US President evokes Joe Biden’s security clearance, fires Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts board and declares himself its chairman
Shogan, the first woman in the post, wasn’t the archivist at the time the classified documents issue emerged. David Ferriero, who had been appointed by then-president Barack Obama in 2009, announced in January 2022 that he’d be retiring effective that April.
Trump also announced he was firing members of the board of trustees for the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts, one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, and naming himself chairman.
“Art and Ideals: President John F. Kennedy” – a permanent exhibition at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington.Credit: Alan Karchmer/OTTO
He also indicated that he would be dictating programming, specifically declaring that he’d put an end to events featuring performers in drag.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote on his social media website.
“We will soon announce a new board, with an amazing chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
In a statement on its website, the Kennedy Centre said it was aware of Trump’s post. “We have received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to our board of trustees,” the statement said. “We are aware that some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi at her confirmation hearing.Credit: AP
Trump also signed an executive order calling for a broad review of all of Biden’s executive actions on guns, along with other federal government rules, plans, reports and lawsuits, to “assess any ongoing infringements of the Second Amendment rights” of Americans.
The order calls for Attorney-General Pam Bondi to conduct the review within 30 days and formulate an action plan for protecting the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.
And he froze aid to South Africa, alleging discrimination against the white minority.
“The government of South Africa blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners,” the White House said in a summary of the executive order. Trump would also move to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees, the White House said.
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“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavoured minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” the summary said in a reference to South Africa’s referral of the Gaza genocide case against Israel at the International Criminal Court, and the country’s land policy. The country’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said South Africa would “not be bullied”.
Trump’s moves encountered other protests too.
Nineteen Democratic attorneys-general started to sue Trump to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records containing sensitive personal data such as Social Security, tax refunds, Veteran’s benefits and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.
Separately, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from placing 2200 employees of the US Agency for International Development on paid leave.
High School students rally in downtown Los Angeles on Friday to stop Donald Trump’s mass deportations and demand immigration reform.Credit: AP
US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, sided with two federal employee associations in agreeing to pause plans to put the USAID employees on paid leave as of midnight on Friday.
The workers’ associations argue that Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.
And protests and walkouts in Southern California against his immigration crackdown, led mainly by high school students, continued for the sixth consecutive day.
Students from high schools in East LA marched downtown, waving Mexican, Guatemalan, and El Salvadorean flags while passing cars which honked in support. Roughly 1000 students were peacefully gathered in front of City Hall.
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The student walkouts began on Monday and have involved high schools all over the greater Los Angeles area. They carried signs that read, “We fight for our parents who fought for our futures”.
Thousands of people protesting mass deportations planned by Trump marched in Southern California on Sunday, including in downtown Los Angeles, where demonstrators blocked a major freeway for several hours.
And in Alaska, the Legislature passed a resolution urging Trump to reverse course and retain the name of North America’s tallest peak as Denali rather than change it to Mount McKinley.
Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order calling for the name to revert to Mount McKinley, an identifier inspired by a former president, who was from Ohio and never set foot in Alaska.
He said he planned to “restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.” He said McKinley “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent”.
AP
