Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board votes to close venue amid legal battle over renaming

Donald Trump’s hand-picked Kennedy Center board members have voted to close for repairs the building after the Trump administration repeatedly argued that the venue was in dire financial straits and could not continue to operate without the president’s name on the building.

The venue will close “immediately,” according to Trump, but the “Renovation and Reconstruction” project cannot continue unless courts agree to let the president slap his name on the building.

“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday.

The board’s vote arrived shortly after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., blocked the institution from trying to add the president’s name to the building — again — after board members proposed renaming the building “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts renovated and restored by Donald J. Trump.”

The Kennedy Center also is blocked from naming the campus “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote Tuesday.

“The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted,” he added.

In May, Cooper ruled that Congress made it “crystal clear” that the building is only to be named after the assassinated president, “and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial” based on a “unilateral say-so.”

The Kennedy Center had until June 12 to strip quickly-installed name plates that briefly rebranded the venue “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” but construction crews in hard hats and neon green high-vis vests only started to assemble scaffolding to reach the letters that afternoon. Trump’s name plates appeared to have been removed in the dead of night in the early morning hours of June 13.

A massive white tarp and scaffolding are still covering the entrance, fueling speculation that a construction crew never actually removed the president’s name from the performing arts venue — or have been told to keep the scaffolding in place while the Trump-dominated board fights to put his name back.

Last month, the board proposed returning the president’s name to the building as a preemptive honor for what was promised to be a multi-million dollar renovation effort. “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” was set to appear directly below the sign.

Attorneys for Rep. Joyce Beatty, who is leading the legal battle against the proposed changes, argued that the board was illegally flouting the judge’s order against returning Trump’s name on the building in a “breathtaking act of defiance.”

The board was set to review a new list of 10 ways to return Trump’s name to the building’s facade, but the item was abruptly removed from Tuesday’s agenda, which instead focused solely on the building’s closure.

A draft resolution states that the venue “is in a dire financial position” and has “exhausted its fiscal resources” that could force its imminent closure — unless Trump can “step in and raise the necessary funds to keep the Center from bankruptcy during its much needed renovation.”

In court filings, the Department of Justice has repeatedly argued that the performing arts venue is falling into “financial ruin” and rapidly deteriorating in a state of “terminal decline” — and that the president is the “sole hope” for its financial and structural survival.

At one point, the Justice Department even floated the idea of demolishing the building altogether.

Trump, with his “unrivaled expertise and experience in real estate and construction” and “prominence” as president to raise money for the venue, must be memorialized on the building’s marble facade — or, according to the Justice Department, the Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down,” government lawyers wrote in court filings.

Unless the president’s name is restored to the performing art venue’s marble facade, donors and performers will flee, financial contributions will “dry up” and renovation projects will come to a halt, they argued.

But internal documents appear to show that the venue went into financial meltdown after Trump’s takeover, while the board and Justice Department argued that the president was overseeing its financial renaissance.

“For years, the Kennedy Center has planned to undergo phased renovations, in which we both renovate and maintain some performances. This is how major performing arts centers in the country operate. But donors, patrons, and artists all fled after the unlawful attempt to rename this sacred memorial after Donald Trump,” Beatty said in a statement shared with The Independent after the board vote.

“Donald Trump only cares about the Kennedy Center for his vanity,” she said. “That is wrong and it is a breach of his fiduciary duty as a trustee. Congress established the Kennedy Center as a living memorial to President Kennedy, and I am proud to defend this cherished institution.”

Her attorney Norm Eisen said the board’s vote is “more of the same failure and abuse that has characterized this administration's treatment of the Kennedy Center.”

“The unlawful renaming drove audiences and artists away,” he said. “Now the Board has voted to shut down yet again to hide the terrible mismanagement under its current leadership. We’ll see the Defendants in court.”