Finally Friday Reads:

“Rob Reiner was right about everything.” John Buss. @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I’m really late today! I started the first day of Winter Break. Additionally, I’ve been watching movies mostly over the last few days because the news has been too stressful to handle lately. So, let’s catch up on the week so we can all have a peaceful weekend. The latest revolting development from the rotter in the White House and his appointed stooges is the renaming of the Kennedy Center, which is actually against the law.

This is from the New York Times. “As Trump Puts His Brand on Washington, the Kennedy Center Gets a New Name. The board for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that it would now be named the Trump-Kennedy Center, although a formal change may have to be approved by Congress.” The story is reported by White House Correspondent Shawn McCreesh.

President Trump’s takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts reached its inevitable apogee on Thursday afternoon when it was announced that the center’s board of trustees had voted to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center.

Even though Mr. Trump had already been calling it that for months in trollish posts online, he acted shocked that his handpicked board had thought to do this for him.

“I was honored by it,” he told reporters at the White House. “The board is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country, and I was surprised by it. I was honored by it.”

Earlier that day, he had called into a meeting of the board, which is now made up almost entirely of people who are loyal to him. (By law, there are a handful of members of Congress from both parties who sit on the board, as well.)

Unusually, the meeting was taking place not at the Kennedy Center but at the Palm Beach home of the casino magnate Steve Wynn, whose wife, Andrea, sits on the board.

Richard Grenell, the center’s Trump-appointed president, was there, and so was Lee Greenwood, who performed “God Bless the USA” at the meeting.

Another member who was in Palm Beach for it was Sergio Gor, a longtime aide to the president who was recently nominated to be the ambassador to India. It was Mr. Gor who proposed the name change.

But there was at least one person who was not down with the idea: Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, who had called in to the meeting.

“It was such a surprise to me when they said we’re going to rename it,” she recounted in a phone interview. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and pushed my button. But then I was muted.”

She added: “Everything was cut off, and then they immediately said, ‘Well, it’s unanimous. Everybody is for it.’”

Ms. Wynn claimed in a phone interview that she was not aware that Ms. Beatty had been muted, and that she did not know who was responsible for it. As for how the president reacted to the name change?

“I think he was very happy,” she said.

Ms. Beatty described the meeting this way: “Everything was regurgitated about how awful anything with the center was, how run down it was, how everything was humiliating, and now they had come in as the great saviors of it.”

She added that the other members took turns praising Mr. Trump, who then pretended to be surprised when they voted to rename the joint after him. “He said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you all were going to name it after me!’” she said.

There is a law that actually has very strict rules about things like renaming the center. It was signed by LBJ.  The Center opened in 1971 featuring Leonard Bernstein’s composition Mass.  My cousin Mary Bracken Phillips was one of the soloists. I remember all this very well. We were all musicians at the time. It was a very exciting time and performance. I’ve linked to her solo, and you can hear more of the original performances at the link.

This is from the AP. “Trump’s handpicked board votes to rename Washington performing arts center the Trump Kennedy Center.

Congress named the center after President John F. Kennedy in 1964, after his assassination. Donald A. Ritchie, who served as Senate historian from 2009-2015, said that because Congress had first named the center it would be up to Congress to “amend the law.”

Ritchie said that while Trump and others can “informally” refer to the center by a different name, they couldn’t do it in a way “that would (legally) stick.”

But the board did not wait for that debate to play out, immediately changing the branding on its website to reflect the new name.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the center a touchstone in a broader attack against what he has lambasted as “woke” anti-American culture.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that a name change requires legislative action.

“Only Congress can rename the Kennedy Center,” said the New York Democrat, who serves on the board as an ex officio member because of his position in Congress.

This is the headline from the Washington Post. “Kennedy Center adds Trump’s name to building. The new signage follows a vote by the board of trustees to rename the arts complex the “Trump Kennedy Center,” a dramatic change for the presidential memorial.

The Kennedy Center installed President Donald Trump’s name on its exterior Friday morning, a dramatic change to a building

On Thursday, the center’s board, made up of loyalists with Trump as chair, voted to rename the institution “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

A blue tarp was stretched across a portion of the building the next morning as a small team on scaffolding started the work. Loud drilling could be heard nearby. Inside the building, large letters spelling “Trump” could be seen on the floor of the entry hall, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post. Signage elsewhere around the exterior of the institution remained unchanged.

This is an affront on so many levels that it’s hard for me to put it into words. First and foremost, it disrespects the legacy of the late President Kennedy, whose name is relegated to an afterthought behind Trump’s. It disrespects all those involved in making the Kennedy Center a reality, including the artists who performed there and those honored there. It disrespects the goals of the Center and those who have worked to keep it as a shining beacon of American creative excellence. We have already seen the crap that happens there now that Trump has his vulgar fingers in it. It disrespects the best of our culture. The vulgar should not get these honors.

I’m going to quote something from the 5oth Annivesary of the Bernstein Mass’ celebration.

During his legendary tenure at the New York Philharmonic from 1958 to 1969, Leonard Bernstein composed only two works, Symphony No. 3: Kaddish (1963) and Chichester Psalms (1965). He had dedicated Kaddish to the memory of John F. Kennedy shortly after his assassination, and when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked Bernstein to compose a piece for the 1971 inauguration of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., he was eager to honor the occasion with a new, large-scale work because he knew he had always wanted “to compose a service of one sort or another.” The son of Russian-Jewish parents, a social liberal, and lifelong activist, Bernstein made a surprising choice: the Roman Catholic Mass. But instead of a straightforward, purely musical setting of the Latin liturgy, he created a broadly eclectic theatrical event by placing the 400-year-old religious rite into a tense, dramatic dialog with music and lyrics of the 20th century vernacular, using this dialectic to explore the crisis in faith and cultural breakdown of the post-Kennedy era.

There’s some good news coming from the Justice System today. Let’s shift to the latest on that. First, we have this headline from The Hill. “Trump’s win streak on Supreme Court emergency docket breaks.” This is reported by Zach Schonfeld. It’s a significant headline, given the current composition of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court refused to intervene Friday in a battle concerning immigration judges’ speech restrictions, for now, snapping the Trump administration’s months-long winning streak on the court’s emergency docket.

It marks the first time since the spring that the court has rejected one of the administration’s emergency appeals. No justice publicly dissented, but the order left the door open for the government to try again once the case progresses further.

“At this stage, the Government has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm without a stay,” the one-paragraph order reads.

The case stems from restrictions on what immigration judges can say publicly. The restrictions require the judges, who are part of the executive branch, to obtain prior approval for speeches when the subject directly relates to their official duties.

The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ) claims the policy violates the First Amendment.

Those free speech issues weren’t yet before the justices, however.

The Trump administration went to the Supreme Court to try to halt an order allowing the lawsuit to proceed before a federal district judge. The administration argues it must go before the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), a specialty body that oversees certain federal employee disputes.

That question poses wider implications for other federal workers’ cases, too. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the lower ruling would “indefinitely thwart the MSPB.”

“The answer to such prolific contravention of the Court’s precedents should not be to wait and see just how much instability will ensue,” Sauer wrote in court filings.

The lower court had acknowledged the MSPB’s purview. But in allowing the lawsuit to proceed, it pointed to President Trump’s firing at the board that left it for some time without a quorum, saying it raises “serious questions” about whether the MSPB “continues to function as intended.”

This also happened.  “Federal judge temporarily blocks HUD permanent housing cuts for homeless. The U.S. district judge questioned whether “chaos” is the point in homelessness funding overhaul.” This article is from Politico. It is reported by Cassandra Dumay.

HUD had withdrawn the new, transitional housing-focused notice before a court hearing last week, but the department said at the time it was “fully committed” to making reforms to the program and would reissue another version with “technical corrections.”

A HUD spokesperson said in a statement after the hearing that the department “remains committed to program reforms intended to assist our nation’s most vulnerable citizens and will continue to do so in accordance with the law.”

McElroy’s decision requires HUD to maintain the status quo in its funding for the Continuum of Care program, which partners with local organizations to connect people experiencing homelessness to housing and resources, until a new notice is released following a process that fits congressional statutes. The judge found that the plaintiffs, a coalition of 20 states as well as 11 local governments and nonprofits that sued HUD, had demonstrated they’re likely to succeed in challenging the department’s procedure for the policy change.

McElroy said HUD’s November decision to revoke the previous notice of funding and issue a new one that dramatically cut permanent housing grants likely conflicted with requirements under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. She said the law reflected Congress’ “prioritization of permanent housing and renewal stability and the formula based allocation scheme.” She also said HUD’s action last month likely conflicted with the statutory deadline for the issuance of a notice of funding.

One last thing.  We have yet another reason to think Bernie Sanders is a punk.  This is from The Bulwark.  It’s written by Sam Stein. “A Milestone Pediatric Cancer Bill Fails at the Hands of Bernie. The Vermont senator is holding out for a bigger health care package. Advocates are asking: Is the price worth it?”  Why on earth would any one punk kids with Cancer whose name isn’t Trump?

FOR YEARS, THE PEDIATRIC CANCER COMMUNITY has tried to pass a single piece of legislation that would allow for more comprehensive drug treatments to be given to young patients.

The process has involved agonizing setbacks, intense private negotiations, and a sudden, unexpected change in fortune thanks to the advocacy of a dying child.

On Wednesday night, this long, laborious journey appeared close to ending with what advocates anticipated would be a triumph. The Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act (named after that dying child) was heading to the Senate floor, where it was expected to be passed by unanimous consent. Having already passed the House, it would then head to Donald Trump’s desk. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the president would sign the measure and—as is his wont—take personal credit for it.

Pediatric cancer advocates scrambled to get to the Senate to watch the moment. Reporters who had covered the issue, including this one, were given the heads-up about its imminent passage. At least three kids who are bereaved siblings of cancer victims and one pediatric cancer survivor sat in the Senate gallery.

And then, it failed. A single senator stood in the way. It was Bernie Sanders.

In a dramatic, heated exchange on the Senate floor—caught by the C-SPAN cameras but largely missed by the news-consuming public—Sanders announced his opposition to quick passage for the bill. He did so not because he disagreed with its objective—which is to give the FDA the authority to push pharmaceutical companies to study combination drug therapies—but because he worried that extraneous provisions attached to it would make it harder to achieve other priorities. He argued that the Senate ought to be passing similarly important, bipartisan-supported health care measures along with it. His staff insisted to me that they would revisit the bill soon, and they seemed confident it would all get done in the new year.

But that’s not at all clear to the pediatric cancer community, which was left stunned by the vote.

“Everyone was just so exhausted and deflated and sad when we exited the gallery,” one member of the community told me. “It was a feeling of abandonment and confusion.”

The entire episode has raised a larger question about the motivations of lawmakers: What are their political and moral obligations in moments like these? Put another way: When is incremental legislative progress worth more than the continued pursuit of a bigger goal?

Read more at the Link about that last question.

So, I’m going to try to spend my Winter Break getting my house in order.  I hope you have a peaceful, warm, and gentle weekend.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Suprise he did do the Trump part in tacky gold lettering or neon. Still makes me want to throw up, though.