Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board again votes to close venue, calling it ‘unsafe’

President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to immediately shutter the performing arts center, a source familiar with the decision said, after its members argued the institution is in “dire” financial and structural shape.The board’s vote came shortly after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected the board’s latest effort to add Trump’s name to the building’s facade — a move the board says is necessary to save the memorial to John F. Kennedy from bankruptcy.The board had cited a partial ceiling collapse in the center’s Grand Foyer earlier this month as evidence the center needed to be immediately closed for repairs. A construction consultant and the center’s director “consider the main building to be unsafe for continued occupancy, and anticipate further risk to the public and employees if the building is not immediately closed and renovations begun,” the board said in a draft resolution to close the center for two years. It was the third time since February that the board voted to close the center for renovations for a two-year period. Ex-officio board member Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, has challenged those efforts in court, saying the board needs congressional approval to close the venue and did not fully investigate whether it would be possible to keep parts of the center open during renovations.Attorneys for the board have said the legal action has kept them from doing necessary repairs, but the judge presiding over the case noted at a hearing Tuesday — as he had previously — that his earlier order preventing full closure allowed for emergency repairs. Trump, the board’s chairman, joined the closed-door meeting virtually and spent several minutes criticizing both Beatty and the judge who blocked his name from being added to the façade, according to a source familiar with the meeting.In a separate resolution that was not expected to be taken up Tuesday, the Kennedy Center said it “is in a dire financial position” and facing potential bankruptcy after it “exhausted its fiscal resources” and that only the board’s chairman, President Donald Trump, is in a position to rescue it. In order to do so, the board had said he would have to be recognized for his efforts on the exterior of the building. “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,” the draft resolution that was made public in a court filing said. “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.”“With certain fiscal collapse within weeks, the board seeks to determine what recognition and acknowledgement will comply” with the judge’s earlier order banning the center from being renamed the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The board had voted last month to instead add the words “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the building and to rename the property “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” by Sept. 8. The new draft resolution offered numerous other similar suggestions.In a ruling issued just ahead of the board vote, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found the board’s latest attempt to add Trump’s name to the facade was also illegal.“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing. The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”Beatty’s attorney, Norm Eisen, accused the board on Monday of effectively trying to shake the institution down. “Pay up or the Kennedy Center closes, & the price is Trump’s name on the building,” Eisen wrote in a post on X, calling it an “outrageous act of hostage taking.”