Trump Administration Closes Kennedy Center Amid Legal Battle Over Renaming and Safety Claims

One day after Donald Trump announced the immediate closure of the Kennedy Center, construction crews erected metal fencing around the building and barred workers from entering without hard hats.

A member of the legal team fighting Trump’s attempts to rename the property after himself wrote in court filings that she saw a forklift “run into and hit the pillars on the building several times.”

The Democratic congresswoman leading the legal battle has called for an emergency court hearing to get to the bottom of the closure, which a federal judge had previously blocked without an explicit court order. The Trump-dominated Kennedy Center may be “violating the ‘clear and unambiguous order of the Court,’” lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty wrote Wednesday.

“Given the unexplained and unlawful closure, it is possible Defendants intend to undertake immediate steps in order to make public access practically impossible for the foreseeable future, including by demolishing public avenues of access to the building, and thereby evade the court’s order,” lawyers wrote.

The venue’s abrupt closure and installation of orange barricades have drawn fears that the president is not merely closing the building for planned renovations but potentially demolishing it altogether, an idea first floated by the Department of Justice in court filings this summer.

Laura Bligh, who attended protests with the advocacy group Hands Off the Arts, told the Associated Press that she feared some or all of the building could be torn down before the legal battle has ended.

“The worst case scenario is a wrecking ball,” she said, adding that the Trump administration can’t be trusted because “look what they did to the East Wing.”

Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House, of course, to make way for a gold-filled, bullet-proof ballroom sandwiched between a “military complex” that includes a sprawling underground bunker with a “drone port” roof.

Hours after Beatty’s request, Judge Christopher R. Cooper ordered the Kennedy Center to respond by 10 a.m. Thursday. “The Court will schedule a prompt hearing if necessary after reviewing the response,” he wrote.

An all-staff email told Kennedy Center employees that the main building is closed “effective immediately” for the next seven days “due to safety concerns.”

“The need to extend this temporary closure will be evaluated on a weekly basis,” the message says.

Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi also confirmed the venue’s closure on Wednesday morning.

“Compounding systemic infrastructure failures from decades of neglect have left a crumbling building and safety concerns require an immediate closure of [the Kennedy Center] main building,” she wrote on X.

Trump “continues to support this great American institution while legal battles halt the progress to save it,” she added.

Closing the venue without Judge Cooper’s approval “appears to directly violate his order,” according to Beatty’s counsel Norm Eisen.

“This is an assault on the rule of law,” he said in a statement shared with The Independent. “The board cannot simply ignore Judge Cooper’s rulings whenever it suits them. In this country, no one — including the president — is above the law.”

Maria Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s niece and former first lady of California, called Trump’s takeover “a sad state of affairs” and a “tragedy.”

She said in a post on X that it appears Trump “will not rest until his name is permanently connected to the name of a great president, whose memory this building was dedicated to.”

“Imagine spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership,” she wrote.

“Closing the Kennedy Center is an affront to President Kennedy's memory, an attack on Congressional power and an outrageous assault on the livelihoods of the artists and workers who operate and perform in our cultural center,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said Wednesday.

“We're demanding it remain open and free from the President’s graffiti, vandalism and desecration,” he said.

On Friday, Hands Off the Arts will attempt to create a human chain around the main building to send a “crystal clear” message that “the Kennedy Center belongs to the American people, not one man.”