Story of the Week: Trump Appointed 14 New Kennedy Center Trustees. Then They Elected Him Chair

Last week, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC announced a new chairman of the board: President Donald J. Trump. Trump’s elevation to the job occurred after he purged 18 Biden nominees from the board of trustees and installed a fresh crop of his own, including himself. Shortly after, they elected him chair, replacing Bush appointee David M. Rubenstein. The board also voted to dismiss Deborah Rutter, who had served as president of the Kennedy Center since 2014.

Story of the Week will take a look at the 14 new Kennedy Center trustees who are now charged with overseeing the acropolis of the arts in our nation’s capital.

Susie Wiles
Wiles is the current White House chief of staff, charged with bringing order and discipline to the Trump White House. She began her association with Trump when she co-chaired his 2016 Florida campaign. She later served as CEO of Trump’s Save America PAC, which spent over $60 million covering legal expenses for Trump and his allies during the last several years. She went on to run Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. The president has dubbed Wiles the “ice maiden” for her unflappable cool under pressure. She is essentially his chief enforcer, which will make her a key figure when the big man is unable to attend board meetings.

Allison Lutnick
Allison Lutnick is the wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, former CEO of the Wall Street investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald. An experienced attorney, she serves as director of disaster relief for the family’s Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, which was founded in the wake of the September 11th attacks, when the firm lost hundreds of employees in the North Tower. While we hope the Kennedy Center won’t need any disaster relief, Lutnick will be able to bring her experience as an event planner to the table. According to Page Six, the Lutnicks organized a lavish bar mitzvah for their son at the Temple of the Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the same location as the annual Met gala). A source estimated the price tag of a single appearance by the rapper Rich the Kid as “between $200,000 and $300,000.” They have his number in case they want him for a concert at the Kennedy Center!

Lynda Lomangino
Lynda Lomangino is the wife of Anthony Lomangino, who has been described as the “trash kingpin” of Palm Beach and is a member of the president’s Mar-a-Lago club. Multiple generations of the Lomangino family have made their fortune in waste management (according to Crain’s, Anthony started working for the family firm in Queens at the age of 10). But Lomangino’s Queens-to-Florida trajectory isn’t the only point of affinity with the president. Lomangino has also donated to the legal defense of Trump insiders caught up in the Russiagate investigation, and he co-founded the super PAC Right for America in 2024 with the goal of bringing Trump back to the White House. Mission accomplished, and for his loyalty, Lomangino’s wife will now sit on the board of the Kennedy Center.

Dan Scavino
The deputy chief of staff under Wiles, Scavino previously served as general manager of Trump National Golf Club Westchester. He began his work on the Trump presidential campaign back in June 2015, making him one of the rare long-haul survivors in an administration marked by turnover. But perhaps that has to do with Scavino’s area of expertise: Starting in February 2016, he became Trump’s director of social media, with USA Today reporting that Scavino writes many of the tweets at @realDonaldTrump (although not those issued during prime time cable news hours, which are personally written by the president). Social media has been Trump’s primary means of communication, allowing him to circumvent legacy newspapers and television channels to speak directly to his base. Will Scavino bring a similar revolution to the Kennedy Center’s press strategy?

Mindy Levine
Another wife! Mindy Levine is married to New York Yankees president Randy Levine, who previously served as chief labor negotiator for Major League Baseball. Mindy has a long record as a philanthropist, with a special interest in animal rescue and charities benefiting Israel. She is also close with New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who celebrated her birthday with the Levines over dinner at the observatory of the Freedom Tower. Randy Levine was briefly floated as a potential replacement of Chief of Staff John Kelly during the tumultuous first Trump administration, but he quickly quashed the rumors. But this new appointment of his wife to the Kennedy Center suggests that the Levines are moving closer to the MAGA center of gravity.

Pamela Gross
A former producer for CNN Tonight With Don Lemon and old friend to Melania Trump, Pamela Gross briefly served as an unpaid adviser to the first lady during the first Trump term. Their work together spawned the “Be Best” initiative to combat cyberbullying. She was also part of the publicity campaign for the first lady’s memoir, which came out last year. Gross is married to media mogul Jimmy Finkelstein, former publisher of The Hill and the online news site The Messenger, which launched in 2023 and abruptly shuttered in 2024. The couple have a home in West Palm Beach, not far from Mar-a-Lago.

Usha Vance
The second lady of the United States lives with her husband, Vice President JD Vance, at the Naval Observatory, a short drive from the Kennedy Center; so one can expect the second couple to regularly avail themselves of its cultural offerings. Like her husband, Usha is a graduate of Yale Law School. She has clerked for Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appellate judge, and for Chief Justice John Roberts on the Supreme Court. As a philanthropist, she has served as secretary of the board for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and a trustee for the Washington National Opera. All US first ladies are automatically made honorary chairs of the Kennedy Center, and you can be certain Vance has an eye on that rarified club, so best to get acquainted now.

John Falconetti
John Falconetti is chairman and CEO of Drummond Press, a commercial printing company based in Jacksonville, Florida, that his family founded in 1939. He has served on several local boards, including the Jacksonville Library and Jacksonville Symphony. He was also chairman of the Republican executive committee of Duval County. Falconetti is married to the highly decorated Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller.

Cheri Summerall
Remember Susie Wiles? This is her stepmother. Cheri Summerall was married to New York Giants placekicker and longtime sportscaster Pat Summerall (Wiles’s father), who died in 2013. She has been a philanthropist for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, helping to organize the annual “Legends for Charity” dinner at which the Pat Summerall Award is given.

Sergio Gor
Maltese-American immigrant Sergio Gor wears many hats: He ran Right for America (the super PAC mentioned above). He is the president and founder of Winning Team Publishing, the company that publishes Donald Trump’s books. And before he was named to the Kennedy Center board, he was appointed director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, charged with ensuring that over 4,000 positions are filled by Trump loyalists (you can be certain he was consulted about every name on this list). He also officiated the 2021 wedding of former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s abortive pick for Attorney General.

Emilia May Fanjul
In 1967, Emilia May married José Fanjul, the scion of a family of Cuban sugar barons who lost it all when Castro came to power. Undaunted, the Fanjuls relocated to Palm Beach, where they built an empire of sugar and real estate now valued at over $8 billion (subsidiaries include Florida Crystals and Domino Sugar). The Fanjuls are frequently criticized for their firms’ reliance on government subsidies to prop up their sugar businesses, with classical liberal critic Johan Norberg calling them “among the most successful American welfare queens.” That largesse is returned in the form of large political donations: José gave over $800,000 to the Trump 47 Committee. But the family smartly hedges its bets. José’s older brother and business partner, Alfonso, prefers to give to Democrats.

Dana Blumberg
An ophthalmologist by trade, Dr. Dana Blumberg married the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, in 2022 in a surprise ceremony that featured performances by Elton John and Ed Sheeran. Last year, she celebrated her 50^th birthday at Harlem’s Apollo Theater with a special performance by Dave Matthews (Kraft is on the board of the theater). Could Blumberg’s relationship with these big-name musicians portend big things for the Kennedy Center?

Patricia Duggan
Patricia Duggan donated over $5 million to help elect Trump in 2024, and she gave $1 million to Robert F. Kennedy’s MAHA Alliance super PAC (she is also a major donor to the Church of Scientology). Her ex-husband, Robert Duggan, is a biotech billionaire who has also given generously to Trump (the Duggans divorced in 2017). An avid art collector, “Trish” (as she is known on her website) also creates her own works in glass, which you can view here.

BONUS: Lee Greenwood
Greenwood was appointed to the board after it elected Trump chair, so he didn’t take part in that vote, although one doubts the vocal Republican would have voted against him. Unlike every other new trustee (except the president himself), Greenwood is a professional entertainer whom most Americans will know as the singer-songwriter behind the patriotic anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.” This isn’t Greenwood’s first federal appointment: In 2008, George W. Bush appointed Greenwood to the National Council on the Arts, a role he held through 2021. Greenwood also has experience running a theater, having built the Lee Greenwood Theater in Sevierville, Tennessee, in 1996. Despite his qualifications, Greenwood’s appointment to the Kennedy Center board seems meant to send the message that this citadel of the arts will now be open to more country music performers and other forms of popular entertainment. That could be a happy development provided that the Kennedy Center truly makes an effort to highlight a diversity of American artists. But considering recent changes in its programming, I am doubtful this is really the objective.