President Donald Trump dismissed half the appointed trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ board on Feb. 12, 2025. The remaining board members, most of whom he had recently appointed, then voted to make Trump the center’s chair. The board also fired Deborah Rutter, who had served as the center’s president since 2014 and already planned to step down seven months later.
The board replaced Rutter with Richard Grenell, who served in the first Trump administration.
