Fears have risen that President Donald Trump’s fresh team at the Kennedy Center will usher the cultural hub into a dark financial hole, even as the White House‘s allies have said the institution’s former leaders already pulled it into a quagmire of fiscal ruin.

For the arts institution, which receives only a small portion of its budget from federal funding, the perennial challenge is to raise additional revenue through ticket sales and private donations.

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center might appear far removed from those unaware of the center’s cultural significance, but the threat of his action should be a warning to everyone who believes in the right to creative expression. Artistic repression is not coming soon — it is already here.