It sounds like a plot twist from HBO’s “Veep”: the invitation to a high-stakes board meeting that would decide the fate of one of America’s most storied cultural institutions landed in a congresswoman’s spam folder.
For Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), the 76-year-old lawmaker who has waged a monthslong legal war over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, it was no joke. As Atlantic staff writer Janay Kingsberry reported, the misfired notice — which Kingsberry described as “a real-life Veep episode in Washington politics” — became part of Beatty’s amended federal complaint, in which she argued she’d been improperly shut out of a White House board meeting where trustees were expected to rubber-stamp President Donald Trump’s plan to close the center for two years.
Beatty has claimed she was forcefully muted when she tried to object during the December vote to rename the venue the “Trump Kennedy Center,” before a message flashed on her screen: “You will not be unmuted.”
The clash traces back to Trump’s takeover of the institution after returning to office. He ousted longtime chairman David Rubenstein and President Deborah Rutter, installed himself as board chair, and packed the board with loyalists — among them White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, aide Dan Scavino, and Fox News personalities Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham.
In May 2025, the board revised its bylaws to limit voting to presidentially appointed trustees, stripping ex officio members like Beatty. Artists later canceled performances, ticket sales slid, and the Washington National Opera severed its decades-long affiliation.
Even after finding the invite, Beatty insists the process broke protocol. “To me, it was immaterial that I found it,” she told Kingsberry. “It was not sent to my chief; it was not sent to my scheduler.”
A federal judge ordered Trump’s name stripped from the facade and temporarily blocked the shutdown — though Beatty calls it only the “first step.”
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