Peter Roskam in 2017. A former Republican congressman, Mr. Roskam, now the chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, said the organization filed a lawsuit on Wednesday because it had been unable to get the State Department to restart the flow of money. The National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit that has had bipartisan support over decades for its work promoting democracy abroad, is suing the U.S. government and cabinet officials for withholding $239 million in congressional appropriations. Members of the group’s board, which includes current and former Republican and Democratic politicians, said the organization filed the lawsuit on Wednesday afternoon as a last resort because it had been unable to get the State Department to restart the flow of money. The group has had to put about 75 percent of its staff on unpaid leave, and about 1,200 grant recipients have received no money for projects since late January, after President Trump signed an executive order freezing all foreign aid. In the lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the group argues that its money from Congress is not foreign aid and does not fall under the purview of the State Department, which manages the transfer of funds, or any other executive branch agency. Withholding the funding, the board members say, is illegal. Peter Roskam, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who chairs the nonprofit, said the board voted on Tuesday to go to court. “We’d be delighted to learn that this was just an oversight and someone just forgot to hit the send button,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, minutes before the lawsuit was filed. “But clearly that’s not what’s going on.” The endowment’s plight is emblematic of the colossal shift in foreign policy that is taking place in the second Trump administration, as the president tries to move the government away from overseas democracy and human rights work and toward an approach that eschews alliances in favor of a more transactional and nationalistic approach. Some senior administration officials have adopted language, including phrases once common among progressive critics of the U.S. government, about the downside of American projects that seek to extend influence abroad, calling such programs “nation-building” and attempts at “regime change.” Spokespeople for the White House, the State Department and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Mr. Trump, posted scathing criticism of N.E.D. online last month, saying it was “RIFE with CORRUPTION!!” “That evil organization needs to be dissolved,” he wrote, using the same conspiratorial language he has employed to describe the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Mr. Musk has helped dismantle. Elon Musk criticized the National Endowment for Democracy as being “RIFE with CORRUPTION!!” in an online post last month. Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican who is Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations, was on the N.E.D. board until she had to step down to prepare for Senate confirmation for her new job. Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, is currently on the board. Mr. Trump’s “America First” policy has also been brought into sharp relief in recent weeks by his criticism of Ukraine in its fight against Russia; his imposing of tariffs on allies Canada and Mexico; his insistence on taking mineral-rich Greenland from Denmark, another ally; and his decision to cut off almost all foreign aid, which strategists have seen as an important component of American soft power. The grants N.E.D. gives out are focused on promoting democracy, free speech and religious freedoms in more than 100 countries and territories, including ones that the first Trump administration and the Biden administration considered rivals or adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. The grants fund projects such as developing software that allows citizens to access banned websites. Mel Martinez, a former Republican senator representing Florida, said the Trump administration’s unwillingness to release funding for organizations that support overseas dissidents was an affront to exiles from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. “That entire group of people are politically active,” he said. “Many have been strong supporters of the president.” In Venezuela, for example, grants support independent groups that monitor elections and defend dissidents targeted by the autocratic government. Authoritarian governments, including those of China and Russia, have denounced the work of N.E.D. over many years. The group traces its origins to a speech by President Ronald Reagan to the British Parliament in 1982. He vowed that “the march of freedom and democracy” would “leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history.” Congress passed a law establishing N.E.D. the following year. N.E.D. gives funding to several sister nonprofits, notably the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. Those groups are also ending programs because of the funding freeze. Several Senate allies of Mr. Trump, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, sit on the I.R.I. board. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a defendant in the lawsuit, is a former board member. The Republican group’s website says it has had to disable its operations to save on expenses, but a page still reminds people to remember the work that it does: “Dictators are afraid of their own people. Helping citizens have a voice in their country is at the heart of what I.R.I. does.” David Super, a professor who studies administrative law at Georgetown University, said N.E.D.’s case had some similarities to a lawsuit filed by contracting companies for U.S.A.I.D. The Trump administration also froze that agency’s funds. In both cases, Mr. Super said, Congress had passed “clear, mandatory authorizing and appropriations statutes.” Withholding money from N.E.D., he said, “is clearly violating both laws.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother Bradley is a partner at a global white-collar criminal defense firm with offices in Washington. Bradley J. Bondi, brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, has announced his candidacy to lead the bar association in Washington at a time when the group might be asked to consider accusations that political appointees at the Justice Department violated professional or ethical norms. Mr. Bondi, a partner at Paul Hastings, a global white-collar criminal defense firm with offices in Washington, threw his hat in the ring in late February, according to a roster of candidates posted on the association’s website. The three-year position of president at the 118,000-member association is unpaid. The role does not extend to controlling disbarments and other disciplinary actions, which are handled by a board of professional responsibility that is appointed and overseen by a court, according to the association’s bylaws. But his candidacy comes at a time when Ms. Bondi, like many other Trump appointees, is quashing internal dissent and seeking retribution against President Trump’s perceived enemies in ways that have challenged norms of prosecutorial independence from politics. The association, which acted to disbar former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York for promoting lies about the 2020 election, could soon become a venue to resolve complaints about the conduct of other Trump allies. Former prosecutors and Democrats are considering filing complaints against department officials over what they claim are efforts to inject politics into prosecutorial decision making, particularly at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. The bar association’s election period starts next month and ends in early June. Mr. Bondi’s opponent is Diane A. Seltzer, a Maryland-based lawyer who runs a small firm specializing in employment law. She has been far more active in the bar association than Mr. Bondi. Mr. Bondi, 51, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Bondi, a former top staff member at the Securities and Exchange Commission, was already a well-known and deeply connected defense lawyer in Washington before his sister became attorney general. But his professional life has, in recent years, intersected with people in her orbit — including Mr. Trump’s business associates and Elon Musk. He represented Tesla Inc. in a 2018 settlement with the S.E.C. over Mr. Musk’s social media posts about taking the company private. Six years later, Trump transition officials considered Mr. Bondi as a candidate to run the commission, but opted for Paul Atkins, whom Mr. Bondi has described as a close friend. Last year, Mr. Bondi’s practice group at Paul Hastings was hired to represent Miami-based Digital World Acquisition Corp., in its merger negotiations with Mr. Trump’s media company. Ms. Bondi later reported owning nearly $3 million in Trump Media shares after the parent company of Truth Social went public a year ago, according to financial disclosures. In January, a group of investors seeking to buy TikTok enlisted Mr. Bondi to prepare a bid. Mr. Trump later reversed President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s ban on the Chinese social media app. Shortly before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Bondi signed on to represent Carolina Amesty, a former Republican state legislator in Florida charged by federal prosecutors with stealing $122,000 in pandemic relief aid, according to court filings. Mr. Bondi has given more than $25,000 to political committees in support of Mr. Trump since 2020, according to federal campaign finance records. But he does not seem to share Mr. Trump’s determination to roll back diversity and inclusion efforts, a cause enthusiastically championed by his sister. In 2021, Mr. Bondi set aside $100,000 to create the “Bradley J. Bondi Diversity and Inclusion Endowed Scholarship” at the University of Florida College of Law, his alma mater.
Democrats, like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, second from left, have pounced on Elon Musk for deriding the nation’s most popular federal program as a pyramid scheme. After the 2004 elections, a Republican president, newly returned to office, decided the political moment was right to overhaul Social Security, making it more like private retirement plans in a bid to prevent it from going bankrupt in the future. Two years and a bruising political fight later, Democrats took back the House and Senate from Republicans. Democrats now believe history may be about to repeat itself. Elon Musk, the multibillionaire overseeing the Trump administration effort to drastically shrink government, has derided the nation’s most popular federal program as a sketchy pyramid scheme while pushing to close offices and eliminate thousands of jobs of those who administer the program. In doing so, he has touched a topic that has traditionally been known as the third rail of American politics. And Democrats, who increasingly regard Mr. Musk as a more opportune political target than even President Trump himself, have rushed to highlight what they consider to be a major political blunder. “They don’t learn,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said of Republicans as his party pounced on the issue. “Their biggest mistake was going after Social Security when George Bush was president. And now they are doing it again.” Illustrating the emphasis Democrats intend to put on the subject, Senator Elissa Slotkin, the Michigan Democrat who delivered her party’s rebuttal to Mr. Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday night, hit on Social Security as well, using it to cast doubt on the president’s vows not to touch the federal retirement program. “The president claims he won’t, but Elon Musk just called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time,” she said in her remarks, quoting a social media post by Mr. Musk. Senator Elissa Slotkin rehearsing the Democratic rebuttal to President Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday. In her speech, she quoted Mr. Musk as calling Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Democrats were already pressing Republicans on potential cuts to Medicaid, the government health coverage program for lower-income Americans, but they view threats to Social Security as having broader resonance. Congressional Republicans respond that Democrats are distorting the Trump administration’s — and their — position on Social Security and that they are simply trying to bolster the finances of the program to guarantee that it won’t run out of money, allowing future generations, like past ones, to get the money they paid in. “We need to make sure that Social Security is strengthened and saved for the future so that everyone who’s paid in can get it,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican. Social Security has long been the political backbone of the Democratic Party. For years, Democrats have capitalized on the slightest hint of any attempt to dismantle or privatize it, as they did when President George W. Bush pushed the idea in 2005, much to the detriment of his party’s midterm election fortunes. The issue is so volatile that when Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, put forward a policy agenda during the 2022 midterm elections that would have theoretically required the program to expire and be re-evaluated, he was immediately repudiated by Republican leaders and eventually had to disavow his own plan. Senator Rick Scott with Mr. Musk on Wednesday. Mr. Scott was repudiated by Republican leaders after putting forward a policy agenda during the 2022 midterms that would have theoretically required Social Security to expire and be re-evaluated. Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Mr. Trump has repeatedly emphasized that he has no plans to tinker with Social Security or Medicare. But Democrats see something afoot with Mr. Musk’s derogatory comments and Mr. Trump’s claims that the program is riddled with fraud. Despite multiple reviews that have found Social Security to be one of the better-run federal programs with a record of never missing payments, Mr. Musk has characterized the program as riddled with fraud and waste. Mr. Trump emphasized that theme in Tuesday night’s address, saying that millions of obviously long-dead beneficiaries remain on the Social Security rolls. But the claim he and Mr. Musk make that benefits still flow to those people has been widely debunked. The agency says that it is a data recording problem, and has reported that just under 90,000 people 99 years or older received Social Security benefits in December — slightly more than the 85,000 Americans over the age of 100 recorded by the Census Bureau. Still, Democrats see the focus by Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump on erroneous claims of fraud as laying the groundwork for a benefit review that could affect those lawfully receiving monthly benefits as Republicans search for ways to offset the cost of hugely expensive tax cuts. Democrats say an equal threat to the program are plans to reduce the work force that had already shrunk, including an effort to pare down as many as 7,000 employees while consolidating regional offices and ending the leases on dozens of field offices around the country. They say the loss of personnel and the shuttering of offices would be tantamount to denying benefits to applicants who would face long waits to talk to advisers or to receive their assistance. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said such delays would break the inherent promise of Social Security that Americans can collect what they contributed. “Part of that promise means being able to get on the phone with an actual human being without having to wait on hold for an hour or more, visit an in-office person to help you get your benefits without having to jump through hoops or drive hundreds of miles,” Ms. Murray said. “But Trump and Elon are decimating the Social Security Administration and without adequate staff at the agency, there will be people who cannot get their benefits period.” Some Republicans also expressed concern about how cuts could affect the level of service their constituents receive. “I do know that it is a whole lot easier to work your way through Social Security benefits if you’re doing it in person with somebody who is well trained in how the system works,” said Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota. “Trying to do any of that stuff online is much more difficult.” But Mr. Rounds also credited Mr. Musk with bringing attention to the fiscal condition of Social Security, which is in such dire financial trouble that benefit cuts could come within a decade if nothing changes. “He’s at least ringing the alarm that the rest of us have tried to do,” said Mr. Rounds, who added that obvious fixes were available. Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, credited Mr. Musk with bringing attention to the fiscal condition of Social Security while expressing concern about the level of service that could result from the cuts. Multiple ideas are circulating to stabilize the program, such as lifting the current $176,100 cap on the amount of pay that is taxed for Social Security. “If Congress eliminated the payroll tax cap for individuals with annual income in the millions of dollars — an amount Elon Musk makes every two hours — and collected the money they are illegally evading in taxes, Social Security would be fully funded for decades,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee. But no one on Capitol Hill is talking seriously about raising that cap any time soon. For now, the push by Mr. Musk to shrink the agency and the beneficiary rolls will guarantee that Social Security remains at the center of the clash over federal spending in the coming months and next year’s elections.
Todd Blanche, a Trump lawyer, is confirmed as the No. 2 Justice Dept. official. Todd Blanche at a Senate confirmation hearing in the Capitol last month. Pete Kiehart for The New York Times The Senate on Wednesday confirmed President Trump’s criminal defense attorney Todd Blanche to take the No. 2 position at the Justice Department, where he has vowed to end the kind of investigations and prosecutions that led to indictments against his client. Mr. Blanche’s nomination to be the deputy attorney general, with oversight of the F.B.I.; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and other federal law enforcement agencies, passed 52 to 46 in a mostly party-line vote. A former federal prosecutor in New York, Mr. Blanche was in private practice as a defense lawyer when he agreed to take on Mr. Trump as a client, assembling and managing a legal team to defend him against four separate indictments. He was Mr. Trump’s attorney in his New York State trial last year on charges of falsifying business records. Mr. Trump was convicted of all 34 counts, but he and his lawyers, including Mr. Blanche, have denounced the case as a misuse of prosecutorial power. Mr. Blanche carried that argument, and his anger, into his confirmation hearing last month. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was still “frustrated” by what he called the unfair treatment of his client by judges and prosecutors. “That’s power, and that’s power that’s corrupted,” he said. Mr. Blanche is the most prominent of several lawyers who have represented Mr. Trump in private practice who are now poised to take senior positions within the Justice Department. Democrats have raised concerns that their elevation to those roles will create inherent ethical conflicts, but Mr. Blanche and the other Trump lawyers have downplayed such concerns. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Blanche confirmed that his “attorney-client relationship with President Trump remains,” but added that he “will not violate my ethical obligations.” He also discounted any suggestion that he might be put in a difficult position by the president, who had a contentious relationship with Justice Department leaders during his first term. “I don’t think President Trump is going to ask me to do anything illegal or immoral,” Mr. Blanche said. “I say that with experience and firsthand knowledge.”
Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times Elon Musk arrived on Wednesday at Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon on Capitol Hill ready to field questions about the work he is doing for President Trump at the Department of Government Efficiency, the office he formed that has taken a hatchet to the federal bureaucracy with no input from Congress. Republican senators have raised few public complaints about Mr. Musk as he has undertaken mass firings across the government without consulting or informing them. But during the nearly two-hour closed-door meeting, the senators gently questioned him about how they might share feedback, minimize blowback from their constituents and, perhaps, eventually get to vote on the cuts he is making. At one point during the largely friendly exchange, Mr. Musk, who made no presentation of his own, shared his personal phone number with senators and encouraged them to reach out directly with any concerns. “We’re getting feedback, and we want to respond to our constituents — how do we work most effectively to do that?” Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said after the meeting, in characterizing the tenor of his colleagues’ questions. Other Republicans said they were simply trying to figure out how they could help Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump succeed. “There was just a general discussion about how we can make his cuts permanent,” said Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. “There was general discussion about how we, as senators, can do a better job of explaining clearly what he’s doing.” The gathering highlighted the conundrum that DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach has created for a number of Republican lawmakers. Many of them genuinely believe the federal government and work force should be scaled back, and most are exceedingly reluctant to criticize Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk, who has a penchant for using his social media platform X to unleash a barrage of abuse against his critics, including Republican lawmakers. But they are also facing intense pushback from constituents at home affected by sprawling cuts and layoffs. In some cases, that has fueled an awkward two-step for Republicans, who have simultaneously praised the work DOGE is doing while also quietly seeking exemptions and special consideration for funding that helps their own constituents. “People were eager to have more feedback opportunities,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who praised Mr. Musk’s efforts on the Senate floor ahead of the meeting. Mr. Musk took a largely deferential tone toward senators, according to lawmakers who attended. When one senator stood and asked whom to contact with questions about the group’s efforts, one of Mr. Musk’s senior advisers volunteered her contact information. Mr. Musk interjected and said senators could contact him directly, a person who witnessed the exchange said. While he told senators a major target was waste at the Pentagon — typically a place where Senate Republicans have refused to entertain spending cuts — he made a point of relaying an anecdote that Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, had shared with him. In recounting that story, which he has previously discussed, he said Ms. Collins gave the Navy money for more submarines, but no new submarines were produced. Senators said they were interested in trying to codify the cuts Mr. Musk’s group has already targeted — a move that would endorse DOGE’s actions while also reclaiming Congress’s power of the purse. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky suggested that lawmakers ultimately should vote on the cuts DOGE has ordered using the recission process, which allows the president to ask Congress to cancel certain funds lawmakers have appropriated. Mr. Paul suggested that the Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday in which a majority of justices rejected Mr. Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid indicated that using the recission process would be more fruitful than unilateral attempts by the executive branch to halt funding. “This is a bigger argument than just one person,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. He added: “Either the cuts and all the great things I think Elon is finding evaporate — they’re ephemeral — or we put them into a rescission package, they send them back to us, and we vote up or down on getting rid of them.” Mr. Musk appeared supportive of the idea, according to several senators who attended. “He said at one point, ‘You guys are going to have to act here to make any of this permanent,’” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said. Mr. Musk also briefed House Republicans at the Capitol later on Wednesday night, in another closed-door meeting that lasted roughly two hours. The message lawmakers sent him, according to Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina: “Speed up, don’t slow down.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling is a victory for foreign aid groups, but its scale is unclear. Food provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development being distributed in South Sudan in 2023. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times The Supreme Court’s Wednesday ruling that the Trump administration must heed a lower court’s order to release frozen foreign aid was a welcome but confusing development for humanitarian and development organizations around the world, as they waited to see if thousands of canceled contracts would be restarted. For weeks, the Trump administration has worked to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal agency chiefly responsible for disbursing foreign aid. Thousands of nongovernmental groups and companies that once partnered with it have been in limbo since the administration canceled over 90 percent of contracts, neutered the agency’s payments system and reneged on promises to pay for work already completed. The organizations that brought the lawsuit have insisted that the court’s ruling ought to force the Trump administration to restore all foreign aid funding. But the administration has been adamant that it was within its rights to decimate the agency. Here’s where things stand, and how this court order is expected to play out. Why has foreign aid been frozen? President Trump has argued that some U.S.A.I.D. programs were counter to American interests, too “woke” and too expensive. On the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order to pause all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review of programs to determine whether they aligned with his foreign policy objectives. The administration has stated in its court filings that the review was “largely completed,” after it announced its decision last week to terminate funding for about 5,800 contracts. Those contracts comprised over 90 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s remaining caseload. On Wednesday, however, Pete Marocco, the State Department official who has been overseeing the cuts to the agency, told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the review was in its early stages. The total funding allotted to U.S.A.I.D. programs before the cuts amounted to less than 1 percent of the overall federal budget. Is any money still flowing? At this point, extremely little. Shortly after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, allowed programs providing lifesaving humanitarian assistance to avoid the 90-day freeze and review. But in practice, almost all of the programs that had received waivers were unable to access funds to continue operating. Even a program to help contain an Ebola outbreak in Uganda was unable to access the money it needed. In recent days, a trickle of organizations received notice that their contract termination notices had been reversed. Among the revived contracts was one to procure H.I.V. medicines and manage supply chains to ship those drugs to countries with high rates of infection. A program to spray long-acting insecticide inside the homes of people in areas of Kenya and Uganda with some of the highest rates of malaria infection in the world was also permitted to resume, until April 30. But the changes in status have been scattered and erratic. According to Tom Hart, the head of InterAction, a U.S.-based alliance of international nongovernmental aid organizations, some groups whose contracts were canceled were notified that they had been reinstated and then canceled again. And nearly none of the reversals of terminations have come with restored funding, obliging partners to front the funds through corporate lines of credit and other sources, if they wish to resume their work. How much foreign aid will be restored? This is the million — or really, billion — dollar question. The Supreme Court’s one-paragraph order kicked the matter of determining how much foreign aid had to be restored back to Judge Amir H. Ali of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It was his order to release the funding that the Trump administration had appealed to the Supreme Court. The administration’s broad cancellation of contracts happened after Judge Ali’s order — and it is not clear if the Supreme Court’s ruling could force the administration to restore all the contracts it canceled. Democrats on Capitol Hill, who see the cuts to U.S.A.I.D. as flouting the will of Congress, which created the agency, insist that the ruling is absolute. “They’re defying the constitutional rules of Congress. Are they also going to defy the constitutional obligations by the Supreme Court?” asked Representative Julie Elizabeth Johnson, Democrat of Texas, after members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee met with Mr. Marocco on Wednesday. But the Trump administration has insisted that it has the authority, separate from the president’s executive order, to end programs that it deems counter to U.S. interests. And Republican allies insist the court could not take that power away. “We don’t interpret that the court should read that in that way,” said Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida and chairman of the foreign affairs panel. “We’re going to continue to fight it.” What does this mean for the future of U.S.A.I.D.? A variety of lawsuits challenging the cuts to the development agency have been working their way through the courts. Wednesday’s ruling was in a case initially brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Journalism Development Network, challenging the administration’s aid freeze as organizations that had been promised those funds. But a parallel suit from unions representing U.S.A.I.D. employees was not able to stop the Trump administration from laying off the agency’s contractors and putting the vast majority of direct hires on leave, as part of a plan to reduce the agency’s staffing from about 10,000 to mere hundreds of staff members deemed “essential.” Without the majority of its staff, it is unclear how the agency would administer programs if they were restored. What happens next? Judge Ali will hold a hearing on Thursday to consider whether to turn his temporary restraining order largely lifting the administration’s freeze into a more muscular judicial command, a preliminary injunction. He has said that he intends to issue his ruling “with full dispatch.” The temporary order is set to expire on Monday or when Judge Ali rules on the motion for a preliminary injunction, whichever comes sooner. Should he grant the injunction, the administration will doubtless appeal again, first to a federal appeals court in Washington and then, if need be, to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, Mr. Marocco also told lawmakers Wednesday that his staff was planning criminal referrals against individuals the administration believes misused foreign aid funds, according to people familiar with the closed-door meeting.
“Hamilton” canceled plans to perform at the Kennedy Center next year as part of the institution’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. “Hamilton,” the musical theater juggernaut about the birth of American democracy, is canceling plans to perform next year at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, citing President Trump’s moves to impose his ideological and cultural values on the long-cherished venue. The musical had been slated to be part of the Kennedy Center’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But after Mr. Trump ousted the Democratic members from the center’s once-bipartisan board, became its chairman and replaced its president, “Hamilton” decided not to come. “This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” the show’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said in a joint interview on Wednesday with its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.” Mr. Seller said the “Hamilton” team believed that Mr. Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us.” “It became untenable for us to participate in an organization that had become so deeply politicized,” he said. “The Kennedy Center is for all of us, and it pains me deeply that they took it over and changed that. They said it’s not for all of us. It’s just for Donald Trump and his crowd. So we made a decision we can’t do it.” Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s new president, called the cancellation “a publicity stunt that will backfire” in a post on social media. He accused Mr. Miranda of being “intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically” and said that it was clear that he and Mr. Seller “don’t want Republicans going to their shows.” “Americans see you, Lin,” he wrote. The decision takes “Hamilton,” the hugely popular retelling of the nation’s founding, out of the Kennedy Center’s plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence — which President Trump has made a priority of commemorating. Although the Kennedy Center had last year announced that “Hamilton” would be staged there in 2026 as part of those celebrations, it had not yet put tickets on sale, and no contract had been signed. Mr. Miranda and Mr. Seller said the show would soon announce another venue in the Washington area so those hoping to see the show in that region would still have an opportunity to do so. The cancellation comes at a time of transformation for the Kennedy Center. Mr. Trump has said he has a “vision for a Golden Age in arts and culture,” but has not specified what that might look like. Mr. Grenell has promised “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.” (The Kennedy Center has regularly presented Christmas-themed festivities.) The venue’s administrators are now figuring out what kind of art they are willing to present, while artists are deciding whether they are still willing to perform there and some ticket buyers are weighing whether they plan to continue attending. Since Mr. Trump’s moves to take control of the Kennedy Center, a handful of artists have canceled shows there, including the musician Rhiannon Giddens and the actress Issa Rae. The soprano Renée Fleming and the singer-songwriter Ben Folds stepped down from advisory positions with the center and its affiliated organizations. “Hamilton,” a biomusical about America’s first treasury secretary, was the biggest Broadway hit in years. It opened on Broadway in 2015 and won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best musical. On Broadway it has grossed more than $1 billion and has been seen by nearly five million people. There have been multiple other productions over the last decade; it is currently running in New York and London and is touring in North America and Britain. And a live-capture version of the show is available to stream on Disney+. Mr. Miranda is no stranger to the Kennedy Center. In 2018, during the first Trump Administration, he and other members of the “Hamilton” creative team were among the Kennedy Center honorees. “Hamilton” has been staged twice previously at the Kennedy Center, playing there for 14 weeks in 2018, when Mr. Trump was president, and for 10 weeks in 2022, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president. Mr. Miranda is also no stranger to dust-ups with the Trump Administration. In 2016, shortly after Mr. Trump was elected to the presidency for the first time, the “Hamilton” cast delivered a curtain call appeal to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was in the Broadway audience, asking that the Trump administration “uphold our American values” and “work on behalf of all of us.” Mr. Trump lashed out, demanding an apology, and saying he had heard that “Hamilton” was “highly overrated.” The show had a better relationship with the Obama administration — Mr. Miranda performed a song from what would become “Hamilton” at the White House in 2009, and in 2016 members of the cast performed at the White House. On that occasion, the first lady Michelle Obama called the musical “the best piece of art in any form that I have ever seen in my life.” Also on Wednesday, Melissa Errico, a well-regarded musical theater performer, said that her World War I-themed concert, “The Story of a Rose,” which had been scheduled to run at the Kennedy Center in May, would relocate to a venue in Northern Virginia. Errico and the show’s producer, Daniel Dayton, said the decision had been made because of concerns over seating capacity. But Ms. Errico also said: “I’m glad at how it turned out. I wanted to do a show that everyone could attend — left, right and center.” Most of this season’s theater programming appears to be intact. Greg Nobile, a lead producer of a Tony-winning revival of “Parade,” a musical about an antisemitic lynching in the early-20th-century American South, said in an interview before the “Hamilton” cancellation that he continued to expect the “Parade” tour to perform at the Kennedy Center this summer. But next season’s programming could be at risk. Meredith Blair, the president and chief executive of the Booking Group, which arranges tours for Broadway shows, said several shows that had planned to perform at the Kennedy Center next season but had not yet publicly announced those plans are now quietly canceling.