Monday, September 21, 2026
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
Justice Department withheld and removed some Epstein files related to Trump
An NPR investigation finds the Justice Department has removed or withheld Epstein files related to President Trump.
The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
NPR reviewed multiple sets of unique serial numbers appearing before and after the pages in question, stamped onto documents in the Epstein files database, FBI case records, emails and discovery document logs in the latest tranche of documents published at the end of January. NPR's investigation found dozens of pages that appear to be catalogued by the Justice Department but not shared publicly.
The Justice Department declined to answer NPR's questions on the record about these specific files, what's in them and why they are not published. After publication, the Justice Department reached out to NPR, taking issue with how its responses to questions were framed. Department of Justice spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre reiterated DOJ's stance that any documents not published are privileged, are duplicates or relate to an ongoing federal investigation.
Following NPR's reporting, the House Oversight Committee's ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., released a statement about the missing files.
"Yesterday, I reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Department of Justice. Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes," Garcia stated.
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents.
Other files scrubbed from public view pertain to a separate woman who was a key witness for the prosecution in the criminal trial of Epstein's co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Maxwell is seeking clemency from Trump.
Some of those documents were briefly taken down and put back online last week, while others remain hidden, according to NPR's comparison of the initial dataset from Jan. 30 with document metadata of those files currently on the Justice Department's website.
NPR does not name victims of sexual abuse.
When asked for comment about the missing pages and the accusations against the president, a White House spokeswoman told NPR that Trump "has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him."
"Just as President Trump has said, he's been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein," White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told NPR in a statement. "And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee's subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein's Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein's victims than anyone before him. Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender."
The White House has previously pointed to a statement from the Justice Department that says the Epstein files contain "untrue and sensationalist claims" about the president.
In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."
First woman accuses Trump of sexual abuse
According to the newly released files, the FBI internally circulated Epstein-related allegations that mention Trump in late July and early August 2025. The list, collected from the FBI's National Threat Operations Center, included numerous salacious allegations. Agents marked most of the accusations as unverifiable or not credible.
But one lead was sent to the FBI's Washington office with the purpose of setting up an interview with the accuser. The lead was included in an internal PowerPoint slide deck detailing "prominent names" in the Epstein and Maxwell investigations last fall.
The woman who directly named Trump in her abuse allegation claimed that around 1983, when she was around 13 years old, Epstein introduced her to Trump, "who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out."
Out of more than 3 million pages of files released by the Justice Department in recent months, this specific allegation against Trump appears only in copies of the FBI list of claims and the DOJ slideshow.
But a review of FBI case file logs and discovery documents turned over to Maxwell and her attorneys in the criminal case against her point to one place the claim could have come from — and how serious investigators took it.
The FBI interviewed this Trump and Epstein accuser four times. That is according to an FBI "Serial Report" and a list of Non-Testifying Witness Material in the Maxwell case that were also released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Only the first interview, conducted July 24, 2019, is in the public database. That interview does not mention Trump.
Of 15 documents listed in a log of the Maxwell discovery material for this first accuser, only seven are in the Epstein files database. Those missing also include notes that accompany three of the interviews. The discrepancy in the file for the Trump accuser was first reported by independent journalist Roger Sollenberger.
According to NPR's review of three different sets of serial numbers stamped onto the files, there appear to be 53 pages of interview documents and notes missing from the public Epstein database.
In the first interview document, the woman discussed ways Epstein abused her as a girl and, in identifying him to investigators, showed a cropped photo of the disgraced financier. Her attorney said it was cropped because she "was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation."
The FBI agents noted it was a "widely distributed photograph" of Epstein with Trump.
A woman whose biographical details and description of Epstein's abuse found in the FBI interview also line up with details from a victim lawsuit. In the December 2019 filing, "Jane Doe 4" does not mention Trump, and the woman voluntarily dismissed her claims against Epstein's estate in December 2021.
Attorneys for this accuser declined to comment.
Elsewhere in the released Epstein files, someone in the FBI wrote on July 22, 2025, before the list and slide presentation were compiled, that Trump's name was in the larger case files and that "one identified victim claimed abuse by Trump but ultimately refused to cooperate."
Second accuser says she met Trump at Mar-a-Lago
The other woman whose mention of Trump made the DOJ's presentation appears in Maxwell discovery files released last month in what's known as a Testifying Witness 3500 material list.
In the first interview of six with the FBI conducted between September 2019 and September 2021, the second woman detailed how Epstein and Maxwell's abuse began while she was around 13 years old and attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts and described how, at one point, Epstein took her to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to meet him.
"EPSTEIN told TRUMP, 'This is a good one, huh,'" the interview report reads.
In a 2020 lawsuit against Epstein's estate and Maxwell, the second woman added that both men chuckled and she "felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why."
That interview was removed from the DOJ's public files some time after initial publication on Jan. 30 and was republished Feb. 19, according to document metadata.
The Justice Department told NPR the only reason any file has been temporarily removed is that it had been flagged by a victim or their counsel for additional review.
Multiple FBI interviews with other people refer to the second woman's meeting with Trump while she was a minor and being abused by Epstein. One interviewwith a fleeting mention of Trump was removed from the public database and subsequently restored last week, while another interview with the woman's mother is still offline. After publication, the Justice Department said, the file required additional redactions and will be reposted soon.
In that conversation, the mother recalled hearing that "a prince and DONALD TRUMP visited EPSTEIN's house," which made her "think that if they are there then how could EPSTEIN be a criminal," according to NPR's copy of the file that was first published.
The possible omission of files that mention these women's particular allegations against the president come as the Justice Department has warned about other documents it has published in full that include what it calls "untrue and sensationalist claims" about Trump.
At the same time, the Justice Department has removed and reuploaded thousands of pages in recent weeks to fix improperly redacted victim names. That includes documents related to the allegations from these two women, who separately say they were around 13 years old when Epstein first abused them.
Robert Glassman, who represents the woman who testified against Maxwell, sharply criticized the Justice Department's handling of the Epstein files.
"This whole thing is ridiculous," he told NPR. "The DOJ was ordered to release information to the public to be transparent about Epstein and Maxwell's criminal enterprise network. Instead, they released the names of courageous victims who have fought hard for decades to remain anonymous and out of the limelight. Whether the disclosures were inadvertent or not—they had one job to do here and they didn't do it."
A DOJ spokesperson told NPR that the department is working "around the clock" to address concerns from victims and handle additional redactions of personally identifiable information that have been flagged.
"In view of the Congressional deadline, all reasonable efforts have been made to review and redact personal information pertaining to victims, other private individuals, and protect sensitive materials from disclosure," the statement reads. "That said, because of the volume of information involved, this website may nevertheless contain information that inadvertently includes non-public personally identifiable information or other sensitive content, to include matters of a sexual nature."
NPR's Saige Miller and Ryan Lucas contributed reporting.
Have information to share about the Epstein files? Reach out to Stephen Fowler through encrypted communications on Signal at stphnfwlr.25. Please use a nonwork device.“
Who’s Winning the Race for Congress?
Who’s Winning the Race for Congress?
Democrats hold momentum with polling leads, while Republicans retain map and funding advantages. Republicans consider resource shifts in Georgia and North Carolina. Ad spending favors Republicans in key Senate races; House control hinges on 21 tossups.
We’re 43 days away from the midterms. Here’s the state of play.
The election is in 43 days.
The bad news for Republicans is that the battleground map keeps shifting to redder and redder territory.
Places like Kansas — where Democrats have not won a Senate seat in nearly a century — now appear to feature actual, well, races. President Trump’s operation is spending millions of dollars in congressional districts he won by double digits.
The good news for Republicans is that almost none of these campaigns are lost causes — yet. District by district, state by state, the races that will decide the majorities remain close. Democrats are still defending some competitive seats that they might have hoped to lock up by now. For instance, they recently plunged in $10 million more to defend a Michigan Senate seat they already hold.
With a little more than six weeks until Election Day, that is the tension at the heart of the midterm map. The Democrats have the momentum. Republicans have the map and the money.
The Battle for the Senate
Maine
Michigan
Alaska
Texas
Iowa
Minnesota
Nebraska
Kansas
Ohio
New Hampshire
Georgia
North Carolina
9 other races
and 34 not up for re-election
50 seats
14 other races
and 31 not up for re-election
It’s a critical couple of weeks for Representative Mike Collins, the Republican nominee in Georgia, and Michael Whatley, the Republican nominee in North Carolina.
Both have consistently trailed in polls, and Republican strategists are actively discussing whether to cut bait, especially on Collins, as The Times reported last week.
At a donor meeting earlier this month in Dallas, Collins was notably missing from a slide presentation of the party’s top
“quality” recruits this cycle — though he was in the room as the presentation was made.
Republicans haven’t given up on Georgia or North Carolina. President Trump campaigned for Whatley last week in North Carolina. Vice President JD Vance will be there on Monday. And Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican majority leader, is headed to Atlanta on Thursday to headline a fund-raiser for Collins.
But as Thune said last week, Republicans “obviously make decisions when it comes to resources” on a stretched map.
Translation: Improve soon in the polls — or else.
Inside the Air Wars
The polls are looking good for Democrats. The money is not — at least in terms of the ad spending in the top Senate races.
Democrats are set to be outspent on television and radio in every major contest outside of Georgia between Labor Day and Election Day.
Here are the gaps for the coming week, according to data from AdImpact, the ad-tracking service.
In Texas, Republicans will have a $25.9 million to $1.1 million edge in the coming week.
In Michigan, it’s nearly $9.1 million to $3.2 million.
And in Ohio, it’s $12.6 million to $6.8 million.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. It's a pivotal moment for American politics. Join us for 2026 and beyond.
One Key Metric
The highest-ever price of a gallon of diesel: $6.50.
The price of diesel on Sunday, according to AAA: $6.50.
The Race for the House
Washington
California
Nevada
Arizona
New Mexico
Texas
Nebraska
Iowa
Wisconsin
Michigan
New York
Pennsylvania
Ohio
North Carolina
Virginia
New Jersey
Florida
Colorado
197 solidly or likely Dem.
218 districts
for control
201 solidly or likely Rep.
Republicans are seeing the same polls that the public is. The Times measured a nearly 9-percentage-point edge for Democrats on the congressional ballot last week — akin to the margin in the 2018 Democratic wave.
But Republicans are openly hoping those numbers are understating G.O.P. support.
“None of us should put any stock in polls anymore because they are wildly inaccurate; we all know that,” Speaker Mike Johnson said last week at the Capitol. “We know this is going to be a tight race. It is going to be decided by about 20 jump-ball swing districts around the country.”
His math is not wrong. The Cook Political Report currently rates 206 seats as leaning Democratic and 208 as leaning Republican. Democrats will need to win a majority of the 21 tossup seats to win the majority (16 of the 21 are currently held by the G.O.P.).
The Money
Democrats appear to believe one swing district is more safely in their hands.
On Friday, the leading House Democratic super PAC, House Majority PAC, began to pull all its reservations for the coming week in Michigan’s 8th district, where Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat, is seeking re-election in a seat that Trump carried in 2024. The total being canceled is around $1 million and can be seen as a sign of bullishness for Democrats. Republicans still have television time booked in the seat.
The Democratic House Majority PAC is planning to book its first television ads in two Republican-held seats in the New York media market on Monday, according to CJ Warnke, the group’s spokesman. The buy is $2.4 million in cable time targeting Representative Mike Lawler of New York and Representative Thomas Kean Jr. of New Jersey.
Top Talker
The ad seen ’round the political world last week was from Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, Republican of Florida, whose straight-to-camera rebuke of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies included the line, “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
Candidates in swing seats often seek distance from an unpopular president. But Trump carried Salazar’s district with 57 percent of the vote. Her decision to so aggressively break with him suggests his numbers have cratered among South Florida’s Hispanic population.
Salazar said on CBS on Sunday that she spoke with Trump since the ad was released and that he was “very courteous, very receptive.” Of course, Salazar has taken the familiar tack of not blaming Trump for his own policies but rather unnamed aides. “I think that some of his advisers are compromising his legacy,” she said on Sunday.
One Poll Number
In last week’s Times/Siena poll, Trump’s approval rating among Hispanic voters was at only 26 percent, with 69 percent disapproving.
On the Issues
Other Republicans sought distance from the president in different ways. In a floor vote, two Republicans, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks andRepresentative Zach Nunn, both of Iowa and running in top battleground, voted for the first time for President Trump to end the war in Iran or seek authorization to continue it.
They had previously opposed restrictions.
On the Ground
Another Iowa Republican, Representative Ashley Hinson, did not attend Vice President JD Vance’s event in the state on Friday.
“I know she couldn’t be here today,” Vance told the crowd, “but are we going to elect Ashley Hinson?”
Quote of the Week
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, last week previewed his weekend travel to Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa to reporters on the Capitol steps in a way that colorfully captured the state of play.
“If you told me six months ago, I was going to be having to spend my time in those three states, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Mr. Kennedy said. “Those ought to be fat guy layups for us. Now we’re going to win there. But the races are close.”
Worth a Thousand Words
Produced by Leo Dominguez, Lazaro Gamio, Rumsey Taylor and Ashley Wu.
Sunday, September 20, 2026
Star Trek is turning 60 – and the vision it promised feels more distant than ever | Dave Schilling | The Guardian
Star Trek is turning 60 – and the vision it promised feels more distant than ever | Dave Schilling
"Who among us doesn’t dream of space in their youth?
OK, maybe some of us. Like the ones with lives. While you were out playing hopscotch with little Jimmy and Susie, I was locked in my room mainlining episodes of Star Trek or the weird, sanitized version of Aliens that aired on broadcast TV. Fantastical science-fiction adventure seemed to offer more than playground games and actual human connection. Spaceships over relationships.
Star Trek, celebrating its 60th anniversary this month, offered a utopian vision of the future. Highly competent scientists traveling the galaxy solving moral and ethical quandaries with grace and intelligence. It was a vision of Earth that had overcome greed and selfishness to pursue a more peaceful world Kirk and Spock. Picard and Data. These were characters that were ethical, witty and heroic. Better that than little Jimmy burning ants with a magnifying glass.
The Alien franchise, on the other hand, was the complete opposite. In the second film, Aliens, which coincidentally is turning 40 this year, the characters are mostly brain-dead killing-machine soldiers and venal corporate stooges. This one sounds a bit more familiar, doesn’t it? The entire known universe is controlled by a diabolical company whose only aim is profit at the expense of the average person. Both Star Trek and the Alien films offered the requisite thrills and whiz-bang action to titillate a young boy like myself back in the 1990s, but they were also diametrically opposed visions of what the world might look like when I became an adult. Would it be along the lines of a lush beige carpet and colorful pajamas or a soaking wet murder machine covered in KY Jellygrinding the working class into the ground? It took a few decades, but I think I found my answer.
The US air force announced on Monday that it had deployed weapons into space, thumbing its nose at the unwritten rule that space is for peace, not for war. The US rationale is, well, everyone else is doing it! Officials point to the increased militarization of space, including a 2024 Biden administration report claiming Russia was developing the capability to detonate nuclear weapons in space to disable or destroy orbiting satellites, which are crucial pieces of global infrastructure.
The air force secretary, Troy Meink, referred to the deployment as “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action”. He wouldn’t say what they were, what they could actually do, or even what they look like. Which is always so comforting when futuristic space guns are involved. Is it a giant laser beam? Missiles? A claw that can grab satellites out of the sky? A large hammer? A Trump-shaped robot gollum that could swallow the International Space Station with the ease and gusto of the real person chowing down on a Big Mac? My imagination, stoked by years of sci-fi television, is running rampant. At the very least, I hope it has a series of blinking lights all over it. And an off-switch.
Back in the 1980s, when Star Trek was at its creative peak, the idea of weaponizing space was considered such a joke that President Reagan struggled to amass a consensus around his Strategic Defense Initiative (derisively nicknamed “Star Wars”), which would have created a US orbiting missile deterrent. But now, Donald Trump is making fantasy space battles a key element of his rapidly deteriorating legacy. The US space force, his absurd brainchild, presented new uniforms that look like they were leftover from a Paul Verhoeven movie. If one wants to conquer a lifeless galaxy full of dirt, rocks and little else, one must be wearing the shiniest black boots possible. Also a hat.
The space force uniforms are certainly lightyears away from the ones on Star Trek, where everyone wears bright colors that immediately make the viewer think they’ve accidentally stumbled onto a rather unique discotheque. The Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, made sure that the phaser weapons depicted on the show had a non-lethal stun setting. I think if anyone proposed a non-lethal weapon for the US space force, they’d be A) fired immediately and B) called woke to their face (and on Fox News in front of millions of people).
Looking back six decades at the world Star Trek was born in, there was optimism in the world, mixed in with the chaos of political assassinations, riots, a war in Vietnam, and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. The idea of going to space and landing Apollo 11 on the Moon was inspiring to a world that needed more cheering up than Ed Sheeran trying to find an opening act for his tour. Star Trek posited that life on Earth might be bad now, but fear not, the good guys would win in the end. Humanity would overcome itself.
Countless modern scientific achievements – cellphones, tablets, the internet, medical advancements – can be attributed to Star Trek beaming ideas of benevolent futurism into homes around the globe for 60 years. But did society actually learn anything from Star Trek? The Federation and the Klingons made peace in the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but could their real-world analogues – the United States and Russia – be any further apart? Of course, if you know anything about the future-history depicted on Star Trek, you know utopia doesn’t occur until after a global nuclear holocaust, in case you want to be even more depressed today.
Star Trek’s impact is immense, especially for a TV show that only lasted for three years and often deployed styrofoam rocks, wobbly models, and dodgy rubber aliens in its design. That impact is a testament to the writing, acting, and film technique that grabbed millions of people and changed their lives. But I’ve never been more pessimistic about humanity achieving the beautiful dream of Gene Roddenberry. With every fascist-looking spacesuit or space laser, I feel like we’re progressing backwards, step by step. Given the proliferation of pandemics, climate change, species extinction, and contaminated food supplies, I’m more apt to wake up expecting to have an HR Giger-inspired genetic abomination gnawing at my face. At least my years staring at my TV screen alone prepared me for what’s to come.
Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist"
Opinion | JD Vance Has a Twisted Idea of What It Means to Be American - The New York Times
JD Vance Has a Twisted Idea of What It Means to Be American
"I am a “Heritage American.” To parts of MAGA America that means I’m entitled to rule.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, congratulations — it means you’re not spending too much time online. But sadly, remaining ignorant of this label is no longer healthy. It’s the not-so-hidden hand behind the birthright citizenship debate, and it’s behind the bigot eruption in Texas I wrote about last week, when Bo French, the Republican nominee for railroad commissioner, posted a profoundly racist insult of South Asian students at the University of Texas at Austin.
Even more disturbing, it’s an idea that has at least a certain amount of appeal to the vice president of the United States and to many of the people who form the so-called Vanceguard — the collection of intellectuals and activists who are (again, mainly online) trying pave the way for JD Vance to succeed Donald Trump as president and leader of the American right.
A Heritage American, in their formulation, is someone who can trace his lineage back to the founding of the country, preferably even before. Not long ago, a person posted a chart online. You get an A grade if you’re “colonial old stock,” meaning your ancestors came here between 1607 and 1789. You get a B if you’re “antebellum stock,” a C if you’re an “Ellis Islander.” You get a D if you or your ancestors arrived after World War II.
And what do those grades mean? You should essentially view them as categories of citizenship, or as Vance put it in a speech to the Claremont Institute, arguably the foremost think tank of MAGA America, “I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.”
Well, by that standard, give me an A+. My grandmother belonged to the Mayflower Society, and our family lore is replete with stories of service and sacrifice running from Plymouth, Mass., to Valley Forge to the Civil War, and through both World Wars. Our roots in this country aren’t as deep as they are for Native Americans, of course, but they are very deep.
At the heart of the Heritage American idea is the concept of inherited virtue, the idea that public policy should orient itself toward benefiting people on the basis of their ancestry. My ancestors’ very existence should then grant me special considerations and privileges.
This is why, for example, many on the right are angry at the University of Texas for its diversity even after it adopted a colorblind, meritocratic admissions system that grants automatic admission to anyone who finishes near the top of their high school class.
Conservatives once favored this policy — and many still do — but not the new right, not any longer.
Too many Asians, especially from India and Pakistan, are gaining admission, you see, and that hurts the people whose families have been here a long time.
It’s a short trip from inherited virtue to inherited entitlement. And at its most extreme, the Heritage American idea bears an eerie resemblance to the so-called 14 words of white supremacy — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
The entire concept is toxic and pernicious. A citizen is a citizen, regardless of his or her parents’ ancestry. And while I’m certainly influenced by my ancestors, I’m not a more worthy person because they existed. The Declaration of Independence had it right: We are all equal — morally, culturally and legally.
I’m not writing only to debunk a poisonous idea — that’s been ably done, many times, by others, including Vivek Ramaswamy last year in The Times — but rather because it’s important not just to rebut bad ideas, but to counter them with better ones, in this case a better way to think about the role our history and our ancestors should play in our lives.
I’m concerned that ideas like Heritage American arise in part because we’ve created a vacuum. By not instilling a robust sense of what it means to be a citizen of the United States and a patriot in our younger generation, we’ve allowed malignant people and malignant ideas to fill the void. They’ve turned something good — an interest in our roots and pride in our families — into something dark.
I’m the grandson of a history teacher, and she taught me our nation’s history — and my family’s history — with all its complexity. There was much to be proud of (I remember my heart soaring when she talked about our ancestors at Valley Forge), but it’s hard to look back on your past with unvarnished pride when you also know that your ancestors wore gray during the Civil War.
Learning that history gave me an immense sense of gratitude overall and — as I got older — a strong sense of duty. The gratitude is easy to explain. I enjoy the blessings of liberty and prosperity that I did nothing to earn.
But with great blessings come great responsibilities. At their best, my ancestors gave me an example to aspire to. I can learn from their mistakes and failures as well. Learning about my Confederate ancestors was important to my own moral development. That uncomfortable history has led me to remind myself that my community is not always right and that sometimes it is necessary to disagree with and potentially defy the culture and even the church from which you came.
If I have enjoyed the fruits of sacrifices I did not make, don’t I have my own obligation to — forgive the cliché — pay it forward myself? I often think about the powerful conclusion to the movie “Saving Private Ryan,” when a dying Capt. John Miller tells Ryan to “earn this” — earn the sacrifice made on his behalf. We aren’t called simply to enjoy the bounties of this country, but to continue the struggle to uphold its ideals.
This brings to mind the words of C.S. Lewis, who defines healthy patriotism as a love of home, “of the place we grew up in or the places, perhaps many, which have been our homes.” But this type of patriotism, Lewis writes: “is not in the least aggressive. It asks only to be let alone. It becomes militant only to protect what it loves. In any mind which has a pennyworth of imagination it produces a good attitude toward foreigners. How can I love my home without coming to realize that other men, no less rightly, love theirs.”
Gratitude, humility, responsibility: Those are the virtues our overlapping histories — personal, familial, national — should instill. But the new right turns that upside-down. It replaces gratitude with a sense of entitlement, humility with arrogance, and a sense of duty with the will to power and the right to dominate.
Think of MAGA’s exploitation of young men. The movement has used the crisis of masculinity to paper over the emptiness in some young men’s lives with a “manosphere” that all too often encourages them to indulge their worst instincts. And now the worst parts of MAGA are doing the same thing with American history and American citizenship itself.
Our history matters. Our heritage matters. But they should call us to service and virtue, not to power and pride. That is what Abraham Lincoln emphasized at the end of his first Inaugural Address. His words mattered then, and they should matter now: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
How President Trump Broke the Kennedy Center - The New York Times
How President Trump Broke the Kennedy Center
"Internal emails and documents demonstrate the political capture of the institution, including how officials once pursued a plan to unload much of the art collection.
A storm brought down a five-foot piece of ceiling plaster at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this month and its leadership sprang into action. One thing they did not do was repair the damage.
Instead staff members left the mess on the carpet for nearly two weeks, posting photos on social media with commentary like “the place is falling apart and @realDonaldTrump wants to fix it.” They measured plaster shards and mapped the “debris field” like investigators after a plane crash, for a 55-page briefing for the center’s board about the building’s decay. No one was injured but Mr. Trump claimed online that a security guard had narrowly avoided “certain death.” Less than two hours later, his allies on the board voted to close the center, citing safety concerns.
Mr. Trump’s threats this past week suggest that saving face, not lives, better explains why he shuttered the Kennedy Center on Tuesday for what officials said would be a temporary closure.
The president, who is the center’s chairman, first announced in February that it would close for two years of renovations. Democratic lawmakers on the board said it was an excuse to avoid the humiliation of plummeting ticket sales and fleeing artists. Since then Mr. Trump has fought to add his name to the memorial to a slain president, drawing multiple court injunctions. When a judge denied him again last week, the president made his priority clear. He decreed that the closing would take place immediately but that the renovation would not begin until courts — potentially the Supreme Court — allow his name on the building front.
Then, as heavy construction fencing went up around the building, he went further. “The Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” he said, arguing that his name on the center would help lift it out of physical and financial turmoil. “Because frankly if we don’t do that it’s going to close, it’ll end up being ripped down.”
On Friday night, a large crowd of demonstrators locked arms to form a human chain around the building in protest of Mr. Trump’s efforts to close the center amid fears that he might ultimately bulldoze it.
The closure is the apotheosis of the wreckage and chaos created in the less than two years since Mr. Trump’s takeover of the center, once a bipartisan global model of public access to the arts. Internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times demonstrate the political capture of the institution by the whims of Mr. Trump, who at the start of his second term installed a board that made him chairman. Audiences and donors fled, and its finances cratered.
The center’s first Trump-appointed director, Richard Grenell, pursued a plan, not previously reported, to replace works in the center’s art collection, including gifts from foreign nations honoring Kennedy, with art selected by Trump patrons. “You can definitely start sending stuff back to the countries who donated it now,” Mr. Grenell said in an email to Josef Palermo, a curator he hired. “Figure out everything you don’t want and just send it back A.S.A.P.”
From: Richard Grenell
Sent: Monday, Oct. 20, 2025 8:12 a.m.
To: Palermo, Josef; Floca, Matt
Cc: Loughery, Rick; Meade, Nick; Floca, Matt
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL]: Art inside KenCen
You can definitely start sending stuff back to the countries who donated it now. Figure out everything you don’t want and just send it back ASAP.
ric
Conservative groups and friends of the president staged events for free or at steep discounts, including a conference on “ending Christian persecution.” The center threw parties and dedicated rooms to Trump donors and political allies.
Workers renovated Mr. Trump’s three theater boxes in the center, installing gold plumbing fixtures and tearing up newly laid tile whose color was not to the liking of the White House. In one email, a Kennedy Center staff member, Lisa Dale, alerted colleagues to Mr. Trump’s demand for a certain type of tree on campus: “Our Chairman loves maple trees and is insisting we plant maple trees from a very specific Grove by a very specific gardener. :) I actually love this about him!”
Mr. Trump and center officials blame past leadership for the maintenance and financial problems. Despite recent removals of art from the campus and from public display, they say there is no active plan to dump the collection.
“Our nonpartisan approach is evident by the consistent practice of welcoming everyone and continued invitations to bipartisan members of Congress and their staff for briefings, tours and our programming,” a spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, said in a statement on Friday. (Hours later she lost her job in a round of layoffs, one of several this year.) On Wednesday she told Real America’s Voice, a pro-Trump television network, that Democratic critics “are knowingly stopping any work that is going to save this institution because they don’t want President Trump to get the credit.”
Democrats scoffed. “It is bonkers,” Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Kennedy Center building, said in an interview. “The No. 1 problem the Kennedy Center has had is President Trump.”
Five Bipartisan Decades
It was first known as the National Cultural Center, conceived in the 1950s by a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and then championed by Kennedy, a Democrat, as an artistic oasis for all. The two presidents built public support and raised money for the center, and their wives were honorary co-chairs of its board.
After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Congress passed a law that named the center for him and required it to operate as a living memorial. The governing framework that developed aimed to insulate the institution from partisanship. The building would be maintained with federal money, and its arts programming paid for by private donors and ticket sales. Board members included legislators from both parties and presidential appointees whose six-year terms overlapped administrations.
For five decades, legislators of both parties attended events like the Kennedy Center Honors, the center’s biggest night of the year. The Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia sat together at the opera. A benefit concert after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks included tributes from Laura Bush, the first lady at the time, and Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
“You had a whole bunch of Republicans and you had a whole bunch of Democrats and everyone was just trying to make art and arts education,” said Michael Kaiser, who ran the center from 2001 to 2014.
Mr. Trump, snubbed by many in the liberal-leaning arts world, was a no-show at center events for most of his first term. But less than a month into his second term, he purged the Kennedy Center board of Biden-era appointees and installed allies. They made him chairman, the first time a sitting president has served in that role.
‘We’re Returning the Art’
Mr. Trump brought on Mr. Grenell, his pugilistic former ambassador to Germany, who stocked the center’s upper ranks with partisans. Internal emails and documents — including some from the office of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on a Senate committee overseeing the center — show that politics shaped Mr. Grenell’s effort to replace the center’s art collection.
A proposal circulated by Kennedy Center officials late last year made it clear on its first page that “de-accession” of artwork “may include disposal via the following means: return to country of origin, transfer or exchange with another institution, public sale or destruction.”
Mr. Grenell left the center in March, and Mr. Palermo, the curator, was laid off the same month. In an Atlantic article published in April, Mr. Palermo described himself as opposed to the plan to purge the art collection. But the documents portray him as an eager participant who crafted a plan to recruit Trump-friendly philanthropists to a new “Collectors Council.”
A memo about the proposed council described some of its functions as de-accessioning “outdated or inappropriate artworks,” and replacing them with works that reflect “shared American values.” Donors would pay up to $100,000 to join.
“It was my job to take orders and try to implement them,” Mr. Palermo said in an interview. He added that Mr. Grenell told him that “the president wants all new art” for the center.
In an interview, Mr. Grenell said he did not discuss art with the president. “What I instructed Josef to do was go back to every gifted piece of art and tell the giver, ‘Thank you very much, we’re returning the art,’” he said. In a subsequent interview, Mr. Grenell said he was particularly focused on returning art in need of repair or restoration, which he said the Kennedy Center could not afford.
The plan described in the documents targeted more than 20 artworks inside and outside the building, including “Blue,” a towering outdoor sculpture given to the center by its artist, Joel Shapiro, that this month was hauled away without public notice or explanation.
Inside the center, the removal plan targeted 15 artworks in the African Lounge, an events space near the Opera House that opened in 1977 and was closed and locked some time after Mr. Trump took over. The lounge’s textiles, artwork and a carved wood sculpture from Ghana representing Africans’ grief over Kennedy’s death were removed without public explanation.
In response to questions about the art removal plan, the center said the works remained “fully safeguarded with no planned or imminent changes” and that the collection “has been comprehensively cataloged.” It said the African Lounge works are being preserved within the center and declined requests to see the art.
Staff members and former Kennedy Center officials speculated that “Blue” was removed because Mr. Trump, who has said he considers much of modern art “a con,” did not like it. But a White House official said Mr. Trump was unaware of the plan to remove “Blue.” The center declined to comment. The sculpture has since been sold to the philanthropist David Rubenstein, the former Kennedy Center chairman ousted by Mr. Trump.
This summer a series of unsigned, unattributed gold-plated reliefs appeared in the Reach, a newer Kennedy Center annex that is slated to remain open during the main building’s closure. The images depicted include Mr. Trump raising his fist after he survived a 2024 assassination attempt, the billionaire Elon Musk and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The artist is believed to be Trish Duggan, a major Trump donor. The center declined to comment. Ms. Duggan did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Name, the Tarps and the End
In July 2025 Mr. Trump secured $257 million from Congress for a Kennedy Center renovation.
In December, the board voted to put Mr. Trump’s name on the building’s front. More performers and patrons fled.
Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio and an ex officio member of the center’s board, sued over the name change.
In March Mr. Trump replaced Mr. Grenell with Matt Floca, a facilities manager with no arts programming experience, whom the president had been calling weekly for updates on everything from new boilers to theater seat armrests that he wanted to be marble.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that only Congress could change the name of the center and ordered Mr. Trump’s name removed. Late at night in mid-June, journalists and a festival-like crowd gathered to watch.
Mr. Floca was worried that the public spectacle would enrage Mr. Trump, according to three people familiar with recent Kennedy Center events who did not want to be named for fear of retribution. Mr. Floca had workers cover a tower of scaffolding with tarps, blocking the crowd’s view as they pulled the letters off the wall. Mr. Trump’s name is gone, but the tarps remain. Center officials have said they are there for maintenance.
Barred by Judge Cooper from shutting down the building entirely, the center began closing off entire sections, citing safety concerns. Its sweeping Potomac terrace has been off-limits since midsummer. The fallen ceiling plaster led to the closure of the entire Grand Foyer, a space nearly two football fields long.
The damage has made a cameo appearance in a White House video, with voice-over by Mr. Floca, justifying the closure. Late last week employees in hard hats finally vacuumed up the debris from the carpet.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for The Times, based in Washington. She has been a journalist for three decades, on three continents.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times."
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