One woman shows the way
BY DAN RATHER AND TEAM STEADY
The country needs more elected representatives to meet every Donald Trump order, action, or whim with a direct question: “What does this have to do with the real and urgent issues facing the American people, the punishing costs of food, fuel, and housing; the Iran war; and the absence of accountability for high-level pedophiles in the Epstein files?”
Ideally, more people should also ask, “What do distractions like the East Wing ballroom construction, the Reflecting Pool renovation, renaming of the Kennedy Center, removing displays at the Smithsonian, proposing statehood for Greenland or Canada, or changes to the Cuban government and economy have to do with the cost of living, Epstein, or the war?”
The war is widening. The general impression is the United States is losing it or at the very least clinging to a costly stalemate.
We have so many issues in need of addressing, issues started, never resolved and left to fester by a president with the attention span of a gnat.
Nonetheless, many Americans will applaud Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH) for fighting the good fight at the Kennedy Center. She is a role model for Republicans and Democrats who should be standing up, speaking up, and confronting the president on the big issues that affect the American people most.
If Republicans lose control of Congress, it won’t only be because of voter discontent. Instead, it will also be to rid the nation of Trump enablers, who have been too scared to stand up to the man causing the madness.
For that man who has worn the bully moniker like a badge of honor for decades, Trump’s scolding of a member of Congress may be a new low — and a new high, because someone finally stood up to him.
After U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled, again, to block the Kennedy Center Board from restoring Trump’s name to the building or adding it anywhere on the grounds, Trump lost it.
He joined a conference call of the center’s board on Tuesday and promptly leveled his abundant anger at Beatty, an ex officio board member. When Trump took office in 2025, he replaced most of the trustees with his loyalists, but the 23 ex officio members are shielded from political machinations. Trump could not get rid of them.
But it is only Beatty who has become a reliable thorn in Trump’s side, blocking his attempts to remake the Kennedy Center, which he has no authority to do.
In December 2025, she filed suit to stop Trump and his board’s decision to rename the Kennedy Center, calling it a “thinly veiled sham.” In May, Judge Cooper ruled in her favor, requiring that Trump’s name be removed from the facade and stopping a board-mandated two-year closure of the institution.
When rulings don’t go his way, Trump is loath to accept them. Instead, he keeps pushing, regardless of the legal merits of any given case. So, it was no surprise when he appealed Judge Cooper’s latest ruling. But Beatty wasn’t giving up the fight. She continued her suit, pushing for emergency hearings and stays.
On that conference call, Beatty gave as good as she got. She described Trump’s “tantrum” on MS NOW, calling it “the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed.”
After calling her “dumb,” Trump said, “I think you’re incompetent.” She replied, “I know you’re incompetent.”
“He said he was going to hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling and killed someone. And I told him, ‘You’re already killing people. We’re at war,’” Beatty continued.
After bragging about his business dealings, Trump accused Beatty of never having accomplished anything. She countered, “You had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.”
Beatty has represented Ohio in Congress since 2013 and led the Congressional Black Caucus for a term, but nothing in her background suggests she would be the member of Congress to finally call Trump on his BS.
One can imagine how incensed Trump must have been after that exchange. He cannot abide a challenge, especially by women and even more especially by women of color.
Trump’s level of indignation was matched only by the level of absurdity of his response. He said either his name goes back on the building or it will have to be destroyed.
“For me to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that it’s going to close. It will end up getting ripped down, it is in very very bad shape… It’s been very badly maintained for 25 years,” he told reporters.
Neither Trump, the White House, nor the Kennedy Center has provided evidence the building needs to be razed.
This president said the center has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars for years. It hasn’t. In 2024, under President Joe Biden, the Kennedy Center had a $40.7 million surplus. Trump might be referring to the center’s coffers under his own leadership, which lost $23 million in 2025.
“It was just an absolute fiscal cliff. Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared — like it was doomsday,” an official familiar with the center’s finances told The Washington Post. The paper reports that the finances are so dire it could face bankruptcy.
Trump believes his name on this building will be a cure-all, but it was his meddling that caused this financial calamity in the first place.
The president claims the arts institute is physically falling apart, is in desperate need of renovations, and only he can raise the needed funds. However, Congress has already appropriated $257 million for the estimated $250 million renovation.
Suddenly on Wednesday night, the possibility that he may make good on his threat to tear down the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy became frighteningly real. A photographer captured this image of Trump inside Air Force One looking at a poster labeled “Kennedy Center Demolition.”
The White House isn’t talking about the poster or the photo, but Beatty added the picture to an emergency motion she filed after the board suddenly voted to close the Kennedy Center to the public. She argued that it violated Judge Cooper’s order blocking the facility’s closure without court approval.
In response, on Thursday afternoon, Judge Cooper issued yet another order, this one requiring 30 days’ notice in writing before any demolition of the Kennedy Center. He also granted Beatty and her lawyers discovery, perhaps in response to the aforementioned photo of Trump.
In 1956 Kennedy published the book “Profiles in Courage,” which won the Pulitzer Prize the following year. In it, he wrote short biographies of eight U.S. Senators who had displayed remarkable bravery and grit. If a sequel were to be written today, one chapter might be titled, “Representative Joyce Beatty.”
Which leaves us all with a question: Will her example lead to more elected officials getting past the distractions and standing up and speaking out on the larger issues?
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Dan
NYA Thanks Dan Rather and Team Steady!