Bill Maher Wins Mark Twain Prize as Kennedy Center
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- Bill Maher will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday at the Kennedy Center, a prize given since 1998 whose past recipients include Conan O'Brien, Dave Chappelle, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, David Letterman, Carol Burnett, and Tina Fey.
- The White House initially called the award report "fake news" in March—press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Maher "will NOT be getting this award"—but the honor was confirmed after further conversations between the Kennedy Center and event organizers.
- President Trump fired much of the Kennedy Center's leadership after returning to the White House in January 2025, installed a board of allies, named himself chairman, and had his name added to the building's facade, prompting a legal fight over presidential power.
- U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled in May that Trump's name was illegally added to the building, ordered it removed, and blocked Trump's announced two-year closure starting in July; the name is now down but the spot is covered with a tarp.
- Kennedy Center lawyers told the court this month they are "not planning for now to build out programming," leaving the venue's calendar largely empty with its last scheduled Concert Hall event—a July 3 musical celebration—uncertain.
- Maher and Trump share a fraught history: Trump filed a $5 million lawsuit against Maher in 2013 over an orangutan birth-certificate joke he later dropped, and the two publicly clashed this year over the tone of a 2024 Oval Office dinner.
- Maher hosted Vice President JD Vance on his show this week, pressing him on the Iran war, immigration enforcement, and election conspiracy theories, telling Vance: "You guys have two outcomes that an election can be. Either we win or they cheated. That s—- has to stop."
Why it matters: The Kennedy Center has long been one of Washington's few nonpartisan cultural institutions, and its transformation is now partially blocked by a federal judge, leaving its future programming in limbo. Handing the Mark Twain Prize to a comedian the White House publicly rejected—after Leavitt said he "will NOT be getting this award"—turns the gala into a proxy fight over how much of the nation's cultural stage the president can rewrite. The judge's order also leaves the building's name in legal limbo, with a tarp where Trump's letters used to be.
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