Henry Lee Higginson would be aghast at an opera company leaving its opera house. But it’s true. For murky reasons the reporting has not clarified, the Washington National Opera said it would leave the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after operating there since 1971.

Higginson was a Civil War brevet colonel who, after investment success, founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881. You could get into a performance for 25¢. By 1900 the orchestra had its own home, the Boston Symphony Hall. Higginson died in 1919, but the orchestra occupies that historic building to this day. When in the late ’60s and early ’70s, my friends bought Doors albums and experimented with marijuana, I attended the Wednesday night BSO open rehearsals to hear (and watch) Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa ply their arts. I was thrilled when the conductor would stop and order a passage replayed, maybe with a little exasperated scold.

In latter years, my wife and I have had season tickets to the Washington opera. Few locals thought the Trump administration’s appetite for change would affect, of all things, the opera. But it has, like lightning zigzagging through a thicket of branches to nail a squirrel.

Unlike the BSO, most opera and orchestral organizations don’t own their facilities, but instead have long-term, sometimes complex, arrangements with the governing bodies of places like Lincoln Center or Dallas’s Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Mostly, they’re public-private partnerships in one form or another.

For artistic organizations operating out of the Kennedy Center, there’s the added twist — not of municipal government, but of federal.

And Washington, D.C.’s federal landscape has been changing fast lately, mainly psychically but also physically. The most visible manifestation of the latter: The White House getting a convention-sized ballroom, and maybe a story added atop the West Wing.

Psychic changes we’re more accustomed to. The metronome of policy swings back and forth on everything from car mileage to vaccinations.

The roiling of the Kennedy Center embodies both. Physically, the building now has the name “Donald J. Trump” added to its external signage. The letters are big; you can see them driving west on Route 66 en route to Virginia. I keep expecting a bust of Trump to pop up next to that busy selfie spot, the “Kennedy head” — a sculpture so big and ugly it’s become sort of lovable over the decades. Psychically, the center has undergone a wrenching change in its governing board members and its apparent approach to programming.

The announced departure of the Washington National Opera has drawn enormous press coverage. The departure is all wrapped up in the ongoing turmoil of Kennedy Center leadership, programming-slash-culture wars, and — frankly — artists and ticket-buyers perhaps cutting their own noses to spite their faces in reaction to what they see as Trump depredations. If you cancel a performance or stop buying tickets, who are you really hurting?

You can’t put on top-tier opera just anywhere. It requires a pit for the orchestra, a large stage with roomy rear and side areas for props and scenery. I’ve seen the behind-the-stage rooms at the Kennedy Center. They’re like caverns.

More than that, opera needs a dignified, uplifting place. The Kennedy Center fits the bill, or it did. Its concert hall interiors and gigantic hallways elevate the experience, just like the ornate Boston Symphony Hall with its statues along the sides and “Beethoven” inscribed over the stage add to the orchestral presentations. Despite its lackluster cafeteria and fluctuating water pressure, the Kennedy Center adds a certain distinction and elegance to a city that, 50 years ago, felt slightly backwater.

Big corporate benefactors have kept the Washington National Opera afloat. I often muse that gifts from Northrop Grumman and American Airlines plus individuals like investor David Rubenstein and candy heiress Jacqueline Mars mean I can buy a seat at the opera for $50 or $75. I often buy a Snickers at intermission.

I plan to keep supporting the opera regardless of where it ends up, and I’ll buy a Snickers bar at intermission. The departure from the marble temple on the Potomac is a loss for the city and an unfortunate reflection on the Kennedy Center’s leadership.

The post The Kennedy Center ‘Kennedy head:’ What it must be thinking! first appeared on Federal News Network.

A few thoughts on the year about to close.

Driving on the Donald J. Trump George Washington Memorial Parkway the other day, I was impressed by the progress in the reconstruction of this vital artery. The contractors and the Trump National Park Service planned well, and the road has remained reasonably passable over the past couple of years. Now the trip to the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has gotten easier. Ditto for trips to the Donald J. Trump Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

I’ve always liked where the Parkway runs close to the Trump Potomac River. You can see across to Trump Washington Monument and the Trump Tidal Basin. But, stately as the nation’s capital appears, change and lots of chaos have marked the calendar year about to end.

But seriously, looking at the D.C. skyline, one wonders about the real state of the republic.

If you search “trump timeline,” you’ll find timelines from many interest groups, most of whom feel aggrieved by the second Trump administration. The release of the Epstein files, “undermining elections,” deportation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, reversing energy policies, legal tangling with Harvard University, military activity against Venezuela — Trump activities make for compelling observation. A lot of this is press-induced, and the Trump style eggs it on. Yet norms have stretched.

I would add that only some of what Trump has done is completely original. But he does things, let’s say, in highly original ways. The result is we have two branches of government in contention with one another. The third branch, and the one detailed first in the Constitution, has rendered itself into an observant chorus with no say over the score.

For federal employees, 2025 will rank as the oddest year many have ever endured. It started with the DOGE swarms, slashing their way to and fro. Then came the deferred resignation program and layoffs. Mass return to the office. Cancellation of collective bargaining agreements at several agencies. Difficulties in settling retirement benefits.

So much news, it almost made me regret retiring. The workforce reductions and changes of conditions may all fall within an administration’s discretionary powers. But rough treatment of persons falls outside of decency. Let’s hope it stops in 2026. I remember a time when a new president of a company I worked for brought in a gaggle of MBAs to do cost cutting. The attitudes felt worse than the cuts, and the company eventually disappeared anyhow.

One thing 2025 has taught me: Keep things in perspective. The worst job situations I remember? I can chuckle about them now. That’s what time does. I once secretly flew to New Jersey and back for a job interview — all in a really extended lunch hour. To be honest, the new job seemed dull, and I never got the offer. Luckily, the situation I was seeking to leave changed overnight for the better, the way better. While you are going through cavalier and high-handed treatment, it’s no fun.

And what about the nation you serve? The absence of any serious debate about what the Government Accountability Office politely calls fiscal unsustainability strikes me as the worst quality in Congress and executive branch policy makers.

It’s not as if no one knows that next year alone the federal deficit will add $2 trillion to the $30 trillion national debt. That Social Security outlays increasingly surpass revenues for as far as the eye can see. That healthcare programs exceed the $3 trillion mark. That interest payments on public debt have passed the $1 trillion mark. The absolute numbers are big, and they are worsening when expressed as a percentage of the nation’s economic output.

So my wish for the nation in the year ahead is fact-facing and rationality, especially on the part of so-called lawmakers.

Beyond thinking of any possible policy and programmatic fixes, the government must resolve to become a better steward of the money it does print and spend.

I’m thinking of Minnesota. The federal prosecutor on the Minnesota Medicare fraud scheme described it as “staggering industrial-scale fraud.” As Trump would say, and McDonald’s used to say, billions and billions. The theft — and it is simple, naked theft — is both heartbreaking and maddening. At an estimated $9 billion, it makes the worst armed robbery seem like child’s play. One almost thinks the perpetrators deserve hanging, such is the extent and callous shrewdness of the crimes. But it also evidences a near total breakdown in program planning, execution and oversight — mainly at the state level, but there’s federal responsibility too. Did anyone notice or care that this was going on?

The staff cuts and turmoil have affected constituent service. People I speak to seem amusedly resigned to how places like the IRS, Social Security and the Postal Service operate. Line employees mostly want to serve effectively, but what kind of backing do they get?

The week before Christmas, I stopped in at my local Postal Service office. It’s busy, a beehive of a facility. I recently became president of a very small non-profit foundation, and we needed to move the P.O. box from Virginia to Maryland so I could easily get the incoming donation checks.

On a Thursday morning, only one employee manned the four-bay counter. Efficiently as she worked, still the line kept stretching to nine, then a dozen, people deep. For a reason I only dimly comprehended, I couldn’t complete the transfer because of a mismatch in phone numbers. I straightened it out a couple of days later, when I had the right information. Two clerks were then on duty, and they kept the lines short.

The post My wish for 2026: Rationality in the Trump era first appeared on Federal News Network.