Kennedy Center Chaos Grows With Emergency Hearing Request

President Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center saga continued Wednesday, the day after a federal judge unceremoniously knocked down his latest bid to add his own name to President John F. Kennedy’s memorial venue. NBC News reported Tuesday that the center’s chief financial officer, Donna Kauranen, resigned from her position right before Trump’s handpicked board of trustees (chaired by none other than Trump himself) voted to shut down the venue indefinitely, ostensibly for repairs and renovations. Now Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center trustee and the plaintiff in the court battle against emblazoning the venue with Trump’s name, is requesting an emergency hearing to challenge the sudden closure, calling it “unexplained and unlawful.” Beatty filed her motion for an emergency hearing Wednesday afternoon, arguing that the closure violates a prior court order that not only blocked the name change but also prevented the center from closing for renovations. Trump’s allies at the center have claimed that the performing arts venue is in dire financial and structural straits and needs the president’s name on it to stay afloat. In a June court filing, the administration wrote that “without the name ‘Trump’ on the Building, our fundraising will not only come to a halt, but any and all monies raised or committed would be obligated to be returned, refunded, or terminated.”Still, U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled Tuesday in no uncertain terms that the Kennedy Center could not inscribe the words “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” on the side of the building, nor anywhere else on the historic grounds. “Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote.In a classic if-I-can’t-have-it-nobody-can tantrum, the president immediately made a “fucking crazy” call to the board to scream at Beatty. He then unleashed his anger on social media.“The Board of The Kennedy Center today agreed, almost unanimously, to close the Building for Safety reasons, and so that it can begin the process of Reconstruction. The closing will take place immediately, however, the Renovation and Reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”In the day since the board voted to close the center, new fencing has appeared around the building. Trump has previously threatened to demolish the center entirely if he doesn’t get his way, demonstrating yet again that if Trump isn’t in the spotlight, the show doesn’t go on.Read more about the Kennedy Center:The family of a Black Texas woman who died during her pregnancy is suing Attorney General and Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton—blaming his extreme abortion ban for her death. San Antonio’s Tierra Walker, 37, passed away in 2024 while she was 20 weeks pregnant. She had long experienced chronic health issues like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and first encountered preeclampsia—a potentially fatal disease that appears in women who are around 20 weeks pregnant—while carrying twins three years earlier. Both babies were stillborn, which in turn “sent her into a health spiral,” according to the lawsuit. In 2024, Walker became pregnant again after a positive streak of health. Soon, however, she began experiencing seizures, nausea, vomiting, and pain. After one emergency room visit, she was sent home, as doctors dismissed her symptoms as unrelated to her pregnancy, offering her mental health treatments instead. “They really treated her so bad because they thought she was crazy,” Walker’s aunt LaTanya Walker said to CBS News. “One day they told me to tell her husband, ‘Can you go tell him that this is all in her head?’”Walker asked for an abortion twice during this time, at about eight and 11 weeks. She was denied. Even worse, doctors noted in their records that she was indeed at a “high” risk of death, and discharged her from the hospital anyway. She returned a few days later. “I asked them time and time again to give her an abortion. And they would tell me … ‘It’s her, but it’s not the baby,’” LaTanya said, alleging that the doctors ignored abortion requests from both her and Tierra—and hid the requests from their records. “We have reviewed dozens of cases,” said Molly Duane, a lawyer for the Walker family. “And what is clear is that doctors are so scared to even write the word in their medical chart that it does not appear there.”It wasn’t until December 27 that Walker returned to the hospital and was formally diagnosed with preeclampsia, nearly three months after experiencing multiple complications related to it. Still, she was denied an abortion. “Medical guidelines say she should’ve been admitted, stabilized, and given medicine to prevent seizures,” CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Céline Gounder said. “Her pregnancy should have been terminated since her baby was likely too young to survive. Instead, she was sent home.”Walker was found dead in her home just a few days later, of preeclampsia and hypertension. Her family is laying her death at the feet of Paxton—and his abortion ban. “At every turn, Texas’s political and medical establishments not only failed but actively harmed Ms. Walker,” the lawsuit reads. “Tierra Walker is dead because not one of her … healthcare providers would give her the one medical procedure that would have saved her life.“For months, Ms. Walker had been asking for termination of her pregnancy—even though this was a wanted pregnancy—because she did not think she would survive the pregnancy. Tragically, she was right. An abortion at any point during her pregnancy would have saved her life.”The suit also attributes the medical inaction to a chilling effect directly tied to Paxton, who has aggressively gone after medical professionals who have performed lifesaving abortions. Paxton’s already scandal-stricken office has yet to publicly respond. Palantir, the shadowy tech and surveillance company founded by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, is now working with Mexican restaurant chain Chipotle to supposedly track food safety issues.Wired reports that Chipotle is working on a “food safety risk platform” hosted on Foundry, Palantir’s main software platform, compiling data including store pest incidents, employee illnesses, and Health Department scores to come up with each store’s risk level.It’s not clear how long the partnership has been going on or how widespread it is. As Wired notes, almost half of Palantir’s business comes from American corporations including food companies like General Mills, meat supplier Tyson, and the fast-food restaurant chain Wendy’s. But the tech company is better known for its contracts with the federal government, totaling billions of dollars. Under Trump, its projects have included building a master database on every American and developing an app to help ICE agents determine where to raid next.Chipotle confirmed the partnership to Wired but didn’t comment further, and Palantir didn’t immediately respond to the publication. Earlier this year, the restaurant chain was linked to the recall of jalapeño peppers from supplier Taylor Farms due to the risk of salmonella poisoning.But Palantir’s ties to some of the federal government’s more sinister activities, coupled with CEO Alex Karp’s ominous comments about disrupting democracy, raise questions as to what else the company is doing with its private contracts.With the Trump administration and Republicans bristling at any regulation of artificial intelligence, companies like Palantir have almost free rein to do whatever they want with their AI models, which are powered by the data they collect. Palantir can collect data from federal government sources and possibly skirt legal and constitutional protections thanks to a lack of oversight, coupled with the favor it has curried with the White House, and it’s partly fueled by the burritos Americans enjoy.The Iran war has slammed the American pocketbook, costing the public billions more dollars at the gas pump.Americans have collectively spent $107 billion more on gas and oil since the war began seven months ago, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday night. The estimate came from the Climate Solutions Lab at Brown University, which has been tracking the mounting costs.Consumers have spent roughly $59 billion more on gas and $48.6 billion on diesel, according to the university’s tracker. That breaks down to an increased price tag of approximately $822.20 per U.S. household.The price differential has been hardest felt in the Western half of the country, particularly in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico.But it’s unlikely that the economic fallout will end anytime soon. Some of Donald Trump’s closest advisers—including Vice President JD Vance and State Secretary Marco Rubio—have reportedly discussed the conflict’s potentially extended timeline with the president, exploring the possibility that Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure and effectively push the war beyond Inauguration Day 2029.Despite the dire reality of the closed-door conversations, Trump has invariably echoed his administration’s forecast for the war to the American public. Speaking with reporters earlier this month, Trump pledged that the conflict will end “immediately” after the midterm elections in November “because they can’t hold out any longer.”The war has been remarkably unpopular, and the financial toll has only further hurt the president’s image. A poll published Wednesday by the Eurasia Group’s Institute for Global Affairs found that support for the war fell by 6 percent since April, sinking to a 40 percent approval in August.Seventeen percent of Republicans reported that they believed Trump made a mistake in attacking Iran, while 16 percent said that they believed the war had made the U.S. less safe.The world’s largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, is horrified that FBI Director Kash Patel is making it easier for people who have engaged in bestiality to become FBI agents.After a ridiculous exchange between Patel and senators in a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, PETA co-founder and president Ingrid Newkirk is making her condemnation known. “No one in America supports humans having sex with animals, and to think an FBI agent might be such a cruel pervert is unconscionable and unacceptable,” Newkirk said in a statement obtained by MediasTouch. “Director Patel must immediately cancel this abominable misstep. It cannot happen.”The baffling new FBI hiring standards came out in a memo quietly issued by the bureau in June, which announced that applicants who had previously hired sex workers, stolen from employers, or engaged in bestiality and animal cruelty (as long as it happened before an applicant turned 18) are no longer disqualified from becoming federal agents.“What we did was, we did not want to punish victims of bestiality—victims who were trafficked,” Patel told Senator Dick Durbin in the committee hearing, somehow conflating bestiality with human trafficking. “Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so,” Patel continued. “And at this FBI, we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving the United States of America and the premier law enforcement agency in the world.”Even Republican senators were confused. “What about the bestiality?” asked Senator John Kennedy.“It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it,” Patel said.“Either side of what, the bestiality?”“Yes.”“So you disqualified the animal?” It’s no secret that the FBI under Donald Trump yes-man Patel has fallen into chaos and ruin. At best, these new hiring policies make the FBI a joke—at worst, they suggest that the agency is ready to elevate and dignify the very worst of human behavior.Read about Patel’s comments: