Trump 2nd term live updates: Trump defends tariffs, declines to comment on Ukraine aid

The hit Broadway musical "Hamilton" canceled a planned 2026 run at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, citing the firing of the theater's board and chairman and subsequent takeover by President Donald Trump.

"Politics have never affected the presentation of thousands of shows and the display of extraordinary visual arts," "Hamilton" producer Jeffrey Seller said in a statement.

"However, in recent weeks we have sadly seen decades of Kennedy Center neutrality be destroyed. The recent purge by the Trump Administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center flies in the face of everything this national cultural center represents."

The show previously ran at the Kennedy Center twice — first in 2018, during Trump's first administration, and again in 2022. The upcoming showing would've been the third such run at the Washington, D.C., theater, but Seller said that the erosion of the theater's independence caused the show to reassess its plans.

"We are not acting against [Trump's] administration, but against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of his recent takeover," Seller said.

President Trump is expected to take the extraordinary step this week of directing his secretary of education to dissolve the U.S. Department of Education, according to sources familiar with a draft executive order.

The draft Trump is expected to issue calls on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate a department closure by taking all necessary steps "permitted by law." The draft doesn’t directly mention Congress but Trump’s proposal requires congressional approval. Any proposed legislation would likely fail without 60 Senate votes.

The move has been months in the making, helping the president inch one step closer to fulfilling a campaign promise.

“The Federal bureaucratic hold on education must end,” the president’s EO draft states. “The Department of Education's main functions can, and should, be returned to the States,” it continues.

In the draft, the secretary is directed to allocate federal funding for education programs subject to rigorous compliance with the law and administration policy.

But congressional approval is required to abolish a federal agency and Secretary McMahon has acknowledged she would need Congress to carry out the president’s vision to close the department she’s been tapped to lead.

A federal appeals court is temporarily allowing President Donald Trump to remove the head of a watchdog agency, overturning a lower court’s decision from this weekend.

In a two-page ruling on Wednesday, a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit granted an emergency stay of the lower court’s order, allowing the president to remove Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger from his role running an independent watchdog agency tasked with protecting federal employees.

"This order gives effect to the removal of appellee from his position as Special Counsel of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel," the ruling said.

The judges – appointed by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump – did not offer a reason when granting the stay.

Since being reinstated, Dellinger has spearheaded multiple efforts to protect federal employees, including winning a case earlier Wednesday that ordered more than 5,000 USDA employees to be reinstated after their terminations.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous

The Trump administration signaled Wednesday that it could bring criminal referrals against people who are accused of misusing taxpayer dollars through USAID foreign contracts, according to lawmakers and people familiar with the comments.

Peter Marocco, the senior Trump administration official running USAID and overseeing the dismantling of its workforce and programs, spent roughly an hour on Capitol Hill Wednesday for a closed-door meeting with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"It's a fluid situation based upon what is found," Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., told ABC News, who said the administration's review of grants was ongoing. "You look at the thousands of these grants going on, who was recieving them? What was the actual cost to administer them?"

"It's every bit appropriate," Mast said of Marocco's review.

Democrats criticized Marocco for not appearing in public to discuss his work. Mast said he planned to hold a public hearing on USAID with Marocco but did not lay out a timeframe for doing so.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

-ABC News' Ben Siegel and Shannon Kingston