US President Donald Trump is seen aboard Air Force One checking a Kennedy Center large printout after landing at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on September 16, 2026. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)
A federal judge has ordered the Kennedy Center board to provide 30 days’ notice ahead of any attempt to knock down the building
President Donald Trump is coming under heavy criticism after a photograph taken on Wednesday suggested that his threats to destroy the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts are very real.
Shortly after attending a Wednesday night rally in North Carolina, Trump was caught on camera by photographer Brendan Smialowski sitting on Air Force One and looking at a large printout of a graphic that appeared to read, “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
Hours before the photo was taken, Trump told reporters that the Kennedy Center would “end up being ripped down” if he was not allowed to put his name on the side of the building in “recognition” for the work he purports to have done to improve it.
Trump basically saying The Kennedy Center will be ripped down unless his name is placed on it because in order for him to want to maintain it, his name should be on it.
In a Tuesday social media post, Trump similarly said that the center was “destined to doom” unless he is allowed to add his name to it.
Alarmed by these developments, attorneys representing Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a Kennedy Center trustee, went to US District Judge Christopher Cooper on Thursday and asked him to intervene and prevent the president from unilaterally destroying the center.
Cooper subsequently ordered the Kennedy Center board to give 30 days’ notice “before the implementation of any changes… including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the center’s main building.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) noted in a Thursday social media post that demolishing the Kennedy Center “would be flagrantly illegal,” and vowed to protect the building, which he described as “one of the crown jewels of our nation’s capital.”
“Trump’s narcissism and incompetence are putting our national heritage and iconic sites at risk,” Beyer added, “and Republicans’ silence and acquiescence to this corruption speaks volumes.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed to news from earlier in the week about the resignation of Kennedy Center chief financial officer Donna Kauranen as a particularly ominous development.
“If the Kennedy Center CFO has packed bags and fled,” wrote Whitehouse, “that’s another warning about center fiduciary failures of due diligence.”
Two American bald eagles are perched on a nesting stand at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on March 13, 2012 in Cambridge, Maryland. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The new interpretation of the 1973 law “is not conservation,” warned one critic. “It is a license to destroy habitat, disrupt migration, pollute ecosystems, and drive endangered species toward extinction.”
Wildlife defenders continued to call out President Donald Trump on Thursday after The New York Timesexposed his administration’s latest attack on endangered species and the landmark law intended to protect them.
The Times reported late Wednesday that as the administration’s rule rescinding the regulatory definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act took effect earlier this week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) internally circulated a memo interpreting the ESA to mean that only the intentional killing or wounding of a protected species is illegal.
“This memorandum—and other recent Endangered Species Act regulatory rollbacks such as the rescission of the long-standing interpretation of ‘harm’—make clear that the Trump administration has declared an all-out war on America’s wildlife,” said Andrew Bowman, president and CEO at Defenders of Wildlife.
“The administration’s absurdly narrow statutory reinterpretation hamstrings the ESA’s effectiveness and makes a mockery of our nation’s half-century commitment to saving and recovering America’s imperiled wildlife,” Bowman charged. “This reinterpretation flies in the face of the ESA’s plain language and common sense, as well as Congress’ intent more than 50 years ago in enacting the ESA to achieve the goal of protecting and fully recovering listed species.”
Oceana vice president Beth Lowell highlighted that “the proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act will remove the core safeguards that have prevented the extinction of 99% of species protected under the act.”
“Federally permitted activities that incidentally injure and kill endangered species currently need to take into account their unintended impacts on wildlife, including nesting beaches for sea turtles or North Atlantic mother and calf pairs as they swim to their feeding grounds,” Lowell noted. “These changes upend the Endangered Species Act’s balance of economic activity and needed protections, pushing species to the brink of extinction.”
“What they seem to be saying in this document is, it doesn’t matter if you killed an endangered species if you didn’t mean to.”
The @USFWS's new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, as revealed by Nesvik's memo, is completely batshit.https://t.co/lPlQgnxrYz
The US Department of the Interior, which oversees FWS, told The Hill that the memo “accurately reflects the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s guidance for implementing the Endangered Species Act following the final rule rescinding the regulatory definition of ‘harm.’”
“Under the guidance, the ESA’s prohibition on ‘take’ continues to prohibit conduct including harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing or collecting protected wildlife,” the department said.
Susan Holmes, executive director of the Endangered Species Coalition—which includes 475 member organizations and over half a million activists—argued that the new interpretation of the law “is not conservation. It is a license to destroy habitat, disrupt migration, pollute ecosystems, and drive endangered species toward extinction.”
“The administration has already eliminated habitat protection for endangered species with its extreme ESA ‘harm’ rule. It is using the so-called ‘God Squad’ to exempt oil and gas drilling in the Gulf from the ESA, and is threatening to eliminate protections for wolves,” she pointed out. “This coordinated effort aims to strip the ESA of its power.”
“If the Trump administration has its way, piping plovers will lose the beaches where they nest,” Holmes warned. “Salmon will be pushed closer to extinction by dams, pollution, water diversions, and destroyed habitat. Grizzly bears will lose the connected landscapes they need to survive as roads, energy development, logging, and other activities fragment their habitat. Rice’s whale—the only whale to live only in American waters—will be lost forever.”
The coalition leader added that “the Endangered Species Act is our most popular and effective wildlife law, with support from 84% of Americans. We must not accept the destruction of a law that has protected our natural heritage for generations. The ESA must be defended, strengthened, and fully enforced—not gutted by political appointees acting on behalf of powerful industries.”
85% of the American population is in favor of the Endangered Species Act.
Humane World for Animals president and CEO Kitty Block and Sara Amundson, head of Humane World Action Fund, also cataloged the administration’s various attacks on protected species—and drew attention to a clear pattern regarding “who stands to benefit from these continued assaults on one of America’s most popular laws for animals.”
“It’s certainly not the average American,” they wrote in a Thursday blog post. “Instead, the beneficiaries are the massive industries that profit from destroying vital habitat and the animals who depend on it for survival. Oil and gas companies and other developers that have to (horror of horrors!) apply for a permit when their activities [pose] a risk of killing animals with federal endangered species protections—such as North Atlantic right whales, gray wolves, and black-footed ferrets, to name just a few—could be handed a pass.”
“If this reinterpretation takes effect, more endangered animals will surely die,” the pair declared. “And we will all be worse off for it.”
A group of detainees board an Eastern Air Express deportation flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on January 11, 2026 in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The group believes Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane were targeted by police in Equatorial Guinea for speaking out about poor treatment in the hotel they were detained in following their deportation.
As Amnesty International warned that two men are now at risk of being tortured in detention in Equatorial Guinea, where the Trump administration deported them earlier this year under one of several secretive deals, US. Rep. Adelita Grijalva said that the “ultimate responsibility lies with” the White House, which sent the men “into harm’s way.”
The human rights group issued an urgent appeal, calling on supporters to send letters to the vice president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, saying that that Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian national, and Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, were “beaten and violently taken by police officers from the Hotel Bamy in Malabo,” the capital of Equatorial Guinea.
They had been “arbitrarily” held at the hotel along with dozens of other people since US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent them there on deportation flights earlier this year. Soliman and Birhane had protection from refoulement to their countries of origin from US immigration courts, but President Donald Trump’s administration has arranged with five governments, through direct payments of tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money, to send hundreds of migrants to countries where they have never lived—many with records of human rights abuses.
Soliman has publicly spoken out against their arbitrary detention, and international media recently published a video showing a police officer at Hotel Bamy pointing a weapon at him and another man.
I am deeply concerned for the safety of Ahmed Soliman after he was deported to Equatorial Guinea and subsequently arrested by local authorities. We need answers immediately.
Last Friday, days after the video went public, said Amnesty, Soliman and Birhane were “targeted” by police, who arrived at the hotel and took them away briefly.
Amnesty continued in its letter and call to action:
Later during the day police officers went back to the hotel, bringing Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane back with them, who had their heads covered with bags tied with a rope. Police officers beat them in their heads, backs, and ribs with their elbows, knees, and guns, asking them where they hid the phones. They pushed one of the men down the stairs of the hotel and said to others that they may never see Ahmed Soliman and Samson Birhane again.
The group wrote that the men were taken “the Malabo gendarmery station known as ‘La Luna’” and were accused of breaking a mirror at the hotel.
“Since then, they have not been informed of the charges against them, nor allowed to speak to their lawyers, and are held in an overcrowded police cell, in inhumane conditions,” reads the sample letter. “I am concerned that they are at heightened risk of torture.”
The New York Timesreported that a lawyer who has been able to get some information about Soliman and Birhane’s condition said they have been denied food and are “covered in bruises.”
“The authorities must immediately release them, inform them of any charges against them, and allow them unimpeded access to counsel,” said Amnesty International.
Officials in the Trump administration, said Grijalva (D-Ariz.), “need to take responsibility and demand Ahmed’s immediate release.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Climate science denier Donald Trump confirms that he knows nothing about democracy and that more liquid gold is being secured according to his policy of global privateering.Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says he wishes someone would Lock Him Up, small Orca says he thinks that his meds have been changed.
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about healthcare in the Oval Office at the White House on September 18, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
One press freedom advocate said it was “difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
In one of his most direct assaults on the First Amendment, President Donald Trump announced in a Friday afternoon tirade that he would ban CNN, MSNOW (formerly MSNBC), and Politico from the White House.
“I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW… and Politico from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” the president wrote in a rambling Truth Social post.
“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” he added, though he did not specify any particular reports he objected to. He added that bans on “Other Fake News Media Outlets” would soon follow.
Trump announces he is banning CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House in a blatant violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. pic.twitter.com/W0qSqpO2HU
Trump, who has long portrayed himself as a defender of free speech, has taken unprecedented actions to censor news outlets during his second term, including threatening networks’ broadcast licenses through the Federal Communications Commission over unfavorable programming.
As of Friday afternoon, it’s unclear whether Trump actually plans to follow through on his White House ban.
Reacting to the news on the air, CNN anchor Brian Stelter said that the network’s reporting team “remains at the White House working just like a usual normal Friday afternoon.” He added that “right now, there is no indication that the administration is taking any steps to actually follow through on his threat.”
“Certainly, if there is an attempt to remove journalists from the White House, well, our cameras are rolling. I think viewers will see it happen,” he said.
“CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting,” the network said in a statement following news of the ban. “We have a right under the US Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government.”
Stelter: CNN's team remains at the White House working just like a usual normal Friday afternoon. Right now, there is no indication that the administration is taking any steps to actually follow through on his threat. pic.twitter.com/HfWAVkveuC
Bruce D. Brown, the president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told Common Dreams in an email Friday that simply banning news organizations from the White House over the content of their reporting “would be flatly unconstitutional.”
“The First Amendment is clear that once the White House invites in some journalists, it can’t ban others because it doesn’t like their reporting,” he said. “This is textbook viewpoint discrimination and will be quickly struck down by the courts if challenged.”
Federal courts have previously struck down attempts by Trump to bar certain press outlets on First Amendment grounds. Last year, a judge ruled that Trump’s removal of the Associated Press from the White House press pool for its refusal to adopt the name “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico was an unconstitutional form of viewpoint discrimination.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rule banning reporters from obtaining information not authorized by the Pentagon, which led dozens of journalists to turn over their press badges and walk out of the building in protest, was also struck down as a violation of press freedom.
In light of these previous failures, Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, expressed bewilderment that Trump was once again trying to ban news outlets from the White House.
“With so many courts having ruled against him on exactly this point, you’d think President Trump would have learned this lesson by now,” he said in a statement.
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, agreed it was “difficult to imagine a more blatant violation of the First Amendment than Trump banning news outlets from the People’s House for criticizing the government.”
“It’s also hard to imagine a dumber move,” he said. “The historically unpopular president has been retaliating against the press for years, but it hasn’t helped him. The press keeps exposing his corruption and his failures. These outrageous attacks only demonstrate how scared he is of an informed public.”
He added that the press must “fight back to protect their rights, not only to access the White House but to access the public records and whistleblowers this administration so desperately wants to keep from them.
Trump’s announcement was met with outrage from Democrats in Congress, who described it as an assault on a basic constitutional freedom.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." https://t.co/MH8wMjMZv6
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) responded to the news simply by posting the full text of the First Amendment on X.
“Fascist and communist governments limit press access to only favorable outlets, persecute journalists, and suppress truthful reporting,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) in a post to social media. “Trump’s administration is doing all of that.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) agreed the move was “straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”
Legal immigrant Adam Abdullah of St. Paul, Minnesota was arrested during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge crackdown and is now being held at the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison. (Photo by handout/Sahan Journal)
“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” said one victim. “Just like kidnapping.”
Anger is growing this week as more details emerge about the Trump administration’s detention of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, including people with no criminal records and, in at least one case, a legal US resident.
At least eight Somali men are being held at the notorious US military base in Cuba, while as many as 12 Somali deportees have passed through the facility in recent weeks, according to Sahan Journal. Seven of those still there are being held at Camp 6, which was originally opened under the George W. Bush administration during the so-called War on Terror to imprison men and at least one child in a facility rife with torture and other abuse.
“I never expected to be arrested in a prison established for the terrorists who I fled from,” 31-year-old Hassan Abdi Abtidoon told Sahan Journal’s Mohamud Farah on Tuesday.
Among the other Somalis held at Guantánamo is 31-year-old Adam Abdullah, a St. Paul, Minnesota, resident who came to the United States as a legal asylum seeker in 2023. Abdullah had a work permit and Social Security number, operated an auto repair business, and had no criminal record, according to Minnesota court records. His past involvement with law enforcement appeared to include nothing more than two parking tickets.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Abdullah in December during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge campaign, which targeted Minnesota’s large Somali community amid widespread racist demonization and dehumanization by Republicans, including President Donald Trump.
After months of detention in Minnesota, Kentucky, and Louisiana, Abdullah said officials told him he was being deported to Somalia.
“From Miami, they say, ‘OK, now we go to Somalia. Then, first we go to Cuba for refueling, and then we go to some other countries to Somalia,’” Abdullah told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) earlier this month.
The flight never left Cuba. Abdullah was taken to Camp 6, where he has remained.
Another Somali detainee, Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, described Camp 6 as “the worst place ever I’ve been in my life.”
Mother Jones reported Wednesday that Mohamed was one of 12 Somali men forced onto a plane last month by ICE agents, who told them they were being deported to Somalia.
“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” Mohamed said. “Just like kidnapping.”
This is APPALLING. The Trump administration is detaining multiple random Somali immigrants with no criminal record at Guantanamo Bay, seemingly because the White House ordered ICE specifically to detain Somalis at Gitmo as part of its effort to punish an ethnic group Trump has attacked.
Seven or eight of the men reportedly remain at Guantánamo, where some of them have described being shackled and subjected to frigid temperatures. Detainees also said they are subjected to constant surveillance, including cameras inside bathrooms.
The US Department of Homeland Security claimed the flight included “some of the worst of the worst” with criminal histories including assault, weapons offenses, robbery, theft, drug charges, and drunken driving.
However, Sahan Journal reported that the attorney for six of the eight detainees had found that all had final deportation orders but no additional criminal charges. Four were recent asylum seekers, and two had lived in the United States for decades.
“The administration says we send the worst of the worst to Guantánamo,” US Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) toldMPR Wednesday. “Yet in the case of Mr. Abdullah, there has been no evidence presented about what he has done, no explanation for why he has been detained. I mean, there is really has been no due process.”
The Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo for immigration detention is not unprecedented. The facility—which experts have placed within the centuries-long story of American concentration camps—has a long history as an offshore immigration detention site that predates the post-9/11 military prison camp.
During the George H.W. Bush administration, thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing political violence were intercepted at sea and taken to Guantánamo. The Clinton administration continued the policy and, at its peak in 1994, roughly 14,300 Haitians were held there. Clinton officials subsequently used Guantánamo for Cuban migrants, more than 30,000 of whom were jailed at the base.
The treatment of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo has also drawn renewed criticism regarding who has and has not been targeted for deportation from the United States.
Human rights activist Suleiman Bolaleh, who has documented atrocities committed under former US-backed Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, noted in a recent social media post that Somali immigrants with no criminal records are being rounded up and sent to Guantánamo, while members of the former dictatorship’s ruling family and senior figures have lived in the United States.
“Men once positioned at the heart of a regime accused of mass killings, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing continue to reside openly in American communities,” Bolaleh wrote. “The contrast is jarring: An immigrant [who] has no criminal record is detained at Guantánamo, while figures tied to that dictatorship’s violent apparatus remain unexamined and unaccountable.”
Multiple legal challenges to the Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo Bay for immigrant detention have been launched.
Meanwhile, the longstanding habeas litigation involving War on Terror detainees at Guantánamo continues. In May, Somali national Guled Hassan Duran—who has been held at Guantánamo since 2006 without being charged—asked a federal court to order his release after years of inaction on his habeas petition.
Duran was approved for release by senior US officials in 2021, but remains imprisoned at Guantánamo along with 14 other men—none of whom has ever been convicted of any terrorism-related crimes. Former Bush administration and US military officials have said that most of the men and boys who were ever imprisoned at Guantánamo were innocent, and that senior administration officials knew it but kept them locked up for political purposes.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
