By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press

Until a few weeks ago, the biggest news to come out of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., was its annual celebration of notable American artists.

That has changed since the return of Donald Trump.

In the first month of his second term, the president has ousted the arts institution’s leadership, filled the board of trustees with his supporters and announced he had been elected the board’s chair — unanimously. In a statement this week to The Wall Street Journal, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The Kennedy Center learned the hard way that if you go woke, you will go broke. President Trump and the members of his newly-appointed board are devoted to rebuilding the Kennedy Center into a thriving and highly respected institution where all Americans, and visitors from around the world, can enjoy the arts with respect to America’s great history and traditions.”

What is the Kennedy Center and how long has it been around?

Supported by government money and private donations and attracting millions of visitors each year, the center is a 100-foot high complex featuring a concert hall, opera house and theater, along with a lecture hall, meeting spaces and a “Millennium Stage” that has been the site for free shows.

The center’s very origins are bipartisan.

It was first conceived in the late 1950s, during the administration of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who backed a bill from the Democratic-led Congress calling for a “National Culture Center.” In the early 1960s, Democrat President John F. Kennedy launched a fundraising initiative, and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed into law a 1964 bill renaming the project the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. Kennedy had been assassinated the year before.

Construction began in 1965 and the center formally opened six years later, with a premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” otherwise known as “MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers).”

Who has performed at the Kennedy Center?

The center has long been a showcase for theater, music and dramatic performances, with artists ranging from the Paul Taylor Dance Company to a joint concert by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Other highlights have included the annual Mark Twain Award for comedy, with recipients including Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Bob Newhart, and the annual Kennedy Center ceremony honoring outstanding artists, most recently Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt and the Grateful Dead, among others.

Presidents have routinely attended the honors ceremony, even in the presence of artists who disagreed with them politically. The good-natured spirit was well captured in 2002, during Republican President George W. Bush’s first term, when Steve Martin offered tribute to honoree Paul Simon. Martin digressed into a tangent about pirated music recordings and joked that he had been approached by Bush about getting bootlegs of Barbra Streisand, a prominent Democrat.

“It’s been nice being a citizen,” Martin added, as Bush and others laughed in response.

Why is Trump focusing on the Kennedy Center now?

Trump mostly ignored the center during his first term, becoming the first president to routinely skip the honors ceremony. One honoree, producer Norman Lear, had threatened not to attend if Trump was there.

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Mirroring his overall governing approach, Trump has been far more aggressive and proactive in his second term, citing some drag show performances at the center as a reason to transform it entirely.

“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,” he wrote on his social media website earlier this month. “I have decided to immediately 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.”

Meanwhile, the Kennedy Center website still includes a passage about the core mission, one that strives “to ensure that the education and outreach programs and policies of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts meet the highest level of excellence and reflect the cultural diversity of the United States.”

Also listed on the site is a new project called “Promise of US,” for which “the public is invited to submit an artistic self-portrait to be part of a virtual wall of faces expressing the myriad diversity of America’s peoples and the promise of America’s future. This ever-expanding mosaic will be featured on the Center’s website and social channels.”

Who is in charge now?

Trump pushed out the incumbent board chair David M. Rubenstein, a philanthropist and Baltimore Orioles owner. He now presides over a board that by tradition was divided between Democratic and Republican appointees, but is now predominantly Republican, with recent additions including Attorney General Pam Bondi, country star Lee Greenwood and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter, brought on by Rubenstein in 2014, resigned soon after the board shakeup. Trump replaced her, on an interim basis, with diplomat Richard Grenell, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany during the president’s first term.

“I’m really, really, really sad about what happens to our artists, what happens on our stages and our staff who support them,” Rutter said during a recent interview with NPR. “The Kennedy Center is meant to be a beacon for the arts in all of America across the country.”

What has been the fallout?

The fallout is unprecedented. Kennedy Center consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming have resigned and actor Issa Rae and author Louise Penny have canceled appearances. During a concert last weekend that proceeded as scheduled, singer-songwriter Victoria Clark wore a T-shirt reading “ANTI TRUMP AF.”

Further controversy is possible. Next month’s schedule includes “RIOT! Funny Women Stand Up, a special comedy event in celebration of Women’s History Month.” Conan O’Brien is to receive the Twain award in an all-star event that will likely include jokes about the president. (Representatives for O’Brien have not responded to requests for comment.) The center also is scheduled to host “Eureka Day,” a stage play centered on an outbreak of mumps, a sensitive topic with the confirmation of vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

For Janelle Asselin, it started with 10 pages of family records, tales of ancestors that spanned Ireland, Canada and the United States.

After a decade of research, she eventually found that John O’Rourke, her second great-grandfather, was not actually the ancestor who emigrated from Ireland as the family lore said. That was actually his father.

So it goes in the world of genealogy, specifically Irish ancestry, where starts and stops are common as official records were burned during wartime, forged due to families hiding their religious affiliations, and also lost during the regular and unrelenting passage of time.

The Ulster Historical Foundation will be coming to Minnesota as part of their national lecture series in order to help those just starting to unearth their Irish and Scottish ancestry, and also those years deep into discovering fourth cousins and relatives decades in the past.

“It is always interesting to dive deeper into the family history. It’s a wonderful way to connect with those roots and get the help to connect directly with those roots,” Asselin said. She serves as the marketing chair of Irish Genealogical Society International, the group that worked to bring the Northern Ireland-based Ulster Historical Foundation to the Twin Cities.

“The Irish records can be really daunting because there is so much about the history of Ireland itself that can be hard to track down,” Asselin said. “The Ulster Foundation will fill in some of those blanks for people who maybe don’t know where to start, or what records might be available.”

Irish Genealogical Society International Co-President Walt Rothwell said the Ulster Historical Foundation tours the U.S. every few years, and is seen as a premier authority in terms of Irish genealogy research.

On March 11, the program will involve sessions related to “Irish Heritage Day 2025,” and researching ancestors and family history in Ireland. On March 12, the program will consist of one-to-one research consultations.

Rothwell also hopes that armchair genealogy researchers realize that the Minnesota Genealogy Society in Mendota Heights offers services for many other cultures other than Irish. The center has a reference library that is open to the public for a fee, $10 per day.

Donna Jones, co-president of Irish Genealogical Society International, said finding out the relatives and places is only the beginning; once that is established the true history starts to unfold.

“It’s not just names and dates. It’s more the context of their lives, and answering, ‘What were their lives like?’” Jones said. “I think it’s just fascinating.”

If you go

What: Interested in finding out more about your heritage and relatives? The Ulster Historical Foundation, seen as one of the premier Irish research groups, will offer Irish and Scottish genealogy workshops on Tuesday, March 11 and Wednesday, March 12.

Where: Irish Genealogical Society International will host “Irish Heritage Day 2025: Researching Ancestors and Family History in Ireland” on Tuesday, March 11, at Lost Spur Golf and Event Center, 2750 Sibley Memorial Highway, in Eagan.

Cost: In person $100 non-members, $85 IGSI members. Virtual on Zoom costs $55 for non-members, $45 IGSI members.

Also: One-on-one research consultations are set for Wednesday, March 12, at the Minnesota Genealogy Center, located at 1385 Mendota Heights Rd., Suite 100, in Mendota Heights. Cost: $60 per 30 minute consultation.

Questions? For more information, call 651-330-9312 or visit ulsterhistoricalfoundation.com/portfolio/lecture-tour-2025.

Interested in local history, too? Sign up for our free, weekly newsletter, “From the Archives,” by following the prompts at twincities.com/newsletters.

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A developer’s efforts to add a series of single-story buildings along the outer edges of the Highland Bridge development have been rebuffed by a tie vote of the St. Paul City Council.

The Ryan Cos. recently sought zoning variances to add four squat buildings along Ford Parkway, each of them no more than 12 to 18 feet tall, on parcels of land where city zoning calls for a minimum of 40 feet. Variance requests for building height and floor area ratio were denied in January by the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals after some members likened the proposal to a strip mall, thrusting the issue before the city council.

Council Member Saura Jost, who represents Highland Park, urged her fellow council members on Wednesday to vote in favor of the Ryan Cos.’ two appeals of the BZA decision, noting that “almost all projects at Highland Bridge have approved variances from the zoning code.”

Deadlock

The council then voted on Jost’s motions, deadlocking 3-3 on each of the company’s requests for zoning variances on the two land parcels. Council Members Anika Bowie and Cheniqua Johnson joined Jost in voting yes, and Council President Rebecca Noecker and HwaJeong Kim joined Nelsie Yang in voting no.

Given the tie, the motions did not pass. Council members noted that the vote could be reconsidered next week if a council member changed their vote.

Spanning more than 122 acres, the former home of the Ford Motor Co. assembly plant in Highland Park has been developed into hundreds of housing units, commercial offices, multiple playgrounds and a Lunds & Byerlys grocery store, but residential construction has slowed.

Representatives of the Ryan Cos. have expressed concern that filling an additional series of sizable commercial or mixed-use buildings will be difficult given an economic climate marked by high interest rates, a difficult lending environment, sluggish city population growth, remote work and the city’s rent-control ordinance.

For and against

Just prior to the vote, Jost said the Board of Zoning Appeals had erred in identifying Ford Parkway at Cretin Avenue as a “neighborhood node,” or a potential transit and development hotspot, when it’s not listed as such in the city’s Comprehensive Plan. She also noted the Ryan Cos. had expressed concern about navigating Ford Parkway’s steep slope, shallow bedrock and perched water, as well as pedestrian easements that cut across the lot diagonally, which had been a city priority.

“Buildings ultimately bear on the soil below them,” Jost said. “These are challenges not created by the landowner, but by the land. And as I mentioned before, they impact the entirety of the design.”

A Twin Cities developer unimpressed with the concept plans told the BZA — and the city council, during a public hearing last week — that construction challenges around slopes and bedrock are common and not insurmountable. While the Ryan Cos. had not provided a geo-technical analysis to prove their point, neither had he, Jost noted.

“I strongly disagree with a local developer being an expert when it comes to sub-surface soil conditions,” she said. “They’re not expert design professionals.”

Taking the opposite tack, Yang said the BZA had relied on credible testimony from a developer with experience in the field, and she could not support the company’s appeals. “I did not find an error in the decision-making,” she said.

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