Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center Board voted to close the building “immediately” for two-year renovations shortly after losing in court a second time in its effort to add his name to John F. Kennedy’s living memorial.
NBC News first reported the development, citing a source familiar with the decision.
The Board, stacked with Trump surrogates, purported to justify their action on the building’s allegedly “dire” financial and structural condition, but the report supposedly backing that claim isn’t public. A federal judge on Tuesday said that the evidence before him shows that financial troubles were of Trump’s own making.
Shortly before the Board’s vote to shutter the Kennedy Center, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the placement of Donald Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center’s facade for the second time this year, finding that linguistic “gymnastics” couldn’t sidestep the clear terms of his previous order.
“Four months ago, this Court declared that Congress named the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for President John F. Kennedy alone,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in a 22-page memorandum opinion and order. “It came to this conclusion for a simple reason: The federal law that created the Kennedy Center permitted no other result.”
In 1983, Congress passed a law declaring “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Only two other people have been honored inside Kennedy’s living memorial: The Eisenhower Theater recognizes the president who first conceived of a national arts center in Washington, D.C., and the John Philip Sousa Stage.
Both were dedicated in 1971, long before the passage of the law.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, pointed out that there was no ambiguity in these terms.
“The law is extremely clear: The John F. Kennedy Center is named for President Kennedy—and no one else,” she wrote in a statement. “But President Trump is holding the Kennedy Center hostage unless he can put his name on this sacred memorial. The Court just rejected this proposal for the second time. This unlawfulness is as breathtaking as it is wrong, and it needs to stop.”
Her attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky celebrated the emphatic ruling: “Two times the court has told President Trump the same thing: You are not above the law. Legal sanity has once again prevailed over Trump’s vanity.”
Earlier this year, the Trump-installed Kennedy Center Board tried to rename the institution the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, inspiring the lawsuit by Rep. Beatty. Judge Cooper blocked that effort and ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the building.
The Trump-surrogate Board hatched a new scheme, crediting Trump for a $250 million renovation (paid for by taxpayers) with the messages “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump” and “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
To date, the so-called Trump Kennedy Center Fund hasn’t raised a dime, the Board acknowledged.
In addition to these two dedications, the Board wanted to rebrand the entire Kennedy Center campus as the “Donald J. Trump Plaza.” Without providing evidence, the Board repeatedly warned of the Center’s imminent financial and structural collapse if it couldn’t proceed with the plan.
Judge Cooper wasn’t impressed.
“One final point: In its briefing, the government intones that, if the Board is not allowed to implement its latest resolution, the Kennedy Center will face financial peril and might even ‘be required to be taken down’ altogether,” Cooper wrote. “The government raised this same specter in the injunction proceedings before this Court and in its motion for a stay pending appeal before the D.C. Circuit. Each court rejected the contention.”
Far from the Center’s financial health being contingent upon Trump’s branding, Cooper noted: “In fact, evidence before the Court pointed in the opposite direction: The renaming of the Center coincided with declines in revenue and contributions, as artists cancelled performances, the Washington National Opera ended its 50-year residency, and ticket sales and viewership of the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast dropped precipitously.”
The Washington Post reported that ticket sales dropped in half the week after Trump’s takeover, and revenue kept cratering from there. Public tax filings show that the Kennedy Center’s revenue far outpaced its expenses before then.
Judge Cooper also described that argument as “beside the point.”
“The Court appreciates that major supporters of cultural institutions are routinely recognized with prominent inscriptions on buildings and in other public areas. But Congress had other ideas for the Kennedy Center,” his opinion states. “It limited such memorials and donor recognitions to discrete (and discreet) areas, so as not to detract from the Center’s function as an ongoing memorial to President Kennedy.”
The judge added that he would “not license a violation” of his orders “under threat that some unidentified donors will withhold their largesse if the Board is not allowed to have its way.”
“It can even less reward a decision by Board members, including the Chair, to curb the Center’s fundraising efforts because they cannot abide statutory restrictions on displaying his name,” he wrote.
Read the opinion in full here.
Threats from Trumps Bd of Directors: close Kennedy Center. These folks act like children - the Kennedy Center was established for a great President not the🤬🤬🤬 we have now. Great reporting ✌️🌹
Once my neighbor had a male dog that would urinate on other peoples' lawns to mark its territory. Just saying.