NAMING RIGHTS: The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington closed its doors in defiance of a court order that it must remain open and the ruling by the same federal judge that Donald Trump’s name cannot be put on the building without a vote by Congress.

  Trump and his hand-appointed board closed the center after Judge Christopher Cooper re-iterated his original ruling that Trump’s name could not be put on the building. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper said in his ruling. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

  In the hours afterward Trump posted a threat that he would cancel a $257 million renovation of the Kennedy Center. Trump is reported to have phoned into the board meeting and screamed obscenities at Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, whose lawsuit has prevented Trump’s name from being added to the building.

  He wrote on social media, “The Board of The Kennedy Center has strongly voted to save it, and they know I’m the only one who can do so, because I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct — that few others have.” But like anything else he touches, he won’t do it unless his name goes on it.

  The Kennedy Center was established in memory of the assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Trump blames prior management for running the Kennedy Center into the ground, but it really took a slide after he stacked the board with cronies and named himself chairman. Performers cancelled appearances and ticket sales disappeared.

CHARACTER JUDGE: President Trump attacked the three Supreme Court Justices he appointed for voting to block his executive order to limit and control voting by mail. 

  Trump wrote on his social media in an obvious reference to justices, Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Coney Barrett that, “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”

  He wrote about “our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting ‘disaster,’ which is a laughing stock all over the World, and where we are the only country that has to endure such a Nation Destroying SCAM.”

  No investigation has discovered enough voter fraud to make a difference in any election.

  Complaining about decisions that went against him on mail ballots, tariffs, and birthright citizenship, Trump said, “The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History.”

BY THE NUMBERS: The majority of voters trust the Democratic Party more than Republicans on six out of eight major issues ranging from the economy and affordability to healthcare and artificial intelligence, according to a new NY Times poll.

  Sixty percent of voters trust the Democrats on healthcare. Immigration, the deficit, economy, and cost of living were all 51 percent trust for the Democrats.

  On artificial intelligence, trust was 42 percent Republican and 40 percent Democrats, with 18 percent undecided.

THE WAR ROOM: The US war on Iran has cost $38 billion through August 1^st and is on track to continue costing $3 billion a month, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

  The estimate comes largely from replacing munitions and equipment lost in battle, the CBO said. The report did not take into account the damage to US military bases in the Gulf region, which has been considerable. 

  At the same time, the Pentagon inspector general reported that the war “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply.”

INFINITE SCROLL:

— FBI Director Kash Patel said yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he is open to sending agents to polling places this fall. ““Election integrity is of paramount importance,” he said. “This FBI will not shy away from that effort.”

— President Trump claimed on his Truth Social that there’s a coverup involving the potential assassin killed by a sniper at a 2024 campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania after attempting to kill the President. Trump wrote, “By the time I got into Office, on January 20th, most of the information was missing, altered, corrupted, or gone. New info was just found! Why wasn’t it seen long ago? This was all a Democrat Plot, to get me out of the Election, that failed.”

— The Trump administration has approved a $2.8 billion sale of bombs to Israel, including 40,000 one-ton “dumb” bombs that have an enormous blast radius and have been blamed for thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza.

— The National Weather Service following President Trump’s executive order has begun changing  the name Lake Ontario to “Lake America” on maps and in weather forecasts.

THE SPIN RACK: Local NBC reporter Eliana Moreno and her pilot were killed yesterday in the crash of their news helicopter in Los Angeles. The chopper went down while the pair was covering a bus accident and one person was also killed on the ground. — Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. — Prosecutors say they will not seek the death penalty in the trial of Nick Reiner, accused of murdering his parents, actor/director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. The younger Reiner has a history of mental illness. 

BELOW THE FOLD:  Kentucky’s 84-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate yesterday after a three-month absence, frail, skinny, and in a wheelchair vowing to finish his term. McConnell spoke haltingly to reporters in the hallway who were ordered not to take video.