A federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump cannot rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reports. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

May 17 is President John F. Kennedy’s birthday, he was born in 1917.

This article has been updated with Kennedy’s date of birth.

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The Villages in Florida is deep red Trump country — it’s called the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. It’s roughly four hours to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, and it’s not unusual to see Trump flags on the backs of residents’ golf carts.

Trump visited The Villages just a few weeks ago, where one resident told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.”

“The Village are very Republican and very Trumpster,” said another.

“Trump 2028!” declared another, waving his fist.

But the tide appears to be turning in Florida, where several polls spell bad news for Trump. His approval is underwater in one poll from April, and one released on Thursday shows a majority of Florida voters hold a negative view of the president.

Still, some may find a letter to the editor in The Villages local news declaring “MAGA has abandoned core Republican principles” surprising.

The letter declares MAGA is “not conservatism,” but rather a “betrayal” that has “embraced indulgence.”

“The irony is cruel,” says the letter writer, Carl Young. “Those who once railed against ‘big government’ now defend its excesses when it serves their side. The philosophy of restraint has been replaced by the politics of spectacle. Rome is burning, and the arsonists call the flames freedom.”

Young scorches Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that he says “produced the highest deficit spending in history.”

Citing dystopian and totalitarian works by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Ayn Rand, he writes: “This is not renewal but regression. America has been dragged into an alternate 1984, where responsibility collapses and chaos parades as strength. The political temperature has risen to 451. The pigs now rule the farm.”

“These were never meant as prophecies. They were warnings,” he continues. “Atlas has finally shrugged.”

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250 years after the founders signed the Declaration of Independence, President Donald Trump is attempting to “vulgarize” the meaning of America, turning it into a celebration that is very much unlike the America those same signatories intended, argues Bill Kristol at The Bulwark.

Fortunately, Kristol says, Trump’s “attempt to usurp America’s moment—and meaning—is failing.”

“It’s not just that Trump’s policies fly in the face of the principles of the Declaration, and seek to undermine a government that secures our rights and derives its just powers from the consent of the governed,” Kristol writes. “It’s also that Trump is doing his best to horn in on the celebration, to turn it into his event, not ours, to vulgarize it according to his taste, to personalize it in accord with his narcissism, and to distort its meaning in line with his prejudices.”

Kristol points to the “unseemly” Rededicate 250 celebration on the National Mall earlier this month, a prayer fest focused on Christian nationalism, according to critics.

He also points to the “grotesque 250-foot Trump arch desecrating Arlington National Cemetery,” which Trump said would be dedicated to himself.

U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) said he plans to introduce legislation to bar the arch from being built.

“Trump is not trying to build this arch to commemorate national heroes, servicemembers who lie in Arlington National Cemetery, or to celebrate freedom,” Beyer said, as The Guardian reported. “He did not dedicate it to the American people or our country’s greatness. Asked who this arch is for, Trump said, simply: ‘me.’”

Kristol also points to the proposed Trump $250 bill that, should it be printed, appears to violate federal law — or would need at least an act of Congress. There’s also the $1.776 billion “slush fund to be dispersed to January 6th insurrectionists,” which a federal judge just temporarily put on hold.

Kristol calls for all those efforts to be blocked by Congress and the judiciary.

The public opposes the triumphal arch, he notes, and even congressional Republicans don’t appear interested in repealing the law that would need to be changed to allow a live person’s face on the nation’s currency.

“Trump may succeed in pulling off individual events and even projects, for now. But his attempted hijacking of the meaning of America is failing,” says Kristol. Americans “have reason to be increasingly confident that Trump won’t succeed in using our 250th birthday to corrupt our civic traditions. We have increasing reason to think that the American people aren’t being seduced by his vision of the country.”

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