On Wednesday, President Donald Trump got himself declared chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after purging the board of everyone appointed by President Joe Biden. In their stead, he appointed his own political allies, donors, and their wives, including second lady Usha Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. He also appointed loyalist Ric Grenell as interim executive director. Other celebrities affiliated with the Center, including Shonda Rhimes (appointed by former President Barack Obama), have announced their resignation in the wake of Trump’s announcement.

Although generally not a hotbed for controversy, the Kennedy Center, as the US’s national cultural center, is an important tool for the country’s cultural soft power. During the height of the Cold War, the Kennedy Center hosted American and Russian ballet dancers performing together, a symbolic act that paid enormous diplomatic dividends. It’s run in public-private partnership, which means all presidents have the right to appoint members to the board of trustees.

Those members oversee the administration of the center’s federal funding and help choose each year’s Kennedy Center honorees, meaning that while they haven’t historically had a granular focus on individual programming, they do have the ability to help........

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