Kennedy Center Board Votes 20-3 to Carve Trump's Name Into the Facade and Close the Main Building for Two Years, Three Months After a Judge Ordered the Name Removed
On Thursday, August 13, 2026, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board of trustees — chaired by President Trump and composed mostly of his appointees — voted 20-3 during a roughly two-hour Zoom meeting to close the center's main building for a two-year, $250 million renovation and to attach Trump's name to the building again. The board approved changing the building's name to "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump," to be realized as an inscription reading "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" placed below the existing marquee bearing President Kennedy's name. The board separately voted to rename the physical site "President Donald J. Trump Plaza." The REACH, a 2019 addition, stays open for limited programming and as a memorial to Kennedy. Reopening is targeted for summer 2028. The vote came three months after U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled in May 2026 that the board's earlier renaming of the venue the "Trump-Kennedy Center" was unlawful, writing that "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," and separately blocking a planned closure as "ill-informed and preordained." A D.C. Circuit panel declined to stay that ruling. Federal law establishes the center as a memorial to Kennedy and bars renaming it — or adding "memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials" — without an act of Congress. The three votes against came from the congressional ex officio trustees: Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH-3), the plaintiff in the underlying lawsuit *Beatty v. Trump*, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA-2). Whitehouse said Trump called into the meeting and gave a speech for several minutes, after which the president's vote — and that of chief of staff Susie Wiles, a board member — were texted in. Democratic trustees said they still had not been given the assessments of what a closure would mean for the institution. The White House defended the plan; Beatty's counsel called the vote an effort to evade the court's ruling, setting up a likely contempt fight.
“What was not authorized is a demolition of the Kennedy Center. … If a federal facility is going to be demolished, it cannot be without congressional oversight here.”