The Trump-appointed board of the Kennedy Center voted on Tuesday to immediately close the performing arts center due to financial issues after a judge blocked the board’s proposal to rename the building after President Trump.
In a meeting held minutes after the judge’s ruling, the board of trustees voted to close the center, citing the institution’s dire financial straits and structural problems which they say make continued operation unsafe, the Associated Press reported.
Judge Christopher Cooper on Tuesday upheld his May ruling that the board cannot rename the center in honor of Trump without congressional approval.
“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 response to Cooper’s original ruling, the board had proposed several inscription options to honor Trump, efforts Cooper dismissed as “word games” in his Tuesday order. The board said in their proposal that Trump would be unlikely to appropriate the funds for the needed reservations “without such appropriate recognition.”
“The Kennedy Center is in such a precarious fiscal position that it will not be able to support its payroll obligations, nor routine maintenance contracts within a matter of weeks,” an earlier draft resolution from the board read. “While actively considering alternative means of fiscal survival, President Trump has offered to step in and raise the necessary funds to keep the Center from bankruptcy during its much needed renovation.”
Since February, the board has voted three times to close the center for renovations for a two-year period. The venue was scheduled to close on July 5, but remained open after attorneys for the board said legal efforts by ex-officio board member Representative Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio) prevented its closure. Beatty has argued the board did not do its due diligence before deciding to close the venue, and had not fully investigated whether it would be possible to keep parts of the center open during renovations.
The board previously pointed to a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer as the reasoning for the center’s immediate closure.
Sources told NBC that Trump, who serves as the board’s chairman, joined the board meeting virtually and “spent several minutes criticizing both Beatty and the judge who blocked his name from being added to the façade.”
Cooper ruled in May that only Congress can approve changes to the center’s name, after the board had already added Trump’s name above Kennedy’s. The board then installed an elevated tarp to obscure Trump’s name and most of Kennedy’s.
Trump reacted to the judge’s ruling and the board’s vote in a post on Truth Social: “The Renovation and Reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name,” he wrote. “If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be … the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”