President Donald Trump kicked off a Kennedy Center board meeting Monday at the White House by accusing past management of letting the institution “go to hell.” The cultural institution, he said, was in “very bad condition,” “a disaster,” “abysmal,” and “on the verge of collapse” — all while offering programming that was “very woke and out of touch with reality.”
It was a brutal assessment of the Kennedy Center — and a convenient one. By asserting that the Kennedy Center was “failing,” Trump can more easily justify his heavy-handed reshaping of it, including the extraordinary decision to close it for two years for renovations — a move that has elicited a lawsuit from Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio board member.
At one point, Trump, reading from prepared remarks, noted that the closure was subject to board approval before adding, “It’s a little late for the board because we already announced it. These are minor details. I think everybody agrees.”
Trump had good reason to expect the board of trustees to approve, which they did, given that he appointed them within weeks of taking office, an early move in remaking the Kennedy Center in his image. While Trump showed little interest in the institution during his first term — even skipping the Kennedy Center Honors — he has upended it in his second, to the dismay of much of the creative community. What had long been a bipartisan cultural institution in the nation’s capital has become another front in the culture wars.
After purging Biden appointees, Trump filled the board with allies, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — who was seated next to him Monday — longtime aide Dan Scavino, Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Fox News hosts Maria Bartiromo and Laura Ingraham and country singer Lee Greenwood. Trump also appointed himself chairman and a combative loyalist, Richard Grenell, as president.
The new board voted in December to rename The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — which had been established as a living memorial to the slain 35th president — by inserting Trump’s name first. This past February, Trump announced the closure of the center for two years, beginning just after the July 4 sesquitennial.
As Trump has remade the Kennedy Center, talent has begun heading for the exits. Actress and writer Issa Rae canceled a sold-out performance and Lin-Manuel Miranda canceled a “Hamilton” run for 2026; Philip Glass pulled out the premier of a new symphony; showrunner Shonda Rhimes resigned as treasurer of the board; and singer Renée Fleming and musician Ben Folds resigned as consultants. Ticket sales have reportedly plummeted.
Not everyone at the White House on Monday was on board with the changes.
“It’s unlawful,” Beatty told reporters after the meeting. “There was no due process of going through anything with the United States Congress, which by law they must do.”
In December, Beatty sued Trump and others over the name change; she amended the lawsuit earlier this month to also oppose Trump’s renovation plans. “This is a case about the ongoing desecration and impending destruction of a cherished national monument,” the lawsuit read, arguing that “only Congress may authorize the kind of demolition and rebuilding.”
A DOJ spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment. A Kennedy Center spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment.
Beatty said several board members came up after her brief remarks on Monday “and expressed that they were glad that I voiced my opinion.” Trump, she added, “stared” at her and expressed his opposition.
Current and former members of Congress have offered support for her and the legal team pursuing the case, Beatty said, along with people from around the country “who believe in the arts and the rule of law,” including Caroline Kennedy in recent days. (Several prominent Kennedy family members have already expressed outrage of the remaking of the center.) Beatty plans to continue legally challenging Trump’s changes “because it’s not about me, it is about the rule of law.”
New front in the culture wars
The Kennedy Center has a rich, bipartisan legacy. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed legislation in 1958 to create a National Cultural Center, which Congress later named in honor of Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. It opened in 1971 with the premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.”
The Kennedy Center Honors, which began in 1978, have paid tribute to legends of stage and screen, including Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen, Francis Ford Coppola and The Grateful Dead. Trump made himself master of ceremonies for the December event — a first for a sitting president — as the institution honored Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, KISS, Michael Crawford and George Strait.
The sprawling center, which includes a concert hall, opera house, theaters and other venues, was established as a public-private enterprise, which is funded through ticket sales, private donations and federal support; $45 million came from federal appropriations in 2024, according to the Washington Post.
When Trump appointed Grenell, in February 2025, he said they shared a “Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture and there would be “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”
Trump and his allies have suggested that the center, which hosts a wide variety of performances, has gone astray in its programming. “The Kennedy Center learned the hard way that if you go woke, you will go broke,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Wall Street Journal last month. And Grenell, who is known for taking aim at Trump critics on X, wrote in response to Miranda pulling “Hamilton” that his “publicity stunt…will backfire.”
Trump announced Friday that Grenell was stepping down, to be replaced by Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of facilities. Trump praised Grenell at Monday’s meeting.
Beatty won a more narrow legal victory this past weekend when a federal judge ordered that she be allowed to participate in Monday’s meeting. In her complaint, Beatty said she was muted when appearing virtually at the December meeting in which board members voted to rename the center to honor Trump. But Beatty’s suit against renaming and closing the center is ongoing.
“We will be returning to court expeditiously now to address the illegality of the closure of the Kennedy Center, including without congressional authorization, as well as the other unlawful actions here, including the renaming of this living memorial,” said Norm Eisen, co-executive chair of Democracy Defenders Action, who are representing Beatty along with the Washington Litigation Group.
“With the center closed, it’s no longer a living enterprise,” Eisen continued. “And with the name change, it’s no longer a memorial to the late President Kennedy.”
Trump is promising that the center will reopen in two years, better than ever. His critics worry that when it does, it may no longer resemble the national memorial Congress created in Kennedy’s name.
