Judge Orders Kennedy Center to Give 30 Days' Notice Before Any Demolition

Since Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump's name removed from the Kennedy Center in June, and the Trump-appointed board voted in August to close the building for up to two years for a $257 million renovation, the dispute has moved from naming rights to a fight over whether the building itself survives.

On Tuesday, September 15, the board voted to close the building "immediately" for safety reasons, according to a Truth Social post from Trump. The closure came two days after Cooper ruled a second time against Trump getting his name on the center, and after the D.C. Circuit had already rejected the board's request to add an inscription crediting Trump with the renovation.

The next day, Wednesday, September 16, Trump told reporters in Charlotte, North Carolina, that his administration deserved recognition for its renovation efforts. "I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition because, frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close," he said, according to The Guardian. "It'll end up being ripped down. It's in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape."

That night, an Agence France-Presse photographer captured Trump on Air Force One looking at a poster that appeared to read "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED," with the final letters obscured by the aircraft's window frame. The Guardian was explicit that the photo "does not establish that demolition was being planned." Other outlets ran with more charged framing: MS NOW quoted Rep. Joyce Beatty's filing calling it evidence Trump's allies "appear to be actively considering the demolition of the Center," while Breitbart and the Epoch Times described the poster as reading "Kennedy Center DEMOLISH."

Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex officio Kennedy Center board member who has led the legal fight to block Trump's renaming push, filed the photo with Judge Cooper on Thursday, September 17, alongside a request for an emergency hearing on what she called the "unlawful closure" of the building. She argued the board might be using a temporary shutdown as cover for a permanent one, and cited a witness who said a forklift struck the building's pillars multiple times.

Cooper denied the emergency hearing. He ordered the Kennedy Center's board to give Beatty's legal team at least 30 days' written notice before any change to the project's scope, including "but not limited to any 'demolition' of the Center's main building." He also ordered a sworn status report on the current closure by next Wednesday.

The Justice Department, in its filing opposing Beatty's motion, said the current closure is a separate, one-week measure "unless extended," distinct from the board's earlier vote to shut the building for up to two years of renovation. Kennedy Center executive director Matt Floca said in a sworn declaration that the shutdown addresses "acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration," pointing to a partial ceiling collapse in the main hallway and an inspection of the roof terrace canopy. Fox News reported the ceiling collapse happened during a rainstorm, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had circulated video of concrete and steel failures at the building days earlier.

Kennedy Center vice president of public relations Roma Davari told "Real America's Voice" that "nothing is being demolished" and blamed media coverage for the confusion. White House spokeswoman Liz Huston echoed that line to CNBC and the Epoch Times, saying "For years, Democrats let the Kennedy Center rot, allowing water damage and crumbling infrastructure to turn a national treasure into a building in decay," and that without Trump's intervention "the Kennedy Center will inevitably continue to decline."

Beatty's attorney Norm Eisen took the opposite view, telling Breitbart that "closing the Kennedy Center without Judge Cooper's approval appears to directly violate his order" and calling it "an assault on the rule of law." Beatty herself said in a statement it was "outrageous that we have gotten to the point of consistent judicial intervention to protect this historic institution from getting bulldozed by the President."

The administration's own filings acknowledge the financial stakes driving the standoff: without Trump's name on the building, they argue, fundraising for the renovation will suffer. Cooper has already rejected that argument once, ruling the government hadn't shown that donations "hinge on President Trump's name being on the building." That ruling is now under appeal at the D.C. Circuit, and the board's separate two-year closure vote is still pending before Cooper, meaning the building's actual fate, whether renovated, demolished, or handed back to Congress as Trump has threatened, still depends on court rulings that haven't come down yet.