President Donald Trump said the board of the Kennedy Center voted Tuesday to shut down the building for “safety reasons,” coming shortly after a federal judge again ruled that the performing arts center was legally prohibited from adding Trump’s name.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the board of the Kennedy Center agreed “almost unanimously, to close the Building for Safety reasons, and so that it can begin the process of Reconstruction.” The closing will take place immediately, he said.
However, Trump said, the renovation project “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name. 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.”
Attorneys from the Justice Department will ask for “an expedited appeal” in the matter. A federal judge previously barred the Kennedy Center from shutting down as Trump had wanted. “In the meantime, 17 Million Dollars, raised by President Trump, has been put into The Kennedy Center account to keep it afloat,” Trump wrote in the post.
The Kennedy Center board’s decision to shut down came after a judge again ruled that the addition of Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center violated federal law.
On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on an emergency motion seeking to block the board of the Kennedy Center — which is comprised of Trump loyalists — from adding his name in other places on the building and its grounds.
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote in his decision. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”
In May, Cooper, an Obama appointee, ordered the center to remove Trump’s name from the building and other materials. The performing arts center complied with his order, and since then a tarp has covered the front façade.
Despite that, Cooper wrote in the ruling, “the drama at the Kennedy Center continues. Despite the Court’s order, on August 13, 2026, the Board passed a resolution ‘to recognize and honor President Trump’s current and future existential and unprecedented contributions to the survival of the Center’ in three different ways.”
Per the board’s resolution, on the façade below its official name, “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” there would be an additional line reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The board also voted to designate “the physical site and grounds upon which the center sits” as the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
Cooper granted the motion filed by Rep. U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who had originally sued the Kennedy Center and Trump over the renaming, to block the proposed additions.
Beatty is “entitled to enforcement of the Court’s injunction, which reflects Congress’s decision to memorialize President Kennedy, and no one else, at the Center bearing his name,” Cooper wrote. A copy of the decision is available at this link.
In his ruling earlier this spring, Cooper also granted Beatty’s request for a preliminary injunction to block Trump from taking any further steps to close the institution. Trump had previously proclaimed that the Kennedy Center would shut down for two years starting July 4, 2026, to undergo a “complete rebuilding.”
Trump, in a post earlier Tuesday on Truth Social, said the Kennedy Center was in a dangerous state of disrepair when he returned to the White House in 2025. “The Board of the Kennedy Center has strongly voted to save it, and they know I’m the only one who can do so, because I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct — that few others have. I also have the strength and power of the Presidency, which will be needed do what must be done, and give it a strong shot at Greatness again!” he wrote.
Variety has reached out to reps from the Kennedy Center for additional information and comment.
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