WASHINGTON — The president of the Kennedy Center on Friday fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden decision to cancel a Christmas Eve performance at the venue after the White House announced that President Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with The Associated Press.

In the letter, Grenell said he would seek $1 million in damages “for this political stunt.”

Redd did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A drummer and vibraphone player, Redd has presided over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts. In an email Wednesday to The Associated Press, Redd said he pulled out of the concert in the wake of the renaming.

“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd said.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and Congress passed a law the following year naming the center as a living memorial to him.

According to the White House, Trump’s handpicked board approved the renaming, which scholars have said violates the law. Kennedy niece Kerry Kennedy has vowed to remove Trump’s name from the building once he leaves office, and former House historian Ray Smock is among those who say any changes would have to be approved by Congress.

The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.

Associated Press writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.

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By JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — A Palestinian attacker rammed his car into a man and then stabbed a young woman in northern Israel on Friday afternoon, killing both, police said. The Israeli military swiftly launched an operation in the assailant’s hometown in the occupied West Bank.

The attack started in the northern city of Beit Shean when the Palestinian man rammed his vehicle into people, killing one man and injuring a teenage boy. He then drove off onto a highway, where he fatally stabbed the woman, and injured another person near the entrance to the city of Afula.

Authorities say the attacker was shot and injured in Afula. He was then taken to hospital; his condition was not immediately known.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu identified the victims as Aviv Maor, a teenager, and Shimshon Mordechai, 68. Paramedics pronounced both dead at the scene.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that he was shocked by the “horrific killing spree.” He said that Israel was “committed to reinforcing and strengthening this challenging border and, of course, to bolstering the security response in the area for the full safety of the residents.”

The path of a the assailant who rammed and stabbed people in northern Israel Friday. (AP Digital Embed)

The military enters attacker’s hometown

Israel’s military soon began amassing troops near the Palestinian town of Qabatiya, where Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the assailant was from. Later Friday, the military said that it conducted a “precise operational search at the residence” of the attacker, together with intelligence forces, and was preparing to demolish the residence.

The operation was ongoing in the area, the military said later in the evening.

Israeli forces blocked several roads around the town, where they entered several houses and positioned themselves around the attacker’s home, said the mayor, Ahmad Zakarneh. He added that residents had stocked up on supplies from bakeries and supermarkets after they were notified of the impending military operation.

Katz said that he’d ordered troops to “act forcefully and immediately” against what he called “terrorist infrastructure” in the town.

“Anyone who aids or sponsors terrorism will pay the full price,” he said.

In this photo released by Israel Police on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025, shows Israeli police officers at the site where a vehicle was used, according to the authorities, during a suspected ramming and stabbing attack in Afula, northern Israel. (Israel Police via AP)

A history of raids

It’s common practice for Israel to launch raids in the West Bank towns that attackers come from or demolish homes belonging to the assailants’ families. Israel says that it helps to locate combatant infrastructure and prevents future attacks. Rights watchdogs describe such actions as collective punishment.

Raids have been conducted in the area of Qabatiya, which is in the northern West Bank near the major city of Jenin, over the last few weeks.

On Dec. 20, Israel’s military said that they killed a person in Qabatiya who “hurled a block toward the soldiers.” It later said that the killing was under review, after Palestinian media aired brief security footage in which the youth appears to emerge from an alley and is shot by troops as he approaches them without throwing anything.

The Israel-Hamas war, which began with the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. It has also sparked a surge of violence in Israel and the West Bank, with a rise in attacks by Palestinian fighters as well as Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.

In September, Palestinian attackers opened fire at a bus stop during the morning rush hour in Jerusalem, killing six people and wounding another 12, according to Israeli officials.

Palestinian youth walk along a tent camp for displaced people as the sun sets in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Recognizing Somaliland

In a separate development, Israel on Friday became the first country to recognize Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia in East Africa.

It wasn’t known why Israel made the declaration now or whether it was expecting something in return.

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Earlier this year, U.S. and Israeli officials told The Associated Press that Israel had approached Somaliland about taking in Palestinians from Gaza as part of President Donald Trump’s plan at the time to resettle that territory’s population. The United States has since abandoned that plan.

Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that he, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, and Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, signed a joint and mutual declaration “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords.”

That’s the project that, starting in 2020, established commercial and diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority countries — and that Trump sees as key to his plan for bringing long-term stability to the Middle East.

Somaliland, a territory of more than 3 million people in the Horn of Africa, seceded from Somalia more than three decades ago, but it has not been internationally recognized as an independent state by any country until now.

The foreign ministry of Egypt — a major mediator in the Israel-Hamas war — said on social media that it rejects Israel’s recognition of Somaliland and stressed full support for Somalia’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity.

The U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Hamas war specifies that Palestinians won’t be expelled from Gaza.

Omar Faruk contributed to this report from Mogadishu, Somalia.

By REGINA GARCIA CANO, Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Men who were part of the group of Venezuelan migrants that the United States government transferred earlier this year to a prison in El Salvador demanded justice on Friday, days after a federal judge in Washington ruled that the Trump administration must give them legal due process.

The men told reporters in Venezuela’s capital that they hope legal organizations can push their claims in court. Their press conference was organized by Venezuela’s government, which had previously said it had retained legal services for the immigrants.

On Monday, a federal judge ordered the U.S. government to give legal due process to the 252 Venezuelan men, either by providing court hearings or returning them to the U.S. The ruling opens a path for the men to challenge the Trump administration’s allegation that they are members of the Tren de Aragua gang and subject to removal under an 18th century wartime law.

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The men have repeatedly said they were physically and psychologically tortured while at the notorious Salvadoran prison.

“Today, we are here to demand justice before the world for the human rights violations committed against each of us, and to ask for help from international organizations to assist us in our defense so that our human rights are respected and not violated again,” Andry Blanco told reporters in Caracas, where roughly two dozen of the migrants gathered Friday.

Some of the men shared the daily struggles they now face — including fear of leaving their home or encountering law enforcement — as a consequence of what they said were brutal abuses while in prison. The men did not specify what justice should look like in their case, but not all are interested in returning to the U.S.

“I don’t trust them,” Nolberto Aguilar said of the U.S. government.

The men were flown to El Salvador in March. They were sent to their home country in July as part of a prisoner swap between the Trump administration and the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Camilla Fabri, Venezuelan vice minister of foreign affairs for international communications, said Maduro’s government is working with a bar association in the U.S. and “all human rights organizations to prepare a major lawsuit against Trump and the United States government, so that they truly acknowledge all the crimes they have committed against” the men.

By JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER and MENGSHIN LIN, Associated Press

KAILUA-KONA, Hawaii (AP) — Throngs of feral cats emerge from the shade of parked trucks and bushes as soon as the familiar Subaru Forester pulls into a dump on Hawaii’s Big Island. They run after the vehicle to a certain meal — a gravy train that might not be around much longer.

A Hawaii County law set to take effect at the start of the new year bans feeding feral animals on county property. It’s an effort to protect native species, such as an endangered goose called the nene, from a super predator introduced to the islands by Europeans in the 18th century.

But the measure doesn’t sit well with many cat lovers, including the driver of the Subaru, Liz Swan, who has been feeding feral felines on the Big Island for 33 years.

“I don’t believe the cats should be exterminated at the expense of the nene,” Swan said. “They’re both living creatures.”

It’s unclear how many feral cats — abandoned pets and their descendants — live on the Big Island. Estimates range well into the tens of thousands, with pockets of dense colonies supported by people. Opponents of the ban say it will hamper their efforts to contain the population by trapping and neutering the animals — and that hungry cats will then have to hunt for food.

Liz Swan sets up food and a trap for stray cats near the Kealakehe Transfer Station and Recycling Center, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)

A variety of threats

About 200 cats live at the Kealakehe Transfer Station and Recycling Center, not far from the bustling tourist district of Kona. Swan shows up every late afternoon with water and kibble, and says she’s never seen a nene anywhere near the dump. Despite living amid trash, the cats there generally appear robust, most of them missing the tip of an ear, indicating they’ve been spayed or neutered.

The cats threaten the native species directly — by killing them — and indirectly, biologists say. Food left out for the cats can attract native animals, bringing them into closer contact with humans. Cat feces can also spread a parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, a disease that has killed endangered Hawaiian monk seals and native birds.

Last year, a male nene — pronounced “neh-neh” — was struck and killed by a car as it crossed a road in Hilo, on the eastern side of the island, to reach a cat feeding station. The goose’s surviving mate, which also had a gosling die of toxoplasmosis in 2024, has recently taken on another partner and is nesting in a Hilo park, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources announced this month.

The county’s feeding ban will help protect them, the department said.

A nene is seen on a golf course, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Waikoloa Village, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)

A Hawaiian biologist’s view

State wildlife biologist Raymond McGuire recently checked for nene nesting sites among the barren black-rock fields near a shopping center at the Waikoloa resort. It’s not their traditional habitat, but he has seen the geese fly in to grab food — risking getting hit by cars — and last year some nested there.

As he approached, a pair of feline eyes peered out of a crack in the lava rock. Cats emerged from their nooks, perhaps mistaking him for someone who might offer food.

McGuire was relieved to see there were no nene nearby — but frustrated with evidence the cats are being fed: empty water bowls and aluminum pans.

He’s a cat owner — “my favorite animal is a cat” — but as a Hawaiian whose love of nature inspired him to pursue conservation work, he believes there is no room for them where native species are struggling to survive.

“There’s so many birds that my kids will never see, that I got to see,” he said, referring to native forest birds. “I think about my ancestors and I do wonder: Are we honoring them well in what we do? Because they did take steps to protect them.”

Feral cats are a problem in many places, but Hawaii’s sensitive ecosystem is full of species that evolved without mammalian predators, making them especially vulnerable, McGuire said.

Biologist Raymond McGuire shows an abandoned nene nest containing three eggs and a golf ball at a golf course, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Waikoloa Village, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)

‘I felt bad for the cats’

Hawaiian culture is closely tied to Hawaii’s animals; aumakua, or ancestral spirit guides, can take animal form, noted Big Island Mayor Kimo Alameda. His family’s aumakua is the shark, he said.

After the county council passed the measure with a veto-proof 6-2 vote, Alameda decided to let it take effect without his signature. Opponents persuaded him it would harm the cats.

“I had a soft spot for that,” he said. “I felt bad for the cats.”

The debate was so contentious that some opponents sent him hate messages, Alameda said.

The mayor said he hopes police consider enforcement a low priority. Violations carry fines of up to $50 for a first offense and up to $500 for subsequent offenses.

A drone photo shows the shoreline near the Old Kona Airport area, where local groups manage colonies of stray cats, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Mengshin Lin)

Will the ban prompt feeders to work in secret?

The answer is simple to Makaʻala Kaʻaumoana, a cultural practitioner — someone who works to preserve Hawaiian cultural traditions — on the island of Kauai.

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Trapping, neutering and releasing cats makes no difference because they can still hunt, she said.

“The cats have to be removed,” she said.

Debbie Cravatta, who feeds cats in her West Hawaii neighborhood, questioned why.

“It’s a native species — why does that reign over a domestic cat that somebody dumped out pregnant and that had six kittens out in the wild?” Cravatta said. “Why is that life more valuable than this life?”

Opponents also argue the ban might only push feeding efforts underground.

“I’m not going to let them starve,” Swan said.

Kelleher reported from Honolulu.