court filings that without the planned work, the deteriorating complex could ultimately face demolition. Meanwhile, The Washington Post obtained internal documents showing that ticket revenue and fundraising deteriorated sharply after Trump’s name was originally added to the building. (Reuters)
The Kennedy Center and Trump’s allies dispute the idea that his takeover caused its financial problems. They argue that Trump inherited an institution already in serious trouble and that his involvement secured major renovation funding and new donor commitments. Grenell also disputed earlier reporting about fundraising turmoil, calling it fake news based on anonymous gossip, and the Center has challenged portions of Palermo’s account. (The Atlantic)
Good. Put all of that on the table.
It still leaves one gigantic problem.
Nobody Should Own This Place
This isn’t ultimately about whether Donald Trump’s name belongs on a marble wall. Congress and the courts can wrestle with that question until everybody involved qualifies for Social Security.
The real issue is whether any president should be able to seize effective control of the governing board of a national cultural institution, install allies, become chairman, reshape its management and leave the rest of us relying on lawsuits to figure out where the guardrails were supposed to be. Trump broke with past practice by removing Biden-appointed trustees before their terms expired, appointed his own allies and became the first sitting president to chair the Kennedy Center board. (The Atlantic)
That structure is why Palermo’s final recommendation matters more today than it did in April. He wants Congress to build a firewall preventing another political takeover of the Kennedy Center. A fresh Atlantic examination this weekend reached much the same structural problem: judges can restrain specific board actions, but only Congress can fundamentally rewrite how the place is governed. (The Atlantic)
I’d go further.
Write the rules so the next Democratic president can’t do it either. Or the Republican after that. Or whichever narcissistic peacock eventually decides the Kennedy Center needs his portrait hanging over the urinals.
National institutions have to survive the people temporarily entrusted with them.
That’s what stewardship means.
And somewhere inside that building, Robert Berks’ 3,000-pound John F. Kennedy is still staring across the Grand Foyer.
For now.
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FROM OFF SCRIPT: THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR
Bullshit: Noncitizens are flooding American elections.
Why: Trump and his allies are escalating claims about noncitizen voting ahead of the midterms. DHS has claimed, without producing evidence, that 250,000 noncitizens may be registered in four states. The Associated Press notes that actual noncitizen voting is extremely rare, already illegal, punishable as a felony, and potentially grounds for deportation. Screaming louder doesn’t turn a rare crime into an election epidemic. (AP News)
Bullshit: Free speech protections disappear when the speaker isn’t a citizen.
Why: A federal judge in California ruled Friday that the government can’t use immigration law to punish noncitizen students for protected political speech about Israel, Palestinians, or other issues. The judge found First and Fifth Amendment problems with the administration’s policy after international students reported censoring themselves out of fear of deportation. Immigration enforcement is a legitimate government power. Turning it into a political speech detector is another thing entirely. (AP News)
Bullshit: The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s birthright-citizenship order, so just write another one.
Why: The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s original attempt to restrict birthright citizenship in June. Trump signed a narrower order in August anyway, carving out several categories including so-called birth tourism. A federal judge declined to block it Friday because the challengers hadn’t formally updated their lawsuit, while simultaneously questioning whether the new exceptions had any basis in the Supreme Court’s ruling and calling the approach unprecedented. That isn’t vindication. That’s a procedural timeout. (Reuters)
Bullshit: Say “national security” and the courts have to stop asking questions.
Why: The Pentagon labeled AI company Anthropic a national-security supply-chain risk after the company refused unrestricted use of its Claude technology for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. On Thursday, a federal judge blocked the designation and called it “illegal and baseless,” finding the government couldn’t simply invoke national security to retaliate against a critic. The Pentagon says the fight was contractual rather than ideological. The court wasn’t buying it. (Reuters)
From Off Script: The Bullshit Detector cuts through political spin, manufactured outrage, and claims that collapse the second somebody bothers checking them. The full Bullshit Detector guide is free to Off Script subscribers or available separately for $4.95 at the Tom Hicks Media Store.
AROUND TOM HICKS MEDIA
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Rabbit Ears Classic TV: A new edition drops today, digging back into the television that once had millions of Americans watching the same thing at the same damn time.
The Backlot Ghost: Wednesday, we head back behind the studio gates for another story from classic Hollywood where the movie usually turns out to be the least interesting thing that happened.
Blind Spot: Off Script’s Sunday deep dive keeps going after the stories that deserve more than a headline, a quote, and 11 seconds of cable-news screaming.
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
Should Congress change the Kennedy Center’s governing structure so no future president, Republican or Democrat, can take control of it this way again?
I’d really like to hear where you land on this one.
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