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‘A 1-2 Punch Against Trump’s Corruption’: Judge Blocks Renaming, Closure of Kennedy Center

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Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Workers add President Donald Trump’s name to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on December 19, 2025. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s renaming of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts after himself is illegal and temporarily barred the president from shuttering the Washington, DC cultural institution for renovations.

Trump’s effort to rename the iconic Kennedy Center the Trump-Kennedy Center came after the president used his authority to purge the institution’s board and appoint new trustees. In an unprecedented move, the trustees then voted to make Trump the center’s board chair. Last December, the board voted unanimously to rename the institution—a move that violated federal law.

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Congresswoman Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, sued over the name change, which outraged many Americans and, along with Trump’s addition of his name to the US Institute of Peace, sparked legislation aimed at banning the naming or renaming of federal assets after sitting presidents.

“May the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be renamed absent Congressional authorization? The answer, plain from the face of the statute, is no,” US District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his ruling on Beatty’s suit. “Nor can any other individual be memorialized on the front portico of the building.”

BREAKING: we just won our Kennedy Center case!Both the renaming & the closure of the Kennedy Center are enjoinedKudos to our wonderful client @repbeatty.bsky.social & my colleagues @democracydefendersaction.org & Washington Litigation GroupThis is a 1-2 punch against Trump's corruption

— Norm Eisen (@normeisen.bsky.social) 2026-05-29T18:55:47.141Z

Originally called the National Cultural Center, the Kennedy Center was renamed via an act of Congress following former President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

“It is hard to imagine a more intentional legislative effort to call the Center by its chosen name,” Cooper—an appointee of former President Barack Obama—wrote. “The organic statute also takes pains to ensure that the Kennedy Center’s public spaces honor President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone… The prohibition is unambiguous.”

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge added.

Cooper also temporarily blocked Trump’s planned two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for renovations.

“In ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center,” he wrote. “More specifically, the Board based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and
neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions.”

While Trump claimed the decision to shutter the Kennedy Center was based on input from a group of “many Highly Respected experts,” who said the center was “tired, broken, and dilapidated,” critics including John F. Kennedy’s descendants pointed to artists not wanting to perform there after the president’s takeover and purge, which resulted in programming including the world premier of a documentary film about his wife panned by one critic as “a scowling void of pure nothingness.”

Cooper said that the Kennedy Center could be allowed to close “after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion.”

Beatty welcomed Cooper’s ruling, which she said “rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law.”

“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” she added. “He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”

Trump, meanwhile, took to his Truth Social network to rail against Cooper, “a Judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”

“Cooper ruled that The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure,” the president wrote.

“Additionally, Judge Cooper ruled that the 36 Member Board of Trustees, which unanimously voted to add the name ‘TRUMP’ onto the former Kennedy Center, making it The Trump Kennedy Center, did not have the right to do such an addition, and the name, ‘TRUMP,’ must be removed,” Trump’s screed continued.

“I took great pride in taking over a losing Institution, and looked forward to making it into a Great and Prestigious WINNER for Washington, D.C., and indeed, the United States of America,” he continued. “Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life.”

“Therefore, based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” Trump said.

“Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” the president wrote. “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”

“There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I,” he added, “but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country.”

Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue Reading‘A 1-2 Punch Against Trump’s Corruption’: Judge Blocks Renaming, Closure of Kennedy Center

Closing air spaces and cracking alliances: Trump’s growing problem with allies

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A view of the NATO Defence Ministers Meeting held at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium on February 12, 2026. [Dursun Aydemir – Anadolu Agency]

by Dr Binoy Kampmark

With the Iran War groaning along, the Trump administration is getting increasingly indignant.  Plumes of childish anger can be seen coming out of the White House and Pentagon.  Having joined an illegal, joint enterprise with Israel in attacking Iran, allies are proving increasingly unwilling to play along.  

That unwillingness gurgled to the top with Spain’s announcement on March 30 that it had closed its airspace to US aircraft participating in strikes on Iran.  This added to Madrid’s decision earlier in the month to deny the US military access to its bases for military operations against Tehran.  “We don’t authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles told reporters.  Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, in an interview with radio Cadena SER, called the move consistent and “part of the decision already made by the Spanish government not to participate in or contribute to a war which was initiated unilaterally and against international law.” 

The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been singularly pertinacious in its characterisation of the Iran War, and more broadly illustrative of the current bad blood in transatlantic relations. 

In a piece for The Economist, Sánchez wrote of his country’s misplaced support for Washington in February 2003 when the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the UN Security Council most gravely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and needed to be attacked. 

The foolishly credulous Spanish Prime Minister at the time, José María Aznar, was convinced that the regime of Saddam Hussein had such weapons.  “Today we face a similar situation, and my government’s position is the same as that voiced by Spanish society two decades ago: NO TO WAR.  No to the unilateral violation of international law.  No to repeating the mistakes of the past.  No to the idea that the world’s problems can be solved with bombs.”

READ: Spain closes airspace to US planes involved in Iran war, defence minister says

Italian authorities have also expressed displeasure at the presumptuousness of their US allies in taking liberties with their military facilities.  In a March 31 report by Corriere della Sera, “several US bombers” that had intended to land at Sigonella air base on route to the Middle East were refused as they had not properly requested authorisation or consulted with the Italian military.  A statement from Palazzo Chigi, the office of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, reiterated that Italy “acts in full compliance with existing international agreements and with the policy guidelines expressed by the Government to Parliament”.

Other allies are openly rebuffing requests by US officials to secure additional military equipment to the Gulf.  Critical here are air-defence systems such as the Patriot batteries that have been dramatically depleted since the outbreak of hostilities.  In the first 16 days of the war, some 1,285 PAC-3 Patriot missiles were used by the US military and Gulf states.  

The Polish Defence Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz could not have been clearer in his statement on whether Poland’s complement of Patriot air defence systems would make their way to the Middle East.  “Our Patriot batteries and their armaments are used to protect Polish airspace and NATO’s eastern flank.  Nothing is changing in this regard, and we have no plans to move them anywhere!”  Fellow allies understood “the importance of our tasks here.  Poland’s security is an absolute priority.”

As has become customary, US President Donald Trump has led the growls of grievance, billowing with anger on Truth Social about the reluctance of European partners to throw in their lot in what is, at best, a criminal enterprise. 

On the issue of depleted jet fuel supplies restricted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he brusquely suggested to his allies that they could purchase supplies from the US (“we have plenty”) and “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.”  With a demented paternalism, he went on to declare that “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.”  With typically strained logic, he went on to suggest that any assistance would be minor, in any case, as Iran had been “decimated”. “The hard part is done.  Go get your own oil!”

READ: Iran launches missile attack on Israel moments after Trump threat

Special mention was made of mulishness on the part of the UK (“which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”) and France.  France, for instance, had refused to permit planes carrying military supplies destined for Israel to fly over French territory.  “France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran’, who has been successfully eliminated.  The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!”.

Soon afterwards, a comically crazed and increasingly God loving Pete Hegseth struck a similar note in the Pentagon.  “A lot has been laid bare, a lot has been shown to the world about what our allies would be willing to do for the United States of America,” grumbled the Secretary of Defense (he prefers War) to reporters.  “When we undertake an effort of this scope on behalf of the free world, these are missiles that don’t even range the United States of America, they range allies and others and yet, when we ask for additional assistance or simple access… we get questions or roadblocks or hesitation.”

In his March 30 interview with Al Jazeera, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also brimming with complaints.  “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basic rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement.  That’s a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States.”  All this called for a reassessment.  “All of it’s going to have to be re-examined.”  The re-examination, notably judging from the temper of European states, is proving increasingly reciprocal and, in some circles, even welcome.

OPINION: The Iran War: A Great Carbon Emitter

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Continue ReadingClosing air spaces and cracking alliances: Trump’s growing problem with allies

Experts Worldwide Agree: US-Israel Attack on Iran a Clear Violation of International Law

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Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An unidentified man shouts anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans while standing in front of a destroyed building near a police station in Tehran, Iran, on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

“Before more children are burned alive or buried under rubble, this lawless war must end.”

Experts on international law throughout the world have concluded that the unprovoked US-Israeli attack on Iran that began on Saturday is illegal.

Adil Ahmad Haque, a Rutgers Law School professor, wrote an analysis for Just Security published on Monday that called the attacks by the US and Israel a “manifest violation of the United Nations Charter,” which “prohibits the use of force against another State unless that use of force is authorized by the UN Security Council or is a necessary and proportionate act of individual or collective self-defense in response to an armed attack.”

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Haque also argued that Iran, in responding to the attacks, violated the UN Charter by launching drone strikes against US allies throughout the Middle East, even though none of those nations had taken part in the US-Israeli operations.

“The United States, Israel, and Iran, have each violated international law,” Haque concluded. “Hundreds of civilians have paid the price. Before more children are burned alive or buried under rubble, this lawless war must end.”

Marko Milanovic, a University of Reading School of Law professor, wrote at the blog of the European Journal of International Law that the US-Israeli strikes are “manifestly illegal” and “as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have.”

Milanovic also said that, leaving legality aside, the war would likely create a humanitarian disaster.

“Maybe, maybe, something good will come out of this… although I very much doubt it,” he wrote. “It is far more likely that many innocent people are about to die, in Iran and possibly in Israel, and that their deaths will be for nothing.”

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) condemned the attacks on Iran as illegal under international law and dismissed any claims by US and Israel that they were necessary to liberate Iranians from a tyrannical government.

“Claims that launching an unprovoked and illegal attack is about defending human rights ring hollow,” CIEL wrote, “when military strikes have already killed hundreds of civilians and intensified suffering as violence escalates—particularly when those same human rights are flagrantly violated by the US and by Israel, both domestically and abroad. Bombs do not yield peace, democracy, climate justice, or human rights.”

Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard described the US-Israeli attack as “a grave threat to multilateralism and to the integrity of the international legal order.”

Callamard also said the international community needed “to intensify diplomatic efforts to prevent further military escalation to avert additional civilian harm, and halt any further crimes under international law against populations who have already endured decades of repression.”

Human rights organization DAWN demanded that the UN General Assembly call an emergency session to declare the Iran attack a violation of the UN Charter.

Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN, said that the war is also illegal under the US Constitution, which states that the US Congress has the power to declare war.

“This war is patently illegal,” Shakir said, “and it must be stopped.”

Original article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue ReadingExperts Worldwide Agree: US-Israel Attack on Iran a Clear Violation of International Law

Experts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: ‘Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack’ in Decades

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Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

US President Donald Trump oversees the military assault on Iran with Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles at Mar-a-Lago on February 28, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Daniel Torok/White House via Getty Images)

“What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable,” said one analyst.

Senior Trump administration officials attempted during a briefing with reporters on Saturday to make their case for the joint US-Israeli military assault on Iran that has so far killed hundreds and plunged the Middle East into chaos.

According to experts who listened to the briefing, which was conducted on background, the justification for war was incredibly weak. Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association, told Laura Rozen of the Diplomatic newsletter that the administration’s argument was “the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades.”

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During his early Saturday remarks announcing the attacks, President Donald Trump claimed that “imminent threats from the Iranian regime” against “the American people” drove him to act. But Kimball said that administration officials “provided absolutely no evidence” to back that assertion during the briefing.

“What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable,” said Kimball.

Following the start of Saturday’s assault, which Trump explicitly characterized as a war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, unnamed administration officials began leaking the claim that Trump feared an Iranian attack on the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, prompting him to greenlight the bombing campaign in coordination with Israel and with a nudge from Saudi Arabia.

Kimball, in a social media post, took members of the US media to task for echoing the administration’s narrative. “Reporters need to do more than stenography,” he wrote in response to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.

“The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price.”

Trump and top administration officials also repeated the longstanding claim from US warhawks that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon, something Iranian leaders have publicly denied—including during recent diplomatic talks. Neither US intelligence assessments nor international nuclear watchdogs have produced evidence indicating that Iran is moving rapidly in the direction of nukes, as claimed by the administration.

Rozen noted that some remarks from administration officials during Saturday’s briefing “suggested Trump’s negotiators”—a team that included Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—“may not have had the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal to curb its nuclear program.” Rozen reported that one administration official kept misstating the acronym for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.

Trump administration officials, according to Rozen, seemed astonished that Iranian negotiators would not accept the US offer to provide free nuclear fuel “forever” for Iran’s peaceful energy development, viewing the rejection as a suspicious indication that Iran was opposed to a diplomatic resolution—even though, according to Oman’s foreign minister, Iran had already made concessions that went well beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned during his first stint in the White House.

Experts said it should be obvious—particularly given Trump’s decision to ditch the previous nuclear accord—why Iran would not trust the US to stick by such a commitment.

The administration’s inability to provide a coherent justification for war tracks with the rapidly shifting narrative preceding Saturday’s strikes—an indication, according to some observers, that Trump had made the decision to attack Iran even in the face of diplomatic progress and left officials to try to cobble together a rationale after the fact.

In a lengthy social media post, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted war was necessary because Iran “refused to make a deal” and because the Iranian government “has targeted and killed Americans,” hardly the claim of an imminent threat push by the president and other administration officials.

Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, noted in response that the Trump administration has “sidelined anyone who could articulate… a coherent argument, partly because expertise is deep state and woke and partly because they just don’t care.”

The result is another potentially catastrophic war that runs roughshod over US and international law, puts countless civilians at risk, and threatens to spark a region-wide conflict.

“President Trump, along with his right-wing extremist Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun an illegal, premeditated, and unconstitutional war,” US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Saturday. “Tragically, Trump is gambling with American lives and treasure to fulfill Netanyahu’s decades-long ambition of dragging the United States into armed conflict with Iran.”

“The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq,” Sanders added. “The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price.”

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Continue ReadingExperts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: ‘Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack’ in Decades

Watchdog Demands to Know If Trump Admin Colluded With Big Oil in Lead-Up to Venezuela Attack

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Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

General view of ‘El Palito’ refinery building at dusk during a walk around the outskirts of ‘El Palito’ refinery on December 18, 2025, in Puerto Cabello, Venezuela. (Photo by Jesus Vargas/Getty Images)

“When government actions tied to foreign resources are preceded and followed by closed-door meetings with the world’s largest oil companies, transparency is not optional—it is essential.”

A legal watchdog group is demanding information about the extent to which the Trump administration planned its attack on Venezuela last weekend with American oil companies, which are expected to profit royally from the takeover of the South American nation’s oil reserves.

The group Democracy Forward filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on Monday seeking records and information about the role of US oil companies in the planning of the attack, which killed an estimated 75 people and led to the US military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife.

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President Donald Trump did not inform Congress of the operation, which is required under the War Powers Act of 1973, but he told reporters on Sunday that he’d tipped off oil company executives both “before and after” the strike.

According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, he informed executives roughly a month before the strike to “get ready” because big changes were coming to the country, which had long held state control over the largest oil reserves in the world.

Since toppling Maduro, in an operation that international law experts have widely described as illegal, Trump has said his goal is to “get the oil flowing” to American oil companies to start “taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

On Tuesday, Trump said Venezuela’s interim leaders—who he’s threatened with more attacks if they don’t do what he says—have agreed to hand over 30-50 million barrels of oil to be sold by the US, which will control how the profits are dispersed.

Trump and several members of his Cabinet, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, are expected to meet with oil executives on Friday at the White House to discuss “security guarantees” for their new spoils.

Democracy Forward has requested information about communications between senior officials at the US departments of Energy and the Interior and executives at top oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips, prior to the attack. This includes emails, attachments, and calendar invitations exchanged since December 2025.

The group has said it will seek to determine whether these companies were given “privileged access or influence” over the administration’s policy toward Venezuela.

“The president couldn’t find time to brief members of Congress before kidnapping a foreign head of state, but appears to have prioritized discussions with Big Oil. When government actions tied to foreign resources are preceded and followed by closed-door meetings with the world’s largest oil companies, transparency is not optional—it is essential,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “The public deserves to know what interests are shaping decisions that have enormous consequences for global energy markets and democratic accountability.”

FOIA, which was passed in 1967, allows members of the public to request records from any federal agency. However, agencies have broad discretion to deny FOIA requests, including in cases involving national security or interagency communications.

Original article by Stephen Prager republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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