The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could be demolished if repairs are not carried out, the Trump administration warned in a court filing on Monday.
Lawyers for the US president said the national arts complex in Washington DC must undergo a $250m renovation or risk facing the wrecking ball.
“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,” they argued.
The warning came as Donald Trump leaves a trail of destruction in Washington, demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a $600m ballroom and ordering a renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool that resulted in algae blooms and a peeling liner.
The court filing represented the first time that Trump’s allies have raised the prospect of knocking down the Kennedy Center – a 100ft-high complex with a concert hall, opera house and theatre – as the dire alternative to closing it for two years of improvements. Such an aggressive move would be sure to face legal challenges, protests and an outcry from historic preservation groups.
The threat emerged on Monday as the administration urged a federal judge to reject a fresh legal challenge to Trump’s efforts to put his name on the Kennedy Center. The dispute has become part of a months-long battle over the president’s attempt to alter the memorial created by Congress in honour of John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, who was assassinated in 1963.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge ruled in May that only Congress has the power to change the Kennedy Center’s name. But the centre’s board, now largely made up of Trump appointees, voted 20-3 on 13 August to change the building’s signage to read: “The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J Trump.” It also voted to name the grounds the “President Donald J Trump Plaza”.
The administration argued the latest proposal did not breach the court’s injunction because the building would still formally be called the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The words “Restored and Renovated by” merely acknowledge Trump’s role, lawyers said, comparing the inscription with acknowledgments of major donors at other cultural institutions.
The filing was made in response to a request by Joyce Beatty, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio and a member of the Kennedy Center board by virtue of her position in Congress, to stop Trump’s name being restored to the facade.
Beatty sued last year after the centre altered its white marble facade to read “The Donald J Trump and John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts”. In May, Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump’s name removed, ruling that the venue “must be named for, and is meant to honor, President Kennedy alone”.
Cooper added: “Congress named the Kennedy Center and only Congress can change it.”
Trump’s name was removed from the facade in June and a big tarpaulin has covered the affected section of the building since then. An appeals court last month rejected the administration’s request to keep the name in place while it challenges Cooper’s ruling.
Nathaniel Zelinsky, a lawyer for Beatty, described Monday’s filing as legally baseless and said it “reads like it was written personally by Donald Trump”. Judge Cooper is due to hear Beatty’s request for an injunction at a hearing in federal court in Washington on Thursday.
The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as a living memorial to Kennedy and opened in 1971. It has hosted stars ranging from Frank Sinatra and Beyoncé to Robert De Niro and Lin-Manuel Miranda. It has been limping artistically and commercially since Trump took over last year, culling staff and declaring war on “woke” programming.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that ticket sales, already down since Trump seized control, plummeted further after his board of trustees voted in December to rename the complex after him and put his name on its marble facade.
Norm Eisen, a former White House “ethics czar” and co-founder of the nonpartisan group Democracy Defenders Action, posted on social media that “the administration is now threatening in federal court to LEVEL the Kennedy Center if Trump does not get his way. His path of destruction knows no bounds & he will answer for it in court.”
John Larson, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, condemned Trump’s threat. “No one is surprised that someone with an ego as big as Donald Trump’s believes their name should be above John F Kennedy’s on our beloved former president’s living memorial,” said Larson. “I wish President Trump were more focused on ending the illegal war he launched in Iran than he is on destroying the Kennedy Center and building his taxpayer-funded ballroom.”
Hands Off the Arts, a group of more than 2,800 activists opposed to government censorship of the arts, said in a statement: “President Trump today issued the judge and American people a threat: ‘Allow me to hijack JFK’s memorial or I will turn it into a crater.’ As Americans, we have already watched in anger the obliteration of the East Wing to satisfy Trump’s vanity – we won’t let it happen again to the Kennedy Center. This is the people’s memorial to honor JFK, and we refuse to let it be desecrated or demolished.”
