Six-and-a-half hours after Donald Trump announced he was heading to the White House Situation Room to make a "final determination" on peace in Iran, the president emerged on social media with a 578-word statement about something else entirely: his fury over a federal judge ordering his name removed from the Kennedy Center.
Trump attacked U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper for being a Barack Obama appointee and focused on the ruling that also blocked the Trump administration from closing the performing arts center for a two-year renovation. The judge gave Trump 14 days to get his name off the Kennedy Center's facade and website. Trump noted that his handpicked board members had "unanimously voted to add the name 'TRUMP' onto the former Kennedy Center, making it The Trump Kennedy Center" - but the judge ruled they had no right to do so.
The president ended his screed with a characteristically unclear plan: "We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them." He also instructed the Department of Commerce to make arrangements for a "full and complete transfer" of the institution's operation, maintenance, and management to Congress.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Postal Service could throw the upcoming midterm elections into chaos by requiring states to provide lists of voters who received mail ballots, according to a draft rule set to be published on Tuesday. Nearly one in three Americans voted by mail in 2024, but Trump signed an executive order in March prohibiting the USPS from delivering ballots to anyone not on a federal list of citizens deemed eligible to vote by the Department of Homeland Security.
The USPS proposal to implement this order would require states to provide the postal service with names and barcodes tied to mail-in ballots for federal elections. The public has 30 days to comment - presumably by email, which is ironic for people who don't trust the mail.
On a separate front, an executive order signed quietly by Trump on Friday could significantly impact children's health. It instructs the CDC to cut the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11, removing vaccines against six diseases. The order relies on an assessment co-authored by Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, a fired Covid vaccine critic, which recommended keeping vaccines for 10 diseases and varicella (chickenpox) but dropping others.
Fifteen states with Democratic governors are suing the Department of Health and Human Services and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing the changes will "make children sicker and strain state resources." The lawsuit notes the assessment supposedly aligns U.S. vaccine schedules with "peer countries" like Denmark - but Danish health officials are reportedly baffled by this comparison. Dr. Anders Hviid, Denmark's equivalent of a CDC official, told the New York Times: "It is surreal, and it is difficult, from a Danish perspective, to understand what's going on."
Members of John F. Kennedy's family celebrated the court order on Friday - the late president's birthday. "An appropriate birthday present on my uncle's birthday today," wrote JFK's niece Maria Shriver. "A federal judge ruled that President Trump and the Kennedy Center Board acted unlawfully in renaming the Kennedy Center." Kerry Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, added: "Perhaps I won't need that pickaxe after all." RFK Jr., Trump's health secretary, made no immediate comment.