The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, whose board Trump filled with loyalists who then elected him chairman, is warning that it faces “certain fiscal collapse” within weeks. A draft resolution and a 57-page packet sent to trustees ahead of a special meeting on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, obtained by The Washington Post and The New York Times, say the center could be unable to make payroll or pay routine maintenance contracts and risks bankruptcy.
The proposed remedy is Trump's name. The resolution says Trump has offered to raise the money to keep the center afloat, but only with “appropriate recognition” of his role, and that without it he is unlikely to lead the rescue or oversee a planned renovation. Trustees are being asked to choose among 10 inscriptions for the building's exterior. One reads: “Renovation Restoration and Endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.” Board member and longtime Trump ally Paolo Zampolli told the Times, “Trump attracts money. So when Trump says donate to this place, everyone will donate.”
The history matters. Trump's name was added to the building's exterior in December 2025, a judge ruled it must be removed, and the lettering came down in June (see The Kennedy Center Board Trump Chairs Adds His Name to the Building, and a Federal Judge Orders It Removed). In August the board voted again to add his name and to close for a years-long renovation, then told a federal judge it would not try to put his name on the building before October 8. The center has also argued in court that it would have to return millions of dollars in private donations if his name is not on the facade.
The finances deteriorated after the takeover. The Post reported the center was slated to collect about $124 million of the $220 million in revenue it had budgeted, “leaving a roughly $23 million deficit even after substantial spending cuts.” Artists canceled events after Trump took over, and ticket sales fell to their lowest levels since the pandemic, according to U.S. media reports cited by AFP.
There is a physical problem as well. On September 4, a section of ceiling plaster roughly four by five feet fell about 60 feet in the Grand Foyer. No one was hurt. Management has deemed the building “unsafe for continued occupancy,” and trustees are being asked to close the main building immediately. The center pointed AFP to a statement from spokesperson Roma Daravi blaming “decades of neglect and deferred maintenance by the previous leadership,” and an anonymous spokesperson said adding Trump's name “attracted new donors and was crucial to raising additional funds for the Center's renovation.”
Court filings on September 14 added detail and dispute. Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio trustee suing over the renaming, filed the draft resolutions and asked Judge Cooper to find the inscription plan in violation of his May ruling. Her notice said the closure resolution “incorrectly asserts that the Delta Consulting Group considers the main building 'unsafe for continued occupancy,' when Delta expressly disclaimed providing any such opinion.” The August vote had also renamed the site the President Donald J. Trump Plaza, Reuters reported, and the center has argued the building may be demolished if the roughly $257 million renovation does not go forward. The Washington Litigation Group, representing Beatty, called the effort “the definition of insanity” and said, “now Trump is taking the Center hostage and threatening to in effect kill it unless he gets his way.”
Update (September 16, 2026): on September 15, Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the board's plan to inscribe Trump's name on the building and rename the grounds for him. The board then voted to close the main building for two years, and Trump posted that the renovation “will not take place” unless an appeals court or the Supreme Court approves “the Board's approved name” (see A Judge Blocks Trump's Name From the Kennedy Center Again; the Board Closes the Building for Two Years and Trump Says It Could Be 'Ripped Down').
Update (September 30, 2026): a Washington Post investigation published September 30 reports that in the 19 months since Trump took over, “the institution has borrowed everything its bank would lend it, dipped into money donors had given on the condition it never be spent and written off pledges from supporters who stopped paying.” In its September 28 appeal brief the Justice Department agrees that “the Center's finances are equally in disrepair” and says that “Just this month, the Kennedy Center was only able to pay its bills thanks to 17 million dollars raised by President Trump,” a figure no one outside the administration has confirmed. Without the administration, it argues, the center “will eventually collapse, with a determination to follow on how to proceed, and what to do with the site” (see A Judge Blocks Trump's Name From the Kennedy Center Again; the Board Closes the Building for Two Years and Trump Says It Could Be 'Ripped Down').