Judge Demands Answers From Trump on Giant Tarp at Kennedy Center

The president was ordered to take his name off the prestigious theater, and now there’s a massive tarp covering the whole facade.

Donald Trump totally isn’t bitter about having his name removed from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Nevermind the fact that his administration put up a massive tarp obscuring the building’s facade after a judge made the president take his name down.

The white tarp attached to the front of the Kennedy Center blocks most of the building’s lettering. (The nameplate now confusingly reads “THE JOHN F. — ORMING ARTS.”) It was erected on June 13, along with some extra scaffolding, one day after the court deadline to remove Trump’s name from the prestigious theater.

Workers took down the letters spelling out Trump’s name in a “predawn operation,” reported Reuters, and installed the tarp immediately afterward. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper demanded the administration explain “the purpose and status of ​the tarp and scaffolding,” though he gave the White House a lengthy deadline, July 31, in which to do so.

Democratic Representative ​Joyce Beatty, a board member at the center, filed the initial lawsuit against Trump after he renamed the center after himself in December. Her lawyers have alleged that the tarp is the White House’s “effort to frustrate the ⁠restoration ​of the status quo as it ​existed prior to the renaming.”

Beatty herself called the new tarp an “act ​of petty defiance.”

The pettiness of this administration is indeed something to behold. Lest we forget, Trump also tried to close the Kennedy Center for two years for “renovations” after multiple artists canceled their performances in the public backlash to the name change. Cooper blocked the two-year closure, too, though the federal government has filed an appeal.

New Study Reveals How Much Young People Have to Struggle to Buy Homes

Houses now cost 3.5 times their median income.

The national median price for a house is now three times higher than the median household income for Americans under 40—an obvious explanation for why nearly all young people say it’s harder for them to buy a home than it was for their parents.

A study from the Pew Research Center released Wednesday shows home prices spiking tremendously in the beginning of the 2010s, and median home value rose 30 percent (from $269,600 to $350,000) from 2019 to 2024. This surge occurred at almost three times the pace of median income, which has risen very slowly.

NEW from @pewresearch.org: The median home price in the US is now 3.5 times the median household income for young adults. That may be why 89% of US adults under 40 say it's harder to buy a home today than it was for their parents' generation.........

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