Kennedy Center attorneys defended the board’s decision earlier this month to restore Donald Trump‘s name three times to the complex, arguing that it is essential to saving the institution.
Earlier this month, the board, chaired by Trump and dominated by his allies, voted for a resolution to return Trump’s name to the front facade of the complex. Below the inscription, “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” would read “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump.” Once a $100 million threshold is met for an endowment, another inscription would be placed below that to read, “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
The board also voted to rename “the physical site and grounds upon which the center sits” as the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
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Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) is challenging the inscriptions and installations, arguing that it violates a previous court order that forced the Kennedy Center to remove Trump from the official name of the institution. In June, a crew removed lettering on the facade that had placed “The Donald J. Trump and” above “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” A tarp was installed in June that covers the facade and its original naming.
In a federal court filing late on Monday, the center’s attorneys wrote that “the Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal.”
They added, “The Board also underscores, and the undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral. The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.”
In the filing, the Kennedy Center attorneys credited Trump with obtaining $258 million in federal funding for center renovations, as the budget outlay was part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed Congress last year. They also wrote that Trump has “marshalled a new donor base to finance an endowment for the Center. These efforts promise to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund desperately needed structural improvements, thereby making the Center physically and financially secure for generations to come and, perhaps most importantly, to make the Center structurally safe from collapse or calamity.”
The attorneys, led by Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, also warned that the Trump recognition was linked to the very survival of the complex itself.
They wrote, “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years. Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain.”
That said, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that it obtained financial documents showing that ticket sales and fundraising collapsed after Trump’s name was added to the center in December. The Post reported that the center’s own financial projections from last spring were on track to fall nearly $100 million short of revenue targets. After the name change, artists canceled performances. Per the Post, a Kennedy Center spokesperson blamed the financial problems on previous leadership, and argued that putting Trump’s name on the complex helped attract new donors. The spokesperson also said that the fiscal 2027 budget is balanced.
Beatty filed an emergency motion last week, arguing that the restoration of the president’s name to the complex violates U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s conclusion that “the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so.” The called the Trump naming “a transparent effort to rename the Center in President Trump’s honor, and at a minimum constitutes an unlawful attempt to memorialize President Trump by returning his name to the portico and grounds where this Court held it does not belong.”
Cooper has set a hearing for Thursday.
In their filing, the center’s attorneys argued that the resolution to install Trump’s name was “completely lawful,” as it is not a “memorial” under “any plausible reading of the statute and in line with the recognition of major donors at similar facilities. They also wrote that renaming of the plaza for Trump was legal, as Congress “authorized the Board to ‘maintain and administer’ the ‘site’ containing the Center, and that entails the authority to name it.”
The center attorneys also claimed that Beatty voted against the resolution to restore Trump’s name but “she explicitly stated that she had ‘no objection’ to one component of it—re-naming the Center’s grounds after President Trump to honor the work he is doing to save the Kennedy Center.”
Beatty’s attorneys said in a statement, “Beatty voted no on the resolution and she is staunchly opposed to this latest illegality–including the unlawful effort to rename the plaza. She will refute their characterization of her comments in Court.”
A Kennedy Center spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
