D.C. Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling—that Congress created the Kennedy Center and only Congress can authorize what comes next for the now nearly-shuttered building was a plot twist truly worthy of the theater after months of Trumpian showboating and intrigue at the renowned performing arts venue. Cooper, an Obama appointee, temporarily halted the planned two-year closure for renovations and gave President Trump two weeks to take his name off the building dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy, a beloved fallen president.
At the Arts Club of Washington, a small concert venue, the group’s president declared in very distinct language that she was happy to introduce a soprano who had performed with “the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” The audience whooped and hollered, said Kandy Stroud, who was there. A member of the Choral Arts Society who had performed many times at the Kennedy Center in the pre-Trump era, Stroud told the Daily Beast she felt “great relief” at Judge Cooper’s ruling.
Well, at least at first.
Exhilaration soon gave way to reality as Trump then threatened to abandon the Kennedy Center if the court’s ruling stood. Now, a quick primer on what you missed before this intermission: Congress has appropriated money for renovations at the Center—which it needs—and the original plan was for it to remain open during this period of work. But since Trump muscled his way into the spotlight, there have been so many cancellations, and such a drop in ticket sales, that a temporary closure seemed a graceful way out of an embarrassing standoff. (Trump had previously ordered this closure beginning July 5.)
The Center is open for now, recently hosting the Broadway musical “Chicago,” along with several ballet performances. It remains the home for the National Symphony Orchestra, which soldiers on.
“It would be wonderful if it stays open and people came back,” Stroud continued, while cautioning that she’s not quite sure if the Center “is ready to start rocking again.” While Trump has exaggerated the problems of an aging building, he’s not wrong that it needs updating. “A lot has to be done to the Kennedy Center,” says Stroud. There’s no argument there. The fix-up is welcome, but will he do it if he can’t brand the building with his name?
Trump took over the Center’s board soon after returning to the White House, firing all the Biden-era appointees, replacing them with goons and sycophants, and making himself chairman. In December of last year, he cited a vote from this board to approve renaming the venue as the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
(Incidentally, it was a former ex-officio board member, Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, who brought the case to Judge Cooper.)
“It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not,” Maria Shriver, a Kennedy niece, wrote at the time on Instagram. After Judge Cooper’s ruling, she thanked the court for the birthday gift to her uncle on what would have been his 109th birthday.
Word had spread quickly in the artistic community that performing at the venue—certainly once it was ‘re-christened’ with Trump’s name—would be damaging. (One donor who did not want to be identified told the Daily Beast she personally advised a top performer, “If you don’t cancel, you’re colluding with him.”) So the talent bailed, the audiences stayed home, and the management team installed by the White House fired everybody who knew anything.
Judge Cooper’s ruling is a step in the right direction to remove Trump’s name, but there’s no guarantee the ruling will hold—and there’s the potential for it to backfire if Trump bails and lets the Center languish. A Kennedy Center spokeswoman said they will appeal. And Trump’s reaction on social media struck an ominous tone: “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” he wrote.
He’s threatening to walk away from the mess he created, because of course he is—that’s a textbook Trump move.
This leaves the iconic institution at a crossroads. Some $257 million in the Big Beautiful Bill was allocated for the renovations at the Center. While significant, that won’t cover what is needed to run a world-class performing arts venue that, in its prime, hosted 2,000 cultural events, theater performances, Broadway shows and more each year.
The chairman of the board ousted by Trump last year was David Rubenstein, a philanthropist who donated and raised millions for the Kennedy Center. It’s not clear that Trump ever tried to fill that hole left by Rubenstein—certainly not from his own pockets—or that Rubenstein would return if Trump does exit stage right.
While the donor who spoke with the Beast is optimistic that attendees—from center right to center left on the political spectrum—would be willing to participate and re-engage now that the bad guy has been booed off by the crowd, some things are hard to undo. The last year and a half have been enormously disruptive to many—the people who bought tickets, the people who worked at the Kennedy Center, and the people in the artistic community who lost a beautiful venue.
For now, Trump is stung, and he’s lost his lines. Once he gets over his initial pique, he’ll do what he always does—go off script. That leaves many questions for those also caught up in the performance. Will he really remove his name from the building? If he gives up on the Center, will the board he put in place step up and function like a real board?
That is Rep. Beatty’s hope. She told Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott of the board that, “They don’t want to be sued, they don’t want to be part of this travesty. I think they will regroup and do what is right for the arts.”
But there’s no guarantee. It will be sad to watch the Kennedy Center go unattended if Trump loses interest in refurbishing an institution that does not bear his name. And having to wait until the next president to step in and revive the Center could mean it’s in a worse state long before it gets better. Like so much of what is happening in Washington, the future of the Kennedy Center is in the hands of a man who cares little about the arts and a lot about himself and how he’s perceived.
