A musician who backed out of a traditional holiday concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in an anti-Trump snit was rewarded more than $250,000 by a Biden-appointed judge.
Jazz drummer Chuck Redd, who had hosted the Christmas Eve “Jazz Jams” since 2006, abruptly refused to participate in last year’s event, sticking it to fans who got a lump of coal dropped in their stocking by the TDS-afflicted musician who was protesting the Trump-appointed board’s changing of the name of the beloved Washington, D.C. venue to the Trump-Kennedy Center days before the scheduled show.
This is musician Chuck Redd, the host of the annual Kennedy Center Christmas Eve jazz concert. He cancelled the event after Trump’s insulting move to change the name of the historic venue.
RETWEET to thank Redd for standing up to Trump! pic.twitter.com/4QB57rVcLv
— Protect Kamala Harris ✊ (@DisavowTrump20) December 25, 2025
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told the Associated Press at the time. “One of the many reasons that it was very sad to have had to cancel.”
In May, an Obama-appointed federal judge ordered the reversal of the name change.
The cancellation was cheered by leftists and denounced as a “political stunt” by then-Trump-Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, who sued the 67-year-old jazzman for $1 million for breach of contract.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” Grenell wrote in a letter to Redd, adding “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”
But Redd prevailed in court when Judge Tanya M. Jones Bosier tossed the lawsuit in June because the plaintiff couldn’t prove that he had a contract in the first place. “It is undisputed that Redd did not sign the 2025 Agreement that the Center provided,” she wrote.
Now the Biden appointee has ordered the Kennedy Center to cough up over $250,000 to cover his attorney’s fees and legal costs incurred in defending himself against the failed lawsuit.
NEW: The Kennedy Center was ordered to pay more than $250,000 in legal fees to a jazz musician who canceled a Christmas Eve concert over the venue’s move to add President Donald Trump’s name, after a judge dismissed the center’s lawsuithttps://t.co/yinv3csBsA
Order:… pic.twitter.com/42s3rlRzj2
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) August 11, 2026
In her Monday order, Judge Bosier ordered the center to remit $252,479.70 to Redd within 45 days.
The “Trump-controlled Kennedy Center tried to silence opposition to its illegal name change by filing a meritless lawsuit,” Redd’s attorney, Lisa J. Banks, said in a statement, according to NBC News.
Banks added that the award was “appropriate as no citizen should have to spend time and money fending off baseless and politically motivated lawsuits filed by the Trump Administration.”
The Kennedy Center said that it intends to appeal the “astonishing” and excessive penalty.
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