The Kennedy Center has canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ people for the World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a change in focus and the Trump administration firing the center’s leadership.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule said their events had been quietly canceled or transferred to other venues. The Tapestry of Pride was planned for June 5 to 8 before the cancellation.

Washington’s Capital Pride Alliance disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center in response to the canceled events.

“We are a resilient community, and we have found other avenues to celebrate,” the alliance’s deputy director June Crenshaw told The Associated Press. “We are finding another path to the celebration … but the fact that we have to maneuver in this way is disappointing.”

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The Kennedy Center’s website still has a section for Tapestry of Pride with a general description and a link to the World Pride site. No other information is provided on the website.

The cancellations come in the wake of massive changes at the Kennedy Center, including President Donald Trump firing both the president and chairman in early February. Trump replaced most of the board with loyalists, who subsequently elected him the new chairman of the institution.

The World Pride event is held every two years and this year’s event runs from May 17 through June 8 with performances and celebrations planned across the nation’s capital. But concerns arose about what kind of reception attendees will receive due to Trump administration policies targeting transgender people and comments about Kennedy Center drag performances.

“I know that D.C. as a community will be very excited to be hosting World Pride, but I know the community is a little bit different than the government,” said Michael Roest, founder and director of the International Pride Orchestra, which had its June 5 performance at the Kennedy Center canceled just days after Trump’s took control of the institution.

Roest told The Associated Press he was in the final stages of planning the performance at the center. He was waiting on a final contract when Trump revealed on Feb. 7 the leadership changes and his plans to amend the institution’s programming.

The center then became unresponsive, he said.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule said their events had been quietly canceled or transferred to other venues. (AP)

On Feb. 12, Roest said he received a one-sentence email from a Kennedy Center staffer saying that they “are no longer able to advance your contract at this time.”

“They went from very eager to host to nothing,” he told The Associated Press. “We have not since heard a word from anybody at the Kennedy Center, but that’s not going to stop us.”

After the cancellation, Roest said he was able to move the International Pride Orchestra performance to the Strathmore theater in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.

Roest said he was never given an explanation for why the performance was canceled so late in the planning stages. He said his orchestra would no longer consider performing at the Kennedy Center and that most queer artists would likely make the same choice.

“There would need to be a very, very public statement of inclusivity from the administration, from that board, for us to consider that,” he said. “Otherwise it is a hostile performance space.”

Crenshaw said some other events, including a drag story time and a display of parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, would be transferred to the World Pride welcome center in Chinatown.

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The cancellations come in the wake of massive changes at the Kennedy Center. (Getty Images)

Monica Alford, a veteran arts and culture journalist and event planner, was set to organize an event on June 8 as part of Tapestry of Pride, but said she also experienced an abrupt end to communication within days of Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center.

Alford has a long history with the Kennedy Center and organized the first-ever drag brunch on its rooftop last year. She said she viewed the institution as her “home base” and “a safe space for the queer community.” She also said she was disappointed to lose the partnership she had with the Kennedy Center.

“We’re doing our community a disservice — not just the queer community but the entire community,” she told The Associated Press.

She said she was still finalizing the details of her event, which she said was “meant to be family-friendly, just like the drag brunch was family-friendly and classy and sophisticated.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

For nearly six decades, there have been few media institutions as durable and respected as the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes.”

Even as traditional appointment TV viewing fades, “60 Minutes” remains the most watched news program, approaching 10 million viewers in some weeks, according to Nielsen data.

Correspondent roles on the program are the most coveted positions in TV journalism. Its deeply reported stories have influence in an age when other mainstream news outlets’ clout has diminished in a fragmented media landscape.

But “60 Minutes” now faces an unprecedented crisis.

This week, the program lost its executive producer, Bill Owens, only the third person to hold the job in the show’s storied history. His farewell note to staff cited interference from the corporate owner, Paramount Global, which is seeking regulatory clearance from the Trump administration to complete an $8-billion merger with Skydance Media.

Clouding the deal, which requires approval by the Federal Communications Commission, is President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit against CBS over the program’s October interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election. The case goes before a mediator next week.

Trump alleges the program was deceptively edited to favor Harris, a charge that 1st Amendment experts say is spurious. But Shari Redstone, controlling shareholder of Paramount Global, and the Skydance partners want to clear the legal obstacle to close their deal, even if it means a settlement.

A Paramount Global representative declined to comment.

The staff of “60 Minutes” was shaken by Owens’ departure. But no one is expected to follow him out the door, largely because it would be seen as giving in to Trump, said one longtime member of the program who was not authorized to comment publicly.

In the short term, Owens’ exit is not likely to change the hard-charging journalistic values of the program, as many of his lieutenants share his ethos. Executive editor Tanya Simon, who is running the program on an interim basis, is the daughter of the late Bob Simon, a well-known correspondent for the program.

“She is one tough cookie,” said Tom Bettag, a former network news producer who worked on the program and is now a lecturer at the Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland. “The troops admire her.”

While Owens cited corporate interference, there was little evidence of it on the screen.

“60 Minutes” remained dogged in covering the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency, with critical reports on the administration’s handling of Ukraine and the bird flu outbreak. The program brought together a Marine Corps band that was dissolved as part of the administration’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the military.

“60 Minutes” staffers credit the drive of Owens, a 25-year veteran of the program, to get tough Trump stories on the air.

CBS executives not authorized to comment noted that “60 Minutes” has a long history of operating independently and Owens was likely not used to the additional oversight implemented in recent months.

Former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky was enlisted last fall to oversee standards at the news division after Redstone became irritated over some of the network’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, including a “60 Minutes” piece that criticized former President Biden’s handling of the conflict.

But the larger fear at “60 Minutes” is that the company will settle the lawsuit with an apology and payment to Trump.

Any willingness to placate the president could have the “60 Minutes” journalists and producers looking over their shoulders as they try to do their jobs.

Confidence, swagger and even a bit of arrogance are part of what made “60 Minutes” a TV news powerhouse since 1968. Those characteristics may be undercut by uncertainty over corporate support, making it difficult to aggressively cover the Trump White House.

“People want to work at CBS News and especially at ’60 Minutes’ because they want to work in a place that will stand up and fight for themselves,” Bettag said. “I have students who look at ’60 Minutes’ and say ‘that’s the kind of person I want to be.’”

“60 Minutes” has been subjected to corporate pressure in the past when network owners were involved in merger talks.

When Laurence Tisch owned CBS and was looking to sell the company to Westinghouse in 1995, the network killed a “60 Minutes” story that featured tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand, a former Brown & Williamson executive who revealed that its cigarettes contained additives to boost the nicotine that keeps smokers hooked.

Brown & Williamson threatened CBS with a lawsuit, claiming the interview would interfere with Wigand’s confidentiality agreement with the company. Under orders from its legal department, ‘’60 Minutes’’ did not broadcast the interview or air Wigand’s most damaging charges until after the Wall Street Journal reported on a deposition he gave in another case.

The conflict was dramatized in the 1999 Michael Mann film “The Insider” and stained the program’s stellar reputation.

“60 Minutes” survived that episode and maintained its stature as the gold standard of TV journalism. In recent years, the program has dominated investigative journalism in prime time as its competitors “Dateline” on NBC and “20/20” on ABC have moved exclusively into telling true crime stories.

What is baffling people who have worked on the program is why Paramount Global or Skydance would want to risk damaging the value of an asset that continues to generate millions in profit for the network and provides enviable stature.

“I pray they back off and see that there would be real glory in speaking up and supporting ’60 Minutes,’ which is truly a national treasure,” Bettag said. “It is also a cash cow and it has an identity for a network, which is truly important.”