former employee

Kennedy Center officials were long aware of serious structural issues that they cited as new problems after the abrupt decision to close the performing arts venue this month, a group of former employees allege in a letter to Congress.

The center’s executive director and chief operating officer, Matt Floca, did not treat the roofing issues as priorities and in April halted a funded plan to address them, according to the letter Thursday signed by David Seide, a lawyer representing the anonymous whistleblowers.

Floca denied their allegations, saying recent investigations of the leaks exposed new hazards at the building.

In a September court declaration, Floca noted there were “acute risks to public safety” when the aging building temporarily closed its doors after an inspection of a deteriorating roof terrace canopy and a partial ceiling collapse. The former employees, however, claim those “acute” issues were known previously by Floca, who joined the Kennedy Center as vice president of facilities in 2024.

“More than one year ago, Mr. Floca had requested and received the needed funds to remediate the New Problems he references,” Seide wrote, citing President Trump’s tax cut and spending bill that he signed in the summer of 2025. “Yet six months ago – with the funds in hand – he stopped the remediation process from moving forward.” In the legislation, Congress earmarked $257 million for the Kennedy Center.

The letter, first reported by The New York Times, is the latest in a series of tensions over an iconic Potomac River waterfront building that has become a focus of the Republican president in his remaking of the nation’s capital in his second term. Trump has installed his own leadership to the center’s governing board and had his name placed on the building before a judge ruled the new lettering was illegally added and ordered it removed.

The Trump-aligned board voted earlier this month to close the center indefinitely for repairs hours after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked its plans to return Trump’s name to the building.

Cooper has told the center that it must give 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building, including demolishing it, as Trump has threatened. The Kennedy Center leadership also must file a status report no later than Friday on the temporary closure and emergency repairs.

Asked for a response to the whistleblowers’ claims, a Kennedy Center spokesperson sent a written statement from Floca, who said the safety of patrons, artists and staff is his priority.

“The Kennedy Center has known for years that the roof overhang leaked,” he wrote. “What we did not know until this summer was how far the damage had spread inside it.”

Floca added that rather than halting design plans in April as the whistleblowers alleged, he had reassigned the work to a more comprehensive plan because the contractor’s quote for the initial plans were nearly three times the expected cost.

“That was a change in the approach to procuring and delivering the work, not a determination that the work was unnecessary,” Floca wrote.

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, wrote Floca on Thursday after receiving the whistleblower letter. Whitehouse said the documents showed Kennedy Center leadership had “hoarded” congressionally appropriated funding for repairs “while blaming previous leadership for the state of repairs.”

“My initial investigation into misconduct at the Center focused on cronyism and corruption, with documents demonstrating considerable excessive and self-serving spending under President Trump’s chairmanship,” Whitehouse said. “The documents that I attach today seem to reveal deeper financial mismanagement.”

A spokesperson for the committee’s Republican majority did not immediately reply to a request for comment Saturday.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

A former employee of Activision Blizzard is suing the Santa Monica-based game company, alleging she was sexually harassed and subject to retaliation.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday, the woman, filing anonymously as Jane Doe, says the game giant “fostered and tolerated a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture,” where male employees and supervisors “openly objectified women, viewed and displayed pornography” and made demeaning sexual remarks in her presence.

She is seeking unspecified compensatory damages, including for lost wages, benefits and earning capacity.

“We take these allegations seriously. We strive to maintain a respectful and inclusive workplace, and we do that through best-in-class policies and systems designed to prevent and address harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and by holding employees accountable for their behavior,” said a Blizzard spokesperson in a statement to The Times.

The woman, who said she worked for the company for 14 years beginning in 2009 in its sound department, accuses 10 men of subjecting her variously to harassment, physical assault, inappropriate touching and inappropriate comments.

Between 2011 and 2012, she alleges, one co-worker lured her to his apartment, where he repeatedly touched her leg and “blocked her exit, threaten[ing] her with physical violence and attempted to rape her.” He continued to demand dates and spread sexual rumors about her calling her a “bitch” and “slut” in front of co-workers and a male manager, according to the suit.

Over five years starting in 2010, Jane Doe says that she was “repeatedly sexually harassed” by another man, a re-recording mixer with whom she worked with, and who told her that she would “be risking her career if she reported him,” the complaint states.

She further alleges that a third man, Blizzard’s audio director, “repeatedly touched” her leg “in a sexual manner without her permission” and when she rejected his advances he “retaliated against her by sabotaging her work and ensuring that she was denied a promotion.”

According to the suit, Jane Doe’s complaints and reports to her supervisors and human resources about her alleged treatment were dismissed and they “failed to take timely or effective corrective action.”

Further, the former employee says that she was “required to work excessive and unsafe hours” and told not to report overtime.

As a result of the harassment, the employee says in her complaint, she suffered suffered depression “and was required to seek ongoing psychiatric care” before being discharged in April 2024.

A year earlier, Activision Blizzard and California’s Civil Rights Department reached a roughly $50-million settlement agreement to resolve an employment discrimination and equal pay lawsuit. .

The Civil Rights Department sued Activision Blizzard in 2021, alleging that women at the company were regularly subjected to sexual harassment, paid less, denied promotions and met with retaliation when they raised concerns with managers.

As part of the agreement, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay up to $45.75 million to compensate women who worked for the company in California from Oct. 12, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2020. The company also agreed to pay $9.1 million to cover the Civil Rights Department’s attorneys fees and costs.
Activision Blizzard also settled a case with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As part of that 2022 settlement, the company agreed to establish an $18-million fund for workers who experienced sexual harassment or discrimination, among other types of workplace misconduct.

Activision Blizzard has denied all wrongdoing.