In a year marked by political turbulence and cultural flashpoints, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. finds itself at the crossroads of art, history, and controversy. This August, the storied institution is simultaneously celebrating the announcement of its 2025 Kennedy Center Honors—featuring a star-studded lineup including Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor, KISS, Sylvester Stallone, and George Strait—and hosting the emotionally charged final performances of the Tony award-winning musical Parade. Both events have become emblematic of the Center’s transformation under President Trump, who has taken an unusually hands-on role in shaping its direction and public image.
On August 18, 2025, the Kennedy Center revealed its five new honorees, a tradition that annually spotlights artists whose influence on American culture is considered profound and lasting. This year’s class is as diverse as it is accomplished. Michael Crawford, the Tony-winning star of The Phantom of the Opera, is joined by disco icon Gloria Gaynor, legendary rockers KISS, actor and director Sylvester Stallone, and country music titan George Strait. At a press conference, President Trump declared he was “98% involved” in the selection process and announced he would personally host the televised ceremony honoring these artists in December. According to Billboard, Trump’s statement has inevitably cast the selections in a partisan light, but the Center’s leadership urged the public to focus on the honorees’ artistic legacies rather than the politics swirling around them.
As part of the celebration, Billboard ran a reader poll inviting fans to select their favorite songs associated with each honoree. For Michael Crawford, the choices were his iconic solos “The Music of the Night” and “The Phantom of the Opera.” Gloria Gaynor’s hits “Never Can Say Goodbye” and the enduring anthem “I Will Survive” were featured. KISS’s options included their raucous “Rock and Roll All Nite” and the tender ballad “Beth,” the band’s first top 10 hit on the Hot 100. Sylvester Stallone, the only honoree linked to two No. 1 Hot 100 hits, was represented by “Gonna Fly Now” and “Eye of the Tiger”—both Oscar-nominated songs from the Rocky film series. Rounding out the list, George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” and “Check Yes or No”—one of his record 44 No. 1 country hits—were up for a vote.
Yet, the celebration is unfolding against a backdrop of institutional upheaval. President Trump’s self-appointment as chairman of the Kennedy Center and his campaign to remove what he terms “woke political programming” have triggered a wave of reactions from the arts community. Some artists have canceled their performances in protest, while others, like Jason Robert Brown—the composer and lyricist of Parade—have chosen to confront the moment head-on.
Parade, which concludes its national tour at the Kennedy Center this week, is a musical that refuses to shy away from America’s darkest chapters. The show dramatizes the 1913 murder of Mary Phagan and the subsequent trial and lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent in Atlanta who was widely believed to have been falsely accused. The case, steeped in antisemitism and mob violence, became one of the most notorious true-crime spectacles of the early twentieth century. Frank’s conviction was eventually commuted to life in prison by Georgia’s governor amid doubts about the evidence, but a mob—including prominent local citizens—broke into the prison and lynched Frank on August 16, 1915. The incident, as reported by NPR, fueled both the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the founding of the Anti-Defamation League, forever altering the landscape of American civil rights.
Jason Robert Brown, reflecting on the decision to perform Parade at the Kennedy Center despite the new political climate, told NPR in an email, “PARADE is the story of Mary Phagan and Leo Frank, yes, but more than that, it has always been the story of the currents of hatred running underneath America. As those currents seem at the moment to be overflowing their banks, I am grateful for the opportunity to share our counternarrative.” Brown’s commitment to presenting the show unchanged—“we’re not changing One Word,” he wrote on social media—stands as a quiet rebuke to calls for self-censorship and a testament to the enduring power of art to challenge and provoke.
Playwright Alfred Uhry, who wrote the book for Parade, grew up in Atlanta in the shadow of the Frank case. “The German Jewish community was very small,” Uhry told NPR. “But when I was born, nobody talked about it at all. I had to go to the library to look it up when I was a kid. It was very important to me to be able to tell the story.” Uhry, who also won a Pulitzer and an Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy, saw the 2023 Broadway revival of Parade gain new urgency amid a resurgence of antisemitic hate. White supremacist protests, conspiracy theories, and social media attacks followed the show, echoing the century-old bigotry it depicts.
This modern wave of antisemitism has not remained on the fringes. Far-right influencers have revived and amplified lies about Leo Frank, with some now holding positions of influence in the Trump administration. Kingsley Wilson, a right-wing commentator who repeatedly accused Frank of heinous crimes on social media, was appointed press secretary for the Department of Defense in 2025. The American Jewish Committee called Wilson “unfit” for office, citing her promotion of “antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook.” Pentagon officials and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have staunchly defended Wilson, with Hegseth telling NPR, “She does a fantastic job. And any suggestion that I or her or others are party to antisemitism is a mischaracterization attempting to win political points.” The Pentagon further stated, “Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson has never promoted antisemitism.”
Meanwhile, the reach of such narratives has only grown, with figures like Candace Owens weaving the Frank case into broader conspiracies about Judaism and Israel. Oren Segal, senior vice president at the Anti-Defamation League, told NPR, “More than 100 years later, the antisemitic mob still exists. They just may not be on the streets of Georgia, but they may be on every social media channel that we all exist on. And so in some ways, it’s the same hatred, but the reach is much, much farther.”
Amid these tensions, Parade’s creators remain focused on their mission. Brown drew a parallel between the past and present, noting, “112 years after the murder of Mary Phagan, the vile racist incitements spewed by Tom Watson continue to be repeated by people at the highest levels of our government, and the bravery of Governor Slaton remains a powerful example of the risks we must be prepared to take to fight against injustice in this country. You cannot tell the story of America without telling the story of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan.”
As the Kennedy Center prepares to honor legends of music and film while simultaneously staging a searing exploration of injustice, it stands as a microcosm of the nation’s own struggles—between remembrance and forgetting, between celebration and reckoning. The arts, as ever, remain a battleground for the soul of America.
