Gay Trump administration official Richard Grenell, who stepped down last March as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., had his $1 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against jazz artist Chuck Redd thrown out by a judge last Friday because, it turns out, Redd never actually signed any contract with Grenell or the Center.
In December, Grenell announced that the Center was suing jazz artist Chuck Redd for breach of contract after Redd withdrew from a New Year’s Eve show, saying he was doing so over Trump’s “defiant and illegal name change happening to the Kennedy Center.” Grenell called Redd a nobody, called his dropping out a “political stunt,” and sued him for $1 million in damages.
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Lawyers representing the Kennedy Center alleged that, in November 2025, Redd had “agreed to a written contract” to perform a one-hour concert on Christmas Eve for $6,500. But last Friday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier said, “I could not find a valid breach-of-contract claim here. There’s no dispute that he did not sign the 2025 agreement,” The Washington Post reported.
Trump added his own name to the Kennedy Center in December 2025, even though such a renaming requires an act of Congress. Last month, a U.S. district judge ordered the Center to remove Trump’s name from the venue. While his name still appears on the front of the building, the Center has removed Trump’s name from its website and from invitations sent out Monday for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor.
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“The Center sued Mr. Redd because he publicly and rightly objected to adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy,” Redd’s attorney Lisa Banks said in a statement. “The lawsuit against Mr. Redd was political retribution, pure and simple, by the Trump Kennedy Center, and the Court correctly saw it as such in dismissing the case.”
In March, the Center offered to settle with Redd and drop its lawsuit if he paid the Center $7,500, played at this year’s Christmas Eve concert, and made no “political commentary” about his reason for withdrawing last year, The Washington Post added. Redd refused. He was just one of numerous performers who refused to appear at the Center after its renaming.
Last February, Trump pledged to shut down the center for two years for “construction, revitalization, and complete rebuilding” into a “new and spectacular entertainment complex.” Congress approved $257 million for the reconstruction in 2025.
In April, a whistleblower in the center criticized Grenell for overseeing an era of “cronyism, incompetence, and a series of bizarre moves that would lead to the Kennedy Center going dark.” The whistleblower alleged that Grenell regularly sold naming and access rights to people and groups willing to pay.
While Grenell claimed that corporations abandoned the center due to its past “hard left woke programming,” referring to the Trump administration’s claim that the center’s past programming showcased “drag shows specifically targeting our youth” and “anti-American propaganda.” But the following year, under Grenell, the center’s show lineup included numerous drag performances in such shows as Chicago, Mrs. Doubtfire, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and Spamalot.
Under his leadership, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues were the worst they’d been in years, with tens of thousands of seats left empty since Trump’s takeover.
Grenell has also presided over multiple cancellations by high-profile artists who had been scheduled to perform at the center, including singer Issa Rae, Pulitzer Prize winner Rhiannon Giddens, Peter Wolf, Low Cut Connie, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington D.C., and Grammy-winning folk artist Béla Fleck. Last June, Lin-Manuel Miranda pulled the entire Kennedy Center run of the historical musical Hamilton from the venue’s lineup.
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