Trump’s Attack on Drag: Kennedy Center, Pentagon, and NEA Rules

President Trump’s attack on drag has run on four tracks: a takeover of the Kennedy Center aimed explicitly at ending drag programming, a Pentagon ban on drag events at military installations, a National Endowment for the Arts rule cutting off grants tied to “gender ideology,” and political alignment with state laws restricting drag performances. Federal courts have blocked nearly every anti-drag law challenged so far, and a judge struck down the NEA restriction in 2025. The administration’s appeals and a Fifth Circuit remand in the Texas case are still working through the courts.

The Kennedy Center Takeover

On February 12, 2025, Trump dismissed half the appointed trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and announced on Truth Social that he would install himself as chairman.¹ The remaining board, most of them his new appointees, elected him chair and fired longtime president Deborah Rutter.² Trump ally Richard Grenell was named interim executive director and later became president.³

Trump said the overhaul was necessary to “remove wokeness” and declared: “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST.”³ He specifically cited drag shows “targeting our youth” as a motivation.

Programming shifted quickly. The Kennedy Center withdrew from plans to host the International Pride Orchestra as part of WorldPride DC’s “Tapestry of Pride” series, originally scheduled for June 5–8, 2025.⁴ The Capital Pride Alliance moved the entire program elsewhere, saying it wanted to “ensure our entire LGBTQ+ community will be welcome.”⁵ A Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC performance called “A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride” was removed from the center’s website the week of February 19, 2025. National Symphony Orchestra Executive Director Jean Davidson said the decision predated the leadership change and was driven by “financial and scheduling factors,” with The Wizard of Oz taking the slot.⁶ The chorus said it would perform the piece at an alternative venue during WorldPride.⁸ The Washington National Opera severed its relationship with the center in February 2026, and ticket sales fell sharply during Grenell’s tenure. Grenell left in March 2026.⁹

The pledge to eliminate drag has not matched the actual lineup. The 2026 season includes multiple productions with drag elements, including Chicago, Mrs. Doubtfire, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and Spamalot.¹⁰ When playwright Harvey Fierstein said he had been “banned,” Grenell called the claim “a total lie” and publicly invited him to stage Hairspray or La Cage aux Folles at the venue, both musicals that feature drag.¹¹

The Pentagon Ban on Drag at Military Bases

In June 2023, the Department of Defense began enforcing a military-wide ban on hosting drag events at U.S. installations. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said “hosting these types of events in federally funded facilities is not a suitable use of DOD resources,” citing the Joint Ethics Regulation.¹² Officials described this as a longstanding rule that had not been consistently enforced. Its first high-profile use was the cancellation of a Pride Month drag show at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, scheduled for June 1, 2023.¹³ Before enforcement tightened, drag events had taken place at various installations, including a 2021 show at Nellis and performances aboard the USS Ronald Reagan between 2016 and 2018.

House Republicans twice tried to write the ban into statute through the National Defense Authorization Act. A July 2023 amendment barring DOD funding for drag shows passed the House but was dropped from the final compromise bill in December 2023.¹⁴ A second attempt by Rep. Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma passed the House by voice vote on June 13, 2024, but again did not survive into enacted law.¹⁵ The administrative ban remains the operative rule.

The NEA “Gender Ideology” Funding Rule

Following Executive Order 14168, the National Endowment for the Arts required grant applicants to certify that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology” and refused to consider applications it judged to promote the concept.¹⁶ Artists and organizations said they were forced to alter projects involving transgender or nonbinary characters and themes to stay eligible.¹⁷

In Rhode Island Latino Arts v. National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Senior District Judge William Smith ruled on September 19, 2025, that the policy was unconstitutional. He called it “a viewpoint-based restriction on private speech” that violated the First Amendment and “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act because the NEA gave “zero explanation of what it means for a project to ‘promote gender ideology.'”¹⁶ The government appealed, and the case is pending before the First Circuit as of June 2026.¹⁷

State Anti-Drag Laws and What Courts Have Done With Them

Since 2022, legislators in at least 14 states have introduced bills to restrict drag performances, usually by expanding “adult entertainment” to cover “male or female impersonators” and barring such performances from public property or spaces accessible to minors.¹⁸ These laws predate Trump’s second term but align with the administration’s framing of drag as part of a harmful “gender ideology.” As of May 2026, two states have laws explicitly restricting drag and four others have “adult performance” laws that could reach drag; 48 states have no such restrictions.¹⁹

Drag performers have prevailed in every federal court challenge so far:

Tennessee. In March 2023 Tennessee became the first state to reclassify “male or female impersonators” as “adult cabaret,” with violations punishable as misdemeanors or felonies for repeat offenses. U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker struck the law down in June 2023 as “unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad,” noting it was “geared towards placing prospective blocks on drag shows — regardless of their potential harm to minors.” The Sixth Circuit later dismissed the challenge on standing grounds and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, leaving the law on the books but not enforced against the original plaintiffs. A federal judge separately blocked a Murfreesboro ordinance banning drag on public property; the city settled with the ACLU in February 2024, paying $500,000 and repealing the ordinance.²⁰¹⁸
Florida. A federal court enjoined the state’s anti-drag regulation, and in October 2023 the Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to narrow it in November 2023, and the Eleventh Circuit reaffirmed the injunction in May 2025, citing the law’s likely unconstitutionality.¹⁸
Texas. A federal judge blocked Senate Bill 12 in August 2023, finding it violated the First Amendment on five independent grounds. In February 2026 the Fifth Circuit vacated the permanent injunction and sent the case back to the district court for reconsideration under the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Moody v. NetChoice. The appeals court found that only one of the five original plaintiffs had standing and narrowed the remaining challenge to the attorney general’s civil enforcement powers against sexually oriented performances at commercial venues in the presence of minors. The case remains active.²¹²²
Montana. HB 359, enacted in 2023, banned drag performers from reading to children, restricted minors from attending “sexually explicit” performances, and imposed fines of $1,000 to $10,000 plus potential loss of professional licenses for librarians and educators. In March 2026 a Ninth Circuit panel unanimously upheld the injunction blocking the law. Judge Jennifer Sung wrote that drag story hours are “purely expressive activity” protected by the First Amendment and that the state had shown “no evidence of a causal link between drag story hours and harm to the physical and psychological well-being of children.” The Montana Attorney General’s office said it was reviewing the opinion and “determining our options” on a Supreme Court appeal.²³²⁴²⁵

The pattern is consistent. In five of six federal cases litigated in 2023, courts concluded that drag shows carry communicative elements intended to convey a particular message and qualify for First Amendment protection. Courts have struck down anti-drag laws as vague, overbroad, not narrowly tailored, and as viewpoint discrimination against expression related to gender identity.²⁶

The Executive Order Framework Behind the Drag Actions

The drag-specific moves sit inside a larger set of orders on gender and sexuality. Executive Order 14168, signed on Inauguration Day in January 2025, mandates a federal definition of gender as an immutable male-female binary, requires replacing “gender” with “sex” in federal materials, and directs the Attorney General to re-evaluate the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which held that sex discrimination covers sexual orientation and gender identity.²⁷ Related orders have targeted diversity initiatives in the military, gender-affirming medical care, K-12 education, and sports policy.²⁸

The administration’s FY2027 budget request, submitted in April 2026, seeks a $166 million increase for FBI counterterrorism funding tied to a new “NSPM-7 Joint Mission Center.” The budget document describes its targets as including “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” The ACLU has called the underlying presidential memorandum an “intimidation tactic” that could be turned on LGBTQ+ advocates; the administration has framed it as a response to domestic terrorism threats.²⁹

1
The Conversation. Trump Has Purged the Kennedy Center’s Board, Which in Turn Made Him Its Chair
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NPR. Kennedy Center Trump Deborah Rutter
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The Guardian. Trump Kennedy Center Ric Grenell
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CNN. Kennedy Center LGBTQ Pride Events Canceled
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NBC Washington. World Pride Events Pulled From Kennedy Center for LGBTQ Safety
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The Hill. Kennedy Center Cancels Gay Chorus Performance
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Rolling Stone. Gay Men’s Chorus DC Appearance Kennedy Center Canceled

Artists departed en masse. Ben Folds, Shonda Rhimes, and Renée Fleming left their roles at the venue, and Issa Rae cancelled a sold-out show, citing “an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds.”7The Hill. Kennedy Center Cancels Gay Chorus Performance
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NPR. Grenell Kennedy Center President
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LGBTQ Nation. Promised No More Drag Shows at Kennedy Center Their New Season Is Full of Drag
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Washington Blade. Richard Grenell Harvey Fierstein Ban Claim
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Politico. Pentagon Cracks Down on Drag Shows at Military Bases
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The Hill. Pentagon Bans Drag Shows on Military Bases After GOP Pressure
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Equality Caucus. Amendments Blocking Funding Drag Shows Gender Affirming Care Dropped NDAA
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The Hill. Lawmaker Shows Photo of Trump Giuliani in Drag to Protest NDAA Amendment
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ACLU. Court Rules in Favor of Artists Free Speech in Case Against the NEA
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ACLU. Rhode Island Latino Arts v. National Endowment for the Arts
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First Amendment Encyclopedia. Drag Show Laws
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Movement Advancement Project. Equality Maps: Restrictions on Drag Performances
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NPR. Tennessee Drag Show Law Ruling
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ACLU of Texas. Fifth Circuit Denies Motion to Rehear Texas Drag Ban Argument
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U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Woodlands Pride v. Paxton, No. 23-20480
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Courthouse News Service. Ninth Circuit Upholds Block on Montana’s Drag Story Hour Ban
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Daily Montanan. Federal Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Against Montana’s Drag Ban
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MSU Exponent. Federal Appeals Court Blocks Montana Drag Performance Ban
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Harvard Law Review. Drag Queens, the First Amendment, and Expressive Harms
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Human Rights Campaign. Background on Trump Day One Executive Orders Impacting the LGBTQ Community
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National LGBTQ+ Bar Association. Trump Executive Order Tracker
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Washington Blade. Trump Budget Targets Gender Extremism