Trump says he will fire Kennedy Center board members, appoint himself chairman

President Donald Trump on Friday announced plans to overhaul the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, writing that he had decided to “immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees,” including chairman David M. Rubenstein, in a post on Truth Social. He added that he plans to install himself as the new chairman of the prominent arts institution.

He did not say which board members he plans to terminate. It is unclear whether the president has the power to make such changes.

“The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation,” Trump wrote. “For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

Trump cited drag shows “targeting our youth” in his post, without specifying, reviving a line of attack against drag performances in events led by government-affiliated institutions. The Kennedy Center held some shows involving drag last year.

In an all-staff email Friday night, Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter said “some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”

The email noted the Kennedy Center has received no “official communications from the White House” about any changes to the board.

“Per the Center’s governance established by Congress in 1958, the chair of the board of trustees is appointed by the Center’s board members,” Rutter wrote. “There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such an action has been taken with Kennedy Center’s board.”

William Becker, who provided legal assistance to the Kennedy Center starting in 1969 and became general counsel from 1993 to 2001, said he couldn’t recall a similar action in his tenure.

When asked about the president’s ability to remove the board and install himself as chair, Becker said, “It’s certainly never happened before, but there’s a lot of things that are happening that never happened before.”

Before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden appointed several new members to the board of trustees, bucking tradition by not publicly announcing them. Among them were several people with connections to his administration, including former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Evan Ryan, the former White House Cabinet secretary and wife of former secretary of state Antony Blinken.

Trump notably broke tradition from previous presidents by not attending the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony throughout his first term in office. Some honorees during his first administration, including Norman Lear and Lionel Richie, threatened to boycott proceedings that included him.

The Kennedy Center, which is visited by roughly 2 million people a year, is funded by a mixture of government and private funds. Its operating budget in 2024 was $268 million. Of that, roughly $125 million came from earned revenue, such as ticket sales, $95 million from private donations and fundraising and $45 million from federal appropriations, with another $4 million drawn from its endowment.

The federal funds go to building operations and maintenance, including the center’s use as a presidential memorial to President John F. Kennedy. Those funds aren’t used for arts programming.

The center is already in the midst of change. Rutter revealed her decision to step down as president at the end of 2025, after holding the position for 11 years. Rubenstein, 75, the philanthropist and Carlyle Group co-founder, was expected to step down as chairman of the center’s board in September 2026. He’s held the position since 2010.

Rubenstein originally said he was stepping down in 2025, but a search for his replacement came up empty.

When asked about her decision to step down as president, Rutter told The Washington Post: “This is not related to the politics of who’s in the White House. The Kennedy Center is truly nonpartisan. … Frankly, for the last six years, I’ve had almost all Trump appointees as my board members. And we’ve had a fantastic era with them.”

After Biden’s new appointees, the board was more evenly split between Trump’s and Biden’s appointees.

The move comes on the heels of Trump’s directives reshaping several Washington cultural institutions. Following Trump’s executive order declaring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” the Smithsonian Institution said last week it was closing its diversity office, freezing federal hiring and requiring workers to return to office five days a week. The National Gallery of Art also closed its diversity office.

The National Endowment for the Arts, meanwhile, said Thursday it will alter its 2026 grant guidelines by eliminating the Challenge America grant, which was reserved for projects that “extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities,” according to its website.

The organization said in a news release that the new guidelines will be published on its website by Monday, Feb. 10, and will “encourage projects that celebrate the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America.”