President Donald Trump on Saturday (May 30) branded the federal judge who blocked his renovation of the Kennedy Center as “an anti Trump Hater” and predicted that the nation’s premier performing arts center he wanted to shutter for a two-year overhaul will “soon be closed, probably never to open again.”

In a lengthy post on his Truth Social platform, Trump fumed about the Friday decision from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who also ordered Trump’s name removed from the center. Clearly angered by his latest legal setback, Trump said it was “impossible for me to be treated fairly,” tying Cooper’s ruling to earlier losses, including the Supreme Court’s rejection in February of his sweeping tariffs.

His post aimed to make the case for the project but did not clarify whether he would continue to defend it in court. Hours after Cooper’s decision, Trump said he was backing away from the renovations and making arrangements to relinquish control to Congress of what, until the Republican president’s second term, had been known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The White House did not immediately clarify his position or say whether he would keep serving as the center’s board chairman.

Trump’s earlier post signaling a retreat from the center gave hope to artists who had been alienated by his takeover, said Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer who is involved in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s Kennedy Center plans.

“I have already heard from artists and from audience members alike who are excited about the Kennedy Center returning to non-partisan normality,” Eisen told The Associated Press in a text message on Saturday. “It’s early days yet but as and when the court’s order is implemented, including Trump’s name coming off the building and the Board otherwise complying with the law, I’m optimistic that the Center will begin the long journey back.”

Trump cites judge’s wife

Without offering evidence, Trump suggested that Cooper’s wife, lawyer Amy Jeffress, was to blame in part for the ruling. The president noted that Jeffress, a partner at the Hecker Fink law firm, is a former federal prosecutor who served as a counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder during the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. Cooper was nominated for the bench by Obama.

Trump also noted that Hecker Fink is representing former President Joe Biden in a lawsuit against the Department of Justice to block the release of audio recordings and transcripts from the Democrat’s interviews with a ghostwriter that were obtained in an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents from his time as a senator and as vice president.

Trump asserted that the Kennedy Center, named for the late Democratic president and opened in 1971, was “rusted, rotted, and rat and bug infested” and that the ”new Building would have been incomparable.”

Cooper said in his ruling that the center board’s March 16 vote to close the venue was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained” with no regard for its legal obligations. The administration had announced the work would begin in July and last approximately two years. Cooper’s ruling halts those plans for now.

The judge also found that the board “overstepped its statutory bounds” by adding Trump’s name to the center. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it, he said. Cooper ordered that Trump’s name be removed within two weeks.

President defends adding name to the center

Trump on Saturday said it was the board, not him, that added the Trump name to the center. “They thought it would be good for this dying Institution,” he wrote.

Shortly after returning to office in January 2025, he ousted the center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a handpicked board of trustees that named him chairman.

Cooper held hearings in late April for parallel lawsuits challenging the project. One lawsuit was filed by a group of cultural and historic preservation organizations. The other was brought by Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio member of the board through her position in Congress. He ruled in favor of Beatty’s request but rejected the other challenge.

Trump, in his post, also noted that Jeffress’ firm represented E. Jean Carroll, the longtime advice columnist whose claims against Trump won her a $5 million award in 2023 for sexual abuse and defamation after a jury agreed that Trump sexually abused her in a New York department store dressing room in 1996. Another jury in 2024 awarded Carroll an additional $83 million for defamation. Both awards are under appeal.

Jeffress did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Morgan Wallen ran into some technical difficulties during the Denver stop of his Still the Problem tour on Friday night (May 29).

While seated at the piano to perform “Sand In My Boots” during the first of two shows at Empower Field at Mile High, the 33-year-old country superstar appeared frustrated after seemingly being unable to hear the instrument properly.

Wearing a Colorado Rockies Todd Helton jersey over a black shirt, matching shorts and a backward hat, Wallen abruptly stood up mid-performance and pushed the piano over before finishing the song a cappella. “Sand In My Boots” topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in February 2022.

Fans seemed to embrace the candid moment, with many praising Wallen’s solo vocal performance in the comments section of an Instagram post featuring fan-captured footage of the incident.

“No piano needed..give it up!! Sound better without it!!” one person wrote. “Imagine he’s giving us this beautiful Acapella solo and all he’s thinking about is pushing that pos piano over,” another commented “This man doesn’t need any background music when he is unplugged. He is the ultimate a acappella singer,” a third commented.

As has become tradition on the tour, the “Last Night” singer opened Friday’s show with a walkout appearance alongside legendary Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway.

The concert also featured opening performances from Brooks & Dunn, Gavin Adcock and Zach John King.

Wallen is set to return to Empower Field at Mile High for a second Denver performance on Saturday (May 30). After that, he’ll head to Pittsburgh for back-to-back shows at Acrisure Stadium on June 5-6. The singer currently has multiple U.S. stadium dates scheduled through August.

Wallen is touring in support of his latest studio album, I’m the Problem, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in May 2025. The project went on to spend 13 nonconsecutive weeks atop the chart.

Looking outside his Istanbul hotel room, all John Burton has seen is yachts, submarines and oil tankers cruising off the Sea of Marmara’s coast.

After getting Ye (formerly Kanye West) back on the road in January to kick off his comeback with a pair of sold-out Mexico City shows in front of 80,000 fans at Monumental Plaza de Toros — his first concerts in Mexico in nearly two decades — Burton has West on the brink of performing the largest show of his career on May 30 at Istanbul’s Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Turkey.

As of our Memorial Day interview, Burton estimates that 90,000 tickets have been sold and he expects to cruise past the six-figure mark to about 120,000 tickets, which he’s billed as the “Road to 100K” campaign. “I was like, ‘We got something, let’s continue to do this around the world,’” he recalls after seeing the success of Ye’s Mexico City’s shows.

Burton, 43, launched Access Opera in 2017 as a production and management company for opera singers, who he refers to as “athletes of the voice” and classical events. He now serves as Ye’s agent handling overseas touring, independently booking his Mexico City and Turkey shows as well as a handful of upcoming European dates this summer.

“The Road to 100k is a way bigger statement than just the capacity,” Burton adds. “It opens up a lot of opportunity for independent promoters that necessarily wouldn’t have access to an artist like this.”

Like Ye, Burton’s a Southside of Chicago native and has been in the G.O.O.D. Music ethos since a teenager while growing up a super fan of Roc-A-Fella.

He worked for longtime Ye affiliate and streetwear designer Don C, served as the executive assistant to John Monopoly, who’s held lengthy stints as West’s manager and then got his own management chops as Consequence’s road manager for multiple tours in the 2000s.

Burton reconnected with Yeezy in 2019 after seeing him at a party where West asked him to come produce his upcoming operas after hearing about his business venture. Burton would helm operations for Nebuchadnezzar and Mary later that year, while also running point on the children’s choir for Ye’s Donda school.

By 2024, Burton relocated to Bangkok with his wife and the couple welcomed their first child. On a whim, Burton picked up the phone and called Ye with hopes of him being open to touring Asia in a market he saw oozing with potential opportunities. “I called Ye and said, ‘Do you want to tour?’” he recalls. West had already performed in Seoul and Shanghai in 2024 and 2025.

Burton envisioned plotting something similar to Michael Jackson’s HIStory World Tour in 1996 to 1997, which boasted 82 dates across Europe, Asia and Africa, while MJ opted not to hit the continental U.S. as he only performed a pair of shows in Hawaii.

Ye has been open about struggles to book U.S. dates following his string of controversies, including repeated hate speech and antisemitic remarks since 2022. The destruction blew up lucrative deals with adidas, Universal Music Group, Gap and Balenciaga, as companies distanced themselves from the mercurial star.

Ye’s made efforts on his road to forgiveness in recent months. West met with a rabbi in November and took out a full-page ad to pen a letter in The Wall Street Journal in January, which saw him apologize to the Jewish and Black communities for his hurtful actions.

Yeezy has avoided major controversy for the first six months of the year as he continues to seek reconciliation and make things right with those he hurt.

As for Burton, he disagreed with how Ye communicated his message in recent years, but backed his intentions as someone whose known West going on two decades. “I think he could have been articulated a lot differently, and he could have driven the point home if it was more diplomatic,” he explains. “But I believe that the sentiments behind it are spot the f—k on.”

Not everyone else was as quick to forgive West. After releasing his Bully album in March via Larry Jackson’s Gamma label, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Ye was booked to headline three nights of Wireless Fest in London this summer. However, he was denied a travel visa by U.K. government officials, which led to the festival’s cancelation in April.

Other European countries followed suit, as Poland and Switzerland canceled shows due to his antisemitic past. Ye went ahead and postponed his France stop in Marseille indefinitely. West’s July 18 concert with Travis Scott in Italy was also reportedly canceled on Friday (May 29).

The seeds for Turkey’s show were planted across the world in Mexico City when Burton invited ILS Vision founder Erdem Karahan to the pair of Mexico City concerts in January. Karahan bought in and will serve as the promoter for West’s return to the stage in Istanbul on Saturday (May 30). “I was like, ‘We got something, let’s continue to do this around the world,’” Burton adds.

The gates to North America were opened after Mexico City for West as well, who booked a pair of concerts on April 1 and April 3 at SoFi Stadium on the heels of Bully, which went on to be Ye’s first shows in Los Angeles since 2021.

Ye’s return to L.A. grossed a staggering $32.6 million across 149,000 tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore. “He’s the Michael Jordan of this thing,” Burton says of West’s place in the rap game and lucrative touring prospects over 20 years into his career.

The two L.A. shows were presented by Rod Wave’s Mainstay Touring, which is backed by Live Nation. According to a release from the company, Live Nation posted a revenue of $25.2 billion in 2025.

Yeezy arrived in Turkey on Thursday (May 28) to plenty of fanfare. Preparations continued throughout the week to bring his globe-shaped stage to Atatürk Olympic Stadium. Like he did at SoFi Stadium, a Travis Scott guest appearance is all-but-confirmed, as he’s in town to host a party in Turkey on Sunday (May 31).

According to a press release, West’s return to Turkey — which marks his first show in the country in 11 years — is expected to generate nearly $100 million in tourism revenue through hotels, transportation, dining and tourist spending.

YE IN TURKEY will be streamed live on West’s YouTube channel. The Chicago native is set to hit the stage around 2 p.m. ET.

For Burton, he’s already got his sights set on booking more shows for Ye across Europe amid the handful of cancelations.

Yeezy will head to the Netherlands for a pair of dates on June 6 and June 8, before returning to the U.S. for two shows in Tampa Bay at Raymond James Stadium on June 26 and June 28. July currently has concerts set in Albania (July 7) and Madrid (July 20), while he’ll head to Portugal to close out the mini European tour on Aug. 7.

“This opens up the conversation for what artists can do independently for our culture, and there are unlimited seats at this independent table,” Burton proclaims. “We just want to be a production agency that’s a part of the conversation.”

He continues: “We’re not trying to say, ‘We Death Row come over here.’ But what we are saying is that if you want an opportunity, we can provide it at scale and we can be doing it with the biggest artists in the world.”

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WWE Clash in Italy 2026 is here and the wrestling event is already turning out to be one of the most anticipated events of the season. Cody Rhodes is put to the test as he defends his Undisputed WWE Championship title after just won the belt against Drew McIntyre during Friday SmackDown. Now, he is set to go up against Gunther during Clash in Italy.

Keep reading to learn more about the event including how to watch Clash in Italy online.

When and Where Is WWE Clash in Italy 2026?

Clash in Italy kicks off on Sunday (May 31), beginning at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT with coverage starting at 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT. The event takes place at Inalpi Arena (Palasport Olimpico) in Turin, Italy.

How to Watch WWE Clash in Italy 2026 Online?

Clash in Italy exclusively livestreams on ESPN Unlimited. Not a subscriber? You can get the sports streaming service for just $29.99 per month. It features every ESPN network, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes, SEC Network, ACC Network, as well as ESPN on ABC, ESPN+, ESPN3, SEC Network+ and ACC Network Extra — all in one app. Sign up for ESPN Unlimited below.

While the service doesn’t offer a free trial, you can still watch ESPN Unlimited with a clever workaround to watch Clash In Italy for free. Learn more about how to get a free trial to access ESPN Unlimited here.

Which Celebrities Are Making Appearances During WWE Clash in Italy 2026?

It’s likely there might be a number of celebrities and recording artists in attendance during the WWE event, such as fans, like Italian rapper Capo Plaza and Caparezza, soccer player Davide Frattesi and others. Tune-in to find out who’s at Clash In Italy.

What’s the Match Card for WWE Clash in Italy 2026?

Check out the full Clash in Italy match cards, below.

Watch WWE Clash in Italy 2026 on Netflix

Although Clash in Italy is available to livestream on ESPN Unlimited, the event is also streamable live on Netflix for international audiences. This means, you can watch internationally with the streaming service when paired with a VPN, such as ExpressVPN. Prices for the virtual private network starts at $2.49 per month for 28 months, so you can watch Clash in Italy on Netflix when the VPN is set to outside of the United States.

Clash in Italy is available to stream on ESPN Unlimited on Sunday (May 31), starting at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT.