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”. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name,” Trump wrote. 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. 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.” Beatty told MS Now on Tuesday that the president had thrown “a tantrum” in a phone call to the board when he learned that she had prevailed in court.
This was the biggest thing I had done. So I reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.” The board’s 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 disputed that characterization, arguing in a court filing that the safety consultants cited, Delta Consulting Group, “expressly disclaimed” reaching any such opinion. Eisencalled 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.
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