The much-debated potential two-year closure of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is being proposed to cover up the institution’s failings since US president Donald Trump installed loyalists to the board and became its chair, says Ohio Democrat Joyce Beatty in a fiery 51-page Friday filing in US District Court for Washington, D.C. Beatty is an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. Trump has insisted the closure is necessary and dictated a date for it, the filing points out, without any proper board oversight.
The strongly worded filing says the administration has responded “grudgingly—to put it generously” to requests for information; criticizes a defense by Trump as being based on “a fake one-year review that never happened”; cites a “sham process to lend a false patina of legitimacy”; and, in a piquant choice of words given Trump’s admiration of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, calls Trump’s decision to close the center a “ukase,” a term referring to a proclamation by a tsar. All that is on page one.
The Kennedy Center referred ARTnews’s request for comment on the filing to the Department of Justice, which did not immediately respond.
Charles Matthew Floca, facilities manager, was charged with finding a consultant “to bless Trump’s closure decision,” says the filing. Only the Delta Consulting Group applied, and the group was required to provide a recommendation within just days. The board approved Trump’s decision to close the center on August 13, 2025, and, says the filing, only received Delta’s written report on August 31, two weeks later. “The bizarre timeline says it all,” says the filing.
The board then held another vote on September 15, seemingly indicating the insufficiency of the first one, and, says the filing, preparatory materials were provided to participants just three days before. It contained serious inaccuracies, says the filing, including that congressionally appropriated funds for the center’s renovation must be spent by September 2029, which Beatty says is false, pointing out that the funds can be spent through September 2034.
The “kicker,” says the filing, is that Floca and others told trustees that construction costs would double, increasing by more than $300 million, if a phased approach to repairs were implemented. Meanwhile, letters from real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle, called upon to outline the schedule for renovations, make clear that “Delta’s estimates were exaggerated,” but those letters were not shared with the trustees.
The two-year closure plan, says the filing, “was designed, not in good faith for the best interests of the Center, but to cover up Defendants’ own mismanagement and to please Trump.”
The filing says that the organization’s chief financial officer texted Floca on September 10, saying, “We need to get shut” because “we are burning money,” memorializing statements by the board’s vice chair, Jennifer Fischer, in a conversation with US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick. She also said that “opponents [will] say [prior Kennedy Center president Richard] Grenell raised a ton of money and then we burned it to the ground.”
The timeline, says the filing, is transparently motivated by Trump’s desire to preside over the reopening. As Lutnick himself said outside the courthouse ahead of a hearing, “why would the President agree to work on the restoration where he’s going to be the President for the next… two-and-a-half years, and then he’s leaving?”
Trump fired the longtime board chair in February 2025 and stocked the board with supporters, and was swiftly elected chair by the new board members; Floca was appointed in March 2026 though he “lacks arts management expertise.”
Attendance and donations then dropped significantly. In December 2025, the board announced it would add Trump’s name to the center, a move Beatty sued to stop. Artists canceled scheduled performances and ticket sales dropped by as much as 70 percent, notes the filing. Trump announced on February 1, 2026 that “I have determined” that the center would close on July 4 and cease operations to allow for a two-year renovation, citing a “one year review” with experts. “No such review ever happened,” says Beatty’s filing.
Congress had appropriated $257 million for upkeep of the building in 2025, with construction phased out over time and the center remaining open. Floca initially said he recommended the two-year closure in January 2026, and has testified that the duration was set by Trump in a message on his social media platform, Truth Social. Beatty amended her suit to stop the closure and requested information to evaluate the validity of the decision. Defendants failed to provide information just days before a scheduled March 16 vote, she says, resulting in the court issuing an order requiring defendants to hand over materials. But no such materials had even been prepared, says the filing.
By the time the meeting came, Trump said it was “too late for the board” to object “because we’ve already announced the closure.” Trustee input was, he said, a “minor detail.”
Despite a court ruling prohibiting the closure, management wound down programming, says the filing. Foca claims he took no efforts to develop the 2026–27 season and even encouraged the National Symphony Orchestra to leave the campus, depriving the center of thousands of ticket sales. Staff layoffs continued.
Changing input from JLL, meantime, first indicated that total closure was necessary, but later revised its advice, saying phased renovations were feasible but also noting that the Kennedy Center’s “true needs approach $400–450 million.” Keeping the center open during the work would incur additional costs of $60 million–$80 million. The latter message was withheld from the trustees, says the filing.
The board then looked for a consultant to support the necessity of Trump’s proposed two-year closure. Only Delta Consulting Group applied, though, according to Beatty, it “lacked any expertise in performing arts management.” It was told to assume a two-year closure beginning with Trump’s decreed date of July 6. JLL’s revised assessment, saying the center could remain open during work, was not provided to Delta.
What’s more, documents included in the filing indicate that Lutnick “shaped the content of Delta’s presentation,” which stated that phased renovations would cost some $560 million, more than twice what Congress had appropriated. “Management knew that was not accurate,” says the filing, noting that JLL’s updated plan calculated only an additional cost of $41 million for a phased renovation.
Furthermore, the defendants produced JLL’s second, revised report only after the completion of depositions in the case, despite its relevance, says the filing, adding that Floca denied under questioning that any updated plan existed.
Heavy rains on September 4 caused the collapse of a small section of ceiling plaster in the foyer, which the center informed staff would result in closure for the rest of the day. Three days before the September 15 meeting, the board received new information, containing two draft resolutions. One again proposed adding Trump’s name to the building, saying that “certain fiscal collapse” would result if Trump were not recognized on the building’s facade as he could not be expected to provide oversight without receiving that distinction. “This was the first and only time that the full Board has been informed of the institution’s ‘certain fiscal collapse,’” says the filing. It also proposed once again that the board approve Trump’s plan to close for two years. It revealed for the first time that Delta and Floca considered the main building “unsafe for continued occupancy.”
Beatty appealed to the court and the renaming proposal was taken off the agenda.
Floca then told the trustees that phased work would double the cost, and the board voted for closure. Trump said that day on social media that the center would close immediately but that renovation couldn’t continue until the court ruled on the name change and that if it did not go through, the work would not take place.
Floca then announced on September 16 that the main building would need to close immediately for safety reasons. The same day, Trump told reporters that unless his name went on the facade, “it’s going to close, it will end up being ripped down.” The same night, a photographer captured an image of him on Air Force One, reading a placard that appeared to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
