The future of the Trump-Kennedy Center’s Israeli Lounge is reportedly in peril, as the organization’s president, Richard Grenell, told far-right activist Laura Loomer that he is considering selling it to a corporate donor — unless a Jewish donor makes a substantial contribution to keep the lounge as is, Loomer claimed in a post on X.

The Israeli Lounge was gifted to the Kennedy Center in 1971 by then-Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yitzhak Rabin. In 2018, Russian-Israeli philanthropist Mikhail Fridman donated $1.25 million to renovate the space, which many in Israel and in the Jewish world had forgotten about. Loomer, a self-described independent journalist, previously claimed that Grenell was considering handing the lounge over to Qatar as a condition of a major donation from Doha for the Kennedy Center’s renovation fund. 

Over the weekend, Loomer said that Grenell had given “his word” that the lounge would not be sold to Qatar, but that “the [Israeli] Lounge will absolutely go away and possibly be given to a ‘corporate donor’ unless a major donor from the Jewish community steps up and makes a large donation to save the lounge with a 5-year renovation plan.”

The apparent threat to the Israeli Lounge comes just a few months after the Kennedy Center hosted an exhibit of Israeli art commemorating the Oct. 7 terror attacks and as the institution has vowed to use its platform to combat antisemitism.

The Kennedy Center operates as a public-private partnership, serving as both an official, national cultural center and as a privately funded entity. The institution has courted controversy over the past year, as President Donald Trump ousted the existing board and its chair — investor and philanthropist David Rubenstein — and replaced it with close allies. Those allies then named Trump chairman of the board and voted to rename the institution “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” after changing the center’s bylaws to ensure that the rebranding resolution would pass. 

In response to the controversies, many artists have cut ties with the Kennedy Center, canceling performances in protest. Most recently, the Washington National Opera announced that it too was leaving the center, from which it has operated since 1971. The opera company said that this not a political move but was in response to policy change requiring all performances to be fully funded in advance before they could proceed; in the past, performances relied on a combination of ticket sales, grants and donations, some of which would only be obtained after the fact.

Several prominent Jewish donors sit on the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees. They include: Dana Kraft, a physician and the wife of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft; Mindy Levine, a volunteer in a variety of Jewish and Israeli causes and the wife of New York Yankees owner Randy Levine; Pamela Gross, a longtime friend of First Lady Melania Trump and the wife of publisher Jerry Finkelstein; and Laura Perlmutter, the wife of former Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, who was born in Mandatory Palestine.