The Kennedy Center Fights Back

Workers at the Kennedy Center are resisting Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the historically non-partisan arts institution.

Trump and his egotistical takeover of the center has resulted in controversial, political layoffs and removal of all leadership deemed not loyal or conservative enough for Trump's regime. Over 90 of the remaining staffers at the historic venue announced Thursday that they would be moving to unionize.

As reasoning for unionizing, the Kennedy Center United Arts Workers, cited concerns with the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to “dismantle mission-essential departments and reshape our arts programming without regard to the interests of program funders, philanthropists, national partners and the audiences we serve.”

Donald Trump kickstarted an authoritarian takeover of the center in February, which he has repeatedly criticized as a financially, artistically, and even architecturally struggling (he hates when things aren't plated or painted gold).

He fired the center’s chairman David Rubenstein and president Deborah Rutter that month, and proceeded to lay off every Biden-appointed member on the center’s board of trustees.

He then named himself the center’s chair and appointed his special presidential envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, as its president. Beyond leadership, the center has also lost 37 employees in the overhaul, and some of its programs have been significantly scaled back, like the entire slate of pride events and performances from minority entertainers.

“We demand transparent and consistent terms for hiring and firing, a return to ethical norms, freedom from partisan interference in programming, free speech protections and the right to negotiate the terms of our employment,” the staffers’ statement to The Times continued.

The union will be partnering with the United Automobile Workers, one of the largest unions in the country, which helped file a request for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday.

Trump has mused on bringing more “anti-woke” offerings to the center’s programming and expressed a fondness for Broadway classics like The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, and Les Misérables, proving that media literacy is dead and gone.

In the words of Robert De Niro, who tore into the president’s ruining of of the Kennedy Center (and Hollywood): “You can’t put a price on creativity, but apparently you can put a tariff on it.”