Trump threatens to cancel Kennedy Center renovation if courts block his name on building

Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the Kennedy Center would close “immediately” and threatened to cancel a planned renovation of the institution if federal courts did not allow his name to be placed on the front of the building.

Trump’s ultimatum came shortly after the president’s handpicked board voted, again, to close the institution’s performing arts building in Washington, citing safety and financial concerns.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said the board voted “almost unanimously” to close the riverside landmark “for Safety reasons, and so that I can begin the process of Reconstruction”. He then said he would block a $257m renovation project that Trump had previously touted to address what the center has described as “decades of deferred maintenance and critical infrastructure needs”.

“The Renovation and Reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name,” Trump wrote. “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.”

The performing arts center, built as a memorial to President John F Kennedy, has been embroiled in a dizzying legal dispute over Trump’s desire to put his name on the building. Prior to the Tuesday meeting, a federal judge blocked the center’s board from adding Trump’s name to the venue, writing that it would violate his previous ruling ordering it to be removed.

“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” US district judge Christopher Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

Democratic congresswoman Joyce Beatty, an ex officio board member, who brought the legal challenge, said Trump’s efforts to rebrand the institution in his name was a reflection of the president’s “vanity” and a “ breach of his fiduciary duty as a trustee”.

“The board’s latest shutdown vote is more of the same failure and abuse that has characterized this administration’s treatment of the Kennedy Center,” Beatty said in a joint statement with attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky. “The unlawful renaming drove audiences and artists away. 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.”

The vote followed a weekend of dueling court filings.

The board’s proposal called for closing the main building on safety grounds, describing it as unsafe for continued occupancy. Beatty’s lawyers dispute that characterization, arguing in a court filing that the safety consultants cited, Delta Consulting Group, “expressly disclaimed” reaching any such opinion.

Eisen called the board’s weekend document dump “an outrageous act of hostage taking”, writing on X: “Pay up or the Kennedy Center closes, and the price is Trump’s name on the building.”

The board had also been expected to vote on a proposal related to adding Trump’s name. But in a notice filed on Monday in the US district court for the District of Columbia, government lawyers disclosed that Joe LaFauci, the center’s vice-president of board relations, told the board that Tuesday’s meeting was “now focused exclusively on the necessary closure of the center”, citing “recently exacerbated structural emergencies”.

However, in the filing, the board said trustees “stand by the recognition resolution proposed and passed by the board on August 13 2026”.

The now-shelved second resolution had listed 10 options for inscribing Trump’s name and the “Trump Kennedy Center Fund” beneath the center’s name on the exterior marble, tying various forms of credit to renovation, endowment or oversight of the building.

After Trump’s name was added to the exterior of the building above Kennedy’s, Cooper ordered the president’s name removed, ruling in May that only Congress has authority to rename it, and the lettering came down in June. The board voted in August to reinstate an inscription and proceed with the closure.

Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, posted a security video on Monday appearing to show debris falling in the center’s grand foyer, saying “the entire building is in this kind of shape” and that only Trump “can deliver the renovation on time and on budget”. Trump then shared the post on Truth Social.

Lutnick’s wife, Allison, is a member of the president’s appointed board.

Tuesday’s vote is the latest turn in a financial and legal fight that has dogged the center since Trump installed himself as chair in February 2025, firing the board and its longtime president, Deborah Rutter.

Current leadership has blamed the crisis on mismanagement by Rutter’s team, alleging a “falsified” budget with $26m in “phantom revenue”, a claim Rutter and former board chair David Rubenstein have both denied, noting the center’s finances were independently audited.