The board overseeing the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on 13 August 2026 to move forward once more with President Donald Trump's plan to close the main building for a lengthy renovation, according to two people with direct knowledge of the virtual, non-public proceedings. The vote still requires sign-off from a federal judge before any closure can begin, and it comes months after the same board's earlier attempt to shut the venue was blocked in court.
In May 2026, US district judge Christopher Cooper halted Trump's push to close the arts institution for two years of renovations, a plan that had been due to start in July after the board — largely appointed by the president — approved it in March. Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who serves on the board, sued to stop the closure. Cooper found that the board had failed to properly weigh its obligations, writing that in ratifying the closure the board had been derelict in its duties.
"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 wrote.
He described the board's original decision, made on 16 March 2026, as "ill-informed and seemingly preordained."
According to reporting cited by the newspaper, the board this time voted to close the Kennedy Center's main building while keeping a newer wing of the campus open for limited programming and to continue functioning as an active memorial to John F Kennedy. Kennedy Center management had reportedly presented the board with three options before the vote — a full closure, a partial closure that would keep unaffected spaces accessible, or a phased closure limited to the most urgent infrastructure repairs, according to the Associated Press.
What does the renovation plan involve?
Before the meeting, the board reviewed a 163-page proposal for a $250m "renewal" project that includes structural repairs, new marble flooring, $11.8m earmarked for acoustical upgrades, and a plan to temporarily relocate the Kennedy Center's 3,000-pound bronze bust of Kennedy elsewhere on the campus. An outside consultant presented board members with a comparison of two renovation scenarios, and both the consultant and construction management firm JLL flagged safety and cost concerns tied to keeping the building open during a phased renovation.
JLL's proposal states the project would fix chronic leaks, swap out aging equipment and redesign sections of the interior. Planned changes include new furniture, a coffee shop, electronic ticketing kiosks and $7m set aside for renovating public restrooms. The firm's target date for reopening is the summer of 2028. Judge Cooper's order had made clear that the board is legally required to maintain the building as a memorial to Kennedy, and under the new plan memorial materials would be shifted to the newer campus addition while the main building is shut.
It remains unclear whether the center will pursue exactly this plan once Cooper reviews it. The Kennedy Center has until next week to submit its plan to the judge, who will assess whether the board conducted adequate due diligence before voting.
What is the dispute over Trump's name on the building?
The board also reportedly voted to inscribe Trump's name on the Kennedy Center's facade, despite a federal court order requiring his name to be taken down. According to the New York Times, the board approved adding an inscription beneath the institution's name reading: "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J Trump." The Associated Press reported that the fuller wording under consideration was "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump," according to the Associated Press.
This is not the first clash over Trump's name at the venue. As previously reported, Judge Cooper ordered Trump's name removed from the building's facade in May 2026 after it had been added the year before, ruling that only Congress has the authority to alter the institution's name. The center complied and took the name down in June, though it is appealing that ruling. The removal itself produced a further legal skirmish, after a federal judge demanded an explanation for why a tarp was placed over the facade once Trump's name was taken off.
What happens next?
The renewed closure vote does not take effect automatically. The Kennedy Center must submit its plan to Judge Cooper for review, and the center has until next week to do so. Cooper will then determine whether the board carried out sufficient due diligence before approving the closure, according to the New York Times. The Kennedy Center has not yet responded to a request for comment on the vote.
Why is Trump changing how carriers launch jets?
Separately, Donald Trump has reportedly directed the US Navy to remove electromagnetic catapult systems from its aircraft carriers and replace them with the steam-powered catapults used on older vessels, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported that Trump signed a national security memorandum on 13 August 2026 ordering the change, something he has publicly pushed for since at least 2017, when he first raised the issue in an interview with Time magazine.
"You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system," Trump said in the 2017 interview. "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 going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good'."
Trump has repeated some version of this anecdote about a Navy official every year since 2017. In 2018 he raised it while speaking to a naval officer docked in Hong Kong. In 2019 he brought it up at a fundraiser, and by 2020, even as the country grappled with the pandemic, the story had become a fixture of his remarks. He told it again in 2021, used it in 2022 during an appearance in Texas, repeated it in Iowa in 2023, and told the same story at one of his final campaign events before the 2024 election. Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has brought up steam catapults while introducing his director of national intelligence and again while addressing troops stationed in Japan.
"We built an aircraft carrier for $19 billion, which is crazy. The price is crazy," Trump said 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'."
The Wall Street Journal reported that senior Navy and industry officials have resisted the change, citing the enormous expense of tearing out a system that was built into the design of the latest carriers.
What else is happening in the trade fight?
Trump has welcomed a ruling from the court of international trade that upholds his decision to end the "de minimis" tariff exemption, a policy that had let people and businesses avoid duties on shipments to the US worth less than $800. The president called the ruling a "BIG WIN," describing the exemption as one of the "most DESPICABLE loopholes in American Trade Policy."
The case was brought by a Michigan-based auto parts manufacturer, which argued it should be refunded for tariffs paid after Trump ended the exemption, pointing to the Supreme Court's earlier decision this year striking down the president's broader tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The trade court disagreed with the manufacturer, ruling that IEEPA "authorizes the president's recission of the de minimis exemption."
In a related report, the White House said countries are routing exports through third nations to dodge US tariffs, estimating annual tax revenue losses of between $19bn and $26bn, according to the Associated Press. The report says China responded to tariffs imposed in 2018 by shipping goods through other countries — from Mexico to Malaysia — for packaging or limited assembly, making it appear that US imports from China had fallen while allowing Beijing's manufacturing sector to keep growing in ways that could threaten US factories and jobs.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on a conference call that China is laundering exports through more than 40 countries, though he argued the report's findings were really about other nations enabling tariff avoidance.
"For years, the great transshipment scam has let communist China launder its exports," Navarro said.
The report lands ahead of a planned visit next month by Chinese president Xi Jinping, whom Trump praised in flattering terms during his own trip to Beijing in May 2026. Navarro said other countries, including India, could also attempt transshipment to avoid new tariffs, and said upcoming trade frameworks would include provisions penalizing partners that engage in the practice. The report cites a range of estimates — from $34.2bn to $303bn worth of goods transshipped annually — and used a central estimate of $75bn in transshipped goods to calculate the lost tax revenue. Navarro said Customs and Border Protection has begun testing an artificial intelligence program to detect transshipment, and that importers found to have falsified a good's origin can be retroactively tariffed for roughly the past year.
What happened in the Harvard lawsuit?
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration that accused Harvard University of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment. In his ruling on 13 August 2026, US district judge Richard Stearns in Boston found that the administration's lawsuit, filed in March 2026, had not plausibly shown an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard's campus.
Stearns said the government's allegations centered mostly on incidents during protests over Israel's war in Gaza in the 2023-24 school year, with only a handful of additional incidents cited from March 2025 that he described as "too isolated and episodic" to support a claim of ongoing civil rights violations. The judge also found the lawsuit did not adequately allege failures by Harvard after the government told the university in June 2025 that it was not complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color and national origin in federally funded programs. Neither the White House nor Harvard immediately responded to requests for comment.
What is happening aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln?
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said concerns about conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are "completely misrepresented," following reports of food shortages and a worsening mental health crisis on the ship, which has now been deployed for more than 200 days after being redirected to the Middle East to support 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 specialist military publications have reported multiple attempts by sailors to jump overboard as conditions and mental strain on the Lincoln reach a breaking point. On 12 August 2026, Democrats on the Senate armed services committee wrote to Hegseth and acting Navy secretary Hung Cao seeking more information on what is being done to improve conditions aboard the ship.
"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," wrote Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, noting that the Lincoln has not made a port call in more than 200 days, a record run of consecutive days at sea.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the USS George Washington will be sent to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln as part of a previously scheduled rotation, according to unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
Who might replace Karoline Leavitt as press secretary?
Karoline Leavitt's surprise resignation as White House press secretary, announced this week, has reportedly set off a competitive search inside Trump's orbit for one of the administration's most visible jobs. Leavitt is stepping down at the end of the month to spend more time with her family, and several names have already emerged as possible successors.
Stephen Cheung, the current White House communications director, has worked closely alongside Leavitt throughout the second Trump term; when he praised her tenure this week, Leavitt joked on social media that the two had survived "many, many news cycles" together. Alina Habba, a longtime Trump loyalist who previously served as his personal lawyer and briefly as US attorney for New Jersey before a federal judge ruled her appointment unlawful, has been a frequent defender of the president on conservative media, and the New York Post has reported, citing administration sources, that she is an early frontrunner for the role.
Anna Kelly, who already serves as principal deputy press secretary under Leavitt, previously worked as a spokesperson for Trump's 2024 campaign and before that as national press secretary for the Republican National Committee. Katie Miller, wife of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, has an insider's view of the administration through her conservative podcast, on which she has interviewed cabinet officials and right-wing media figures; she previously served as communications director for the Department of Government Efficiency and was Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary from 2019 to 2021. Taylor Budowich, a former White House deputy chief of staff who worked alongside Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino, was, together with Leavitt, named as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press after it was barred from the press pool for declining to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America."
What did the new attorney general say in his first speech?
Todd Blanche, confirmed this week as attorney general, used his first address at the justice department's Washington headquarters to call on staff to work as "one team" with "one mission." Blanche's confirmation passed narrowly last week after some Republican senators said his record as acting attorney general gave them little confidence he would act independently; senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins cited his decision to approve a $1.8bn "anti-weaponization fund" compensating Trump allies as a reason for opposing his confirmation.
"Everything that I do will not be the right path or the right decision," Blanche said. "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 Blanche's appointment will deepen the justice department's politicization as Trump continues to target perceived political opponents. Addressing a workforce that includes the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Blanche said he was proud of the department's work on violent crime and 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."
