The Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted to immediately close the institution for renovations, a source familiar with the vote said, after President Trump and his allies on the board repeatedly warned of financial and physical ruin for the center if no action is taken.
For more than a year, the president has pushed for the center to be overhauled and for its performing arts programming to be shaken up — and his administration has pushed to add his name to the building.
Mr. Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — whose wife, Allison, sits on the Kennedy Center board — called into the board’s meeting Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter told CBS News. One Democratic member of the board who has sued over the changes to the center, Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, alleged in a statement that the president “verbally berated” her ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Earlier Tuesday, a federal judge again blocked the board — which is chaired by Mr. Trump and composed of his Cabinet members and political allies — from adding Mr. Trump’s name to the building after he had previously ordered it to be removed.
“Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in his ruling.
Cooper’s ruling came in response to the board’s vote in August to add the inscription “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump” beneath the Kennedy Center’s name on the building.
The government told the court it plans to appeal Tuesday’s ruling.
Last December, the board had voted to rename the center “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” and added Mr. Trump’s name to the facade. Judge Cooper ruled in May that Mr. Trump’s name had been added illegally and ordered its removal. At the time, he also blocked the administration from closing the venue for renovations.
Since Mr. Trump’s name was removed, the exterior wall displaying the Kennedy Center’s name has been obscured by a tarp-covered scaffold.
Lawyers for the Justice Department argued in court filings in the lawsuit that the center’s “dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit” conditions and recent financial losses put the living memorial to President John F. Kennedy in a “financial and structural death spiral” that requires it to be closed for renovations.
Last year, Congress approved $250 million for the renovation project.
In a Truth Social post shortly after the board voted Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that construction would not begin on the center until after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on a Justice Department appeal of Cooper’s earlier order barring the first renaming, with Mr. Trump’s name on the building.
“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,” Mr. Trump said, adding that he has raised $17 million so far in donations to send to the center to “keep it afloat.”
The source of the donations mentioned by Mr. Trump was not disclosed, and it’s unclear where the donations are going.
Beatty told reporters the president “threw a tantrum [during Tuesday’s board meeting] because he lost in court.”
“He was very explicit with his words, and I responded equally as explicit,” Beatty said. She added that she and Mr. Trump engaged in a “heated debate” during the meeting, and he “used some descriptive words that I took objection to. I am educated, I’m intelligent, I can read, and I am not doing this for any other reason than it’s unlawful.”
The White House responded to Beatty’s allegation that Mr. Trump verbally assailed her by accusing Democrats of neglecting the Kennedy Center.
“President Trump stepped up to save it, and Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America Last,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said.
