President Donald Trump removed more than a dozen Joe Biden-appointed board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, including former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The ousted members include chairman David Rubenstein and close Biden aides such as Jean-Pierre and political strategist Mike Donilon, the New York Times reported. The move comes three days after Trump said he would "terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture." The Kennedy Center announced the same day that board members had begun to receive termination notices, NPR reported.
The firings are part of Trump's larger purge of "woke" government officials. The president on Monday dismissed advisory boards for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard academies. "Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years," Trump said. "We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!"
Biden in 2021 set the precedent for those dismissals, firing all 18 advisory-board members Trump had appointed in his first term. Those firings prompted a lawsuit, Spicer v. Biden, which found that the president had the power to remove the officials.
Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who filed the suit against Biden, told the Washington Free Beacon that the Biden team's arguments enabled Trump’s actions.
"When I sued President Biden for removing all the Trump appointees from the services academies they went to court and argued the president had absolute authority to do so," Spicer said. "Now President Trump is cleaning house and the Biden appointees can thank Biden for making it possible."
The Kennedy Center, which was established by law as the "national cultural center" of the United States, hosts Broadway-style shows and other performances and is the official residence of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera. Trump has criticized the institution's programming in recent years, telling reporters on Sunday that "we don't need woke at the Kennedy Center."
"Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth—THIS WILL STOP," Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social. "The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation."
Trump announced in the Truth Social post that he would appoint himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center's board. "At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN," Trump said.