The Trump administration is threatening to demolish the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if it does not get its wish to close it for two years in order to renovate it.
In a Monday court filing, the administration describes the building as “dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit” and argues that, absent its proposed renovation, the building “will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site,” noting that “some” unidentified people have “for many years” proposed an outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River.
“Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy,” argues the administration in the filing, “but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain.”
The filing, in US District Court for the District of Columbia, was submitted by Brett A. Shumate, assistant attorney general; Eric J. Hamilton, deputy assistant attorney general; and Brantley T. Mayers, counsel to the assistant attorney general.
The filing claims that Trump obtained $258 million in funding from Congress for capital restoration in 2025, as well as recruiting donors to finance an endowment. His “efforts and prestige,” Trump’s lawyers write, “provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” and without his invovelment, the Kennedy Center will “continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral.”
They lawyers add that “without the Trump administration, its people, and President Trump, the Center cannot survive, either structurally or financially.” They say that the building is “embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital.”
Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat in the House of Representatives and ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, filed an emergency appeal in federal court on August 20, seeking to block the center from restoring president Donald Trump’s name to the building.
The board had voted earlier this month to engrave the president’s name on the venue’s facade so that the signage read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” (It had previously added his name as part of the name of the facility.) Additionally, if the newly established Trump Kennedy Center Fund reaches $100 million, the board would approve a second inscription reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” They also wish to rename the site that contains the Center as “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
Beatty’s counsel has described the board’s actions as “clear violations” of a prior court order. The authors of the Monday filing say that Beatty is “seemingly motivated by a partisan end to ensure the Kennedy Center does not succeed under President Trump’s leadership.” Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest filing.
The organization’s board had voted in December 2025 to add Trump’s name to the institution and to the signage on its facade, leading to a legal standoff in the courts between the Trump administration and historic preservationists. Any such change, legal experts warn, could violate an act of Congress designating the building as a memorial solely to honor assassinated president John F. Kennedy.
Trump installed himself as chairman of the organization’s board a month after taking office for his second term. The board also includes ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi (who represented Trump in his first impeachment trial), Fox host Laura Ingraham, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and Trump adviser Susie Wiles.
In May, US District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the board could not rename the institution, which Congress dedicated as a living memorial to Kennedy in 1964, and that any name change would require congressional approval. Cooper also found that the Kennedy Center board had acted unlawfully in approving a two-year closure for renovations.
