WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted on Tuesday to close most of the iconic performing arts venue just hours after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump's name to the building.
In a social media post, Trump said the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building. A federal judge has twice said that can't happen without the approval of Congress.
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing," U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in the latest ruling on Tuesday.
Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center's chairman last year by loyalists on the board, participated in the virtual board meeting and said on social media that the Justice Department would appeal Cooper's ruling. He said he'd given $17 million to an endowment intended to support the institution.
The meeting included testy exchanges at points between Trump and Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who has led the campaign to block efforts to memorialize the president at the Kennedy Center. At one point, Beatty referred to Trump as someone who caused “extreme harm,” according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Trump said Beatty was “incompetent” and “holding up everything.”
“You're holding up the whole country,” she responded.
The developments threw into limbo the fate of one of the nation's most prominent cultural institutions, a place where presidents, lawmakers and celebrities of all political ideologies have gathered for decades to recognize and celebrate the best in American arts and culture.
The venue's leaders have argued that the massive building, which began construction in 1965, was in dire need of renovations. A partial ceiling collapse in the building's main hallway earlier this month intensified the calls for renovations.
But Trump's insistence on a physical recognition of his work on the building, reminiscent of his tendency to add his name to buildings as a real estate developer, has been a persistent sticking point — alienating many of the institution's longtime supporters and facing repeated legal roadblocks.
The fight over the Kennedy Center marks a rare setback in Trump's second term bid to dramatically remake the nation's capital in his gilded tastes. He's demolished the East Wing of the White House and is replacing it with a ballroom and plans to build a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. He's also eyeing a golf course renovation along the Potomac River.
The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe his name on the Kennedy Center's facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading: “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also be renamed in Trump’s honor.
Cooper ruled in May that the Kennedy Center illegally added Trump’s name to the building, ordering it removed. The institution’s leaders complied in June but left a tarp and scaffolding in place where Trump’s name once stood.
Hanging over the hearing was the prospect that the administration may seek to demolish the Kennedy Center. In a filing earlier this week, administration lawyers told the court that absent recognition of the president, the Kennedy Center would struggle to raise money for renovations. Without that money, they suggested, the building may need to be demolished, a prospect that alarmed some given Trump’s swift moves last year to dismantle the East Wing.
The Kennedy Center, the lawyers argued, “will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.”
