‘It will never be the same’: How Trump turned on the Kennedy Center and brought it to its knees

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

When President Donald Trump’s name was ordered removed from the Kennedy Center this spring, it seemed that an opening to move on from his reign over the performing arts center might have emerged.

“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” the president wrote in a late-May Truth Social post , seemingly relinquishing the control he’d seized a year prior.

Speculation even bubbled up among some of the more than a dozen “ex-officio,” board members — who don’t get a vote but are not allied with Trump — over whether the former board chairman, billionaire philanthropist David Rubenstein, could be brought back to help restore the center’s fundraising and programming, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. (CNN has asked Rubenstein for comment.)

But after Trump said he would remain chairman, “it kind of all squelched pretty quickly,” one of the sources said. The hope that his crusade to rename a monument dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy had ended turned out to be wishful thinking.

Instead, nine months from a cold December day when cranes first placed Trump’s name on the marble façade, the institution has been brought to the brink by the president still very much engaged in a fight: lights have been turned off inside , infrastructure is crumbling and protests swirl while legal battles mount.

A lawsuit brought by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex-officio board member, led to a judge’s ruling that Trump’s name had to be scraped off the building and that the board could not shut down the facility altogether.

Trump has only ratcheted up his threats to tear down the building in response to the legal setbacks: The president was seen with a poster this week through the window of Air Force One that appeared to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” Though the federal judge has since ordered a 30-day notice be given before any major change happens, it’s not at all clear where things go from here.

Late Friday night, the administration argued in court that the Kennedy Center must close for two years, asking the federal judge in the case to allow it so that the “dangerously dilapidated and decrepit” building can be renovated.

On the same day, over a dozen Kennedy Center employees were laid off, including its lead spokesperson, according to two sources familiar with the matter — gutting an already skeleton staff. The Kennedy Center declined to comment on the cuts.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Trump has said previous leadership is to blame for the dire financial situation. During a contentious board call this week, he also blamed Beatty for bringing litigation that, he said, has contributed to the center’s downfall.

While the president and his allies on the board argue his name needs to be re-affixed to the building to revive fundraising, current and former officials, performers and industry officials say it is precisely Trump’s involvement that alienated the center’s donors and prompted scores of artists to cancel their performances.

“The Broadway productions will not come back, the artists will not come back,” said a source familiar with discussions about programming. “None of those donors will come back as long as Donald J Trump is the chairman.”

Current and former Kennedy Center officials, musicians, artists and other performers with ties to the center suggest that Trump’s takeover has added a permanent imprint on the Kennedy Center, whether or not his name ultimately ends up on the building.

“There are wonderful theaters throughout this country, and they are certainly part of the cultural ecology,” said LaRue Allen, president and executive director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, which has a 50-year history with the institution. “But the Kennedy Center — it is our nation’s capital. It is our national showcase.”

Another Kennedy Center source who recently left said simply: “It will never be the same.”

CNN has asked the White House for comment.

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Trump’s focus on the Kennedy Center is emblematic of a notable shift from his first administration to a second one that has targeted arts, cultural and educational pillars across the country, in addition to Trump’s unrelenting desire to remake the nation’s capital to his liking.

In his first term, Trump mostly avoided the venue, skipping the Kennedy Center Honors after awardees threatened to boycott the event if he attended. The White House even said in a 2017 statement that the president and First Lady Melania Trump were not participating “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.”

And when the Kennedy Center initially received $25 million in funding in a March 2020 Covid stimulus package, Trump defended the aid, saying: “The Kennedy Center, they do a beautiful job, an incredible job.”

Nine months later, however, he singled out a $40 million line-item for the center while criticizing a subsequent December 2020 Covid aid bill — a foreshadowing of his future disaffection.

By his 2024 campaign, Trump made clear that going after so-called “wokeism” would be a pillar of a second presidency. He didn’t appear to single out the Kennedy Center on the campaign trail, but in his third week in office he’d already set a takeover plan in motion.

“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN, ” Trump wrote on Truth Social in February 2025.

Trump said he had fired Rubenstein as chairman of the board as well as board trustees “who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”

The takeover became the first domino in a cascade of Trump moves to remake the nation’s capital, including the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, the closure and remodeling of the busiest public golf course in Washington, DC, and his ongoing efforts to build a 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery — projects all still being fought over in court.

Though Trump has widely criticized cultural institutions and museums, he’s been able to exert only so much control over them, primarily by reducing their federal funding. The federal government has gutted the agencies that fund the arts, including the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and denied and rescinded tens of millions of dollars in grants to organizations that don’t align with the president’s values.

But the Kennedy Center is one of the few cultural institutions where the president has been able to flex more of his power by seizing control of the board. He has similarly tried to bring the federally funded Smithsonian Institution to heel, with more uneven results.

A week after Trump’s board takeover, the president was named as its chairman, and he installed longtime loyalist Richard Grenell as executive director.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“So we took over the Kennedy Center,” Trump told reporters. “I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”

His new role prompted several cancellations, including most notably the Broadway show “Hamilton.”

Leading up to the center’s Kennedy Center Honors in December 2025, which Trump himself was hosting, the president began referring to the building as the “Trump Kennedy Center.”

On December 18, 2025, the board made that declaration official by voting to rename the facility the “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” saying that the change honored Trump’s work at the center after taking over.

One day later, new signage was installed to add Trump’s name to the building’s façade.

The legal battle and wave of cancellations that has ensued present particular challenges for an institution that makes part of its budget from ticket sales.

Operating as a non-profit, the Kennedy Center received roughly $37 million from Congress in the last fiscal year, according to the latest appropriations legislation signed into law. But the bulk of its revenue comes from programming and private donations. In fiscal year 2024, during the Biden administration, the Kennedy Center reported $307 million in revenues, according to documents filed with the IRS.

Last year, Grenell sought to revamp the center’s calendar to include, in his words, more family-friendly programming. He brought in “Dog Man: The Musical,” based on the popular kids’ graphic novel series, at the recommendation of second lady Usha Vance.

At the same time, the center became a place to host events that lean in to Trumpian ties, including the premiere of the documentary “Melania,” a Charlie Kirk memorial and the FIFA World Cup draw (where the organization gave Trump a peace prize).

But after Trump’s name was added to the building, a wave of performers pulled out, and ticket sales sagged. Multiple sources told CNN earlier this year that attendance at the Kennedy Center had been so low that for months it had to “paper the house” — a theater term that means to fill seats by offering free or discounted tickets.

“There was a haze of despair around the performances. Nobody was showing up to performances,” Carlos Simon, the Kennedy Center composer-in-residence since 2021, told CNN.

Simon, who is in the last year of his residence, noted that the National Symphony Orchestra is now playing at other venues in Washington. He said he’s stayed in his role at the Kennedy Center “for the morale of the folks who were still there trying to do the good work of presenting music.”

“I feel really bad that it’s become this political tool or pawn, but music still has to go on,” he said.

Amid the cancellations, Trump announced in February that the Kennedy Center would close for two years on July 4 to allow for renovations — a move critics suspected was to being made more to provide cover for the shrinking pool of patrons than because of the need for such a dramatic closure.

The Kennedy Center also received an influx of funding last year thanks to Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which contained $257 million for the center to pursue “necessary expenses for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures.”

Yet the board has argued only Trump’s help can muster the funds to renovate the building — and Trump has made clear his help will only come with naming rights.

In the meantime, Matt Floca, Grenell’s successor as executive director, this week told the judge in the Beatty case that the center needs to temporarily close due to safety concerns.

Even if the building survives, officials say getting the center’s programming to return — particularly Broadway shows — would still take months if not several years.

That is under the assumption, of course, that performances would be willing to return, said the source involved in the center’s programming.

“If we started now in terms of engaging with property companies, going back and forth and getting a deal made, we could have Broadway tours back at the Kennedy Center by the basically middle of ‘27 into ’28,” the source said. “That’s how long it takes for all these pieces to be put in place.”

CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

吉姆·沃森/法新社/盖蒂图片社

今年春天，当唐纳德·特朗普总统的名字被下令从肯尼迪中心移除时，似乎出现了一个摆脱他对这个表演艺术中心统治的机会。

“我已经指示商务部与国会达成一切必要安排，以便将该机构完全移交给国会，并赋予国会运营、维护和管理的责任，”总统在 5 月下旬发表于 Truth Social 的一篇文章中写道，这似乎放弃了他一年前夺取的控制权。

据两位知情人士向CNN透露，甚至在十几位“当然”董事会成员中——他们没有投票权，但与特朗普没有盟友关系——也开始猜测，前董事会主席、亿万富翁慈善家大卫·鲁宾斯坦是否会被请回来，帮助恢复该中心的筹款和项目运作。（CNN已就此事向鲁宾斯坦征求意见。）

但一位消息人士称，在特朗普表示将继续担任主席后，“这件事很快就平息了”。人们原本希望他为纪念约翰·F·肯尼迪而进行的更名运动就此结束，但事实证明这只是一厢情愿的想法。

然而，从 12 月一个寒冷的日子里起重机首次将特朗普的名字刻在大理石外墙上算起，到如今九个月过去了，这座机构已被这位仍然深陷斗争的总统推到了崩溃的边缘：内部的灯光被熄灭，基础设施正在崩溃，抗议活动此起彼伏，法律诉讼也愈演愈烈。

俄亥俄州民主党众议员乔伊斯·比蒂（Joyce Beatty）是董事会的当然成员，她提起的一项诉讼导致法官裁定，必须将特朗普的名字从大楼上抹去，并且董事会不能完全关闭该设施。

面对法律上的挫败，特朗普变本加厉地威胁要拆除肯尼迪中心：本周有人看到总统在空军一号的窗户里举着一张海报，上面似乎写着“肯尼迪中心拆除”。尽管联邦法官已下令，任何重大改动都必须提前30天通知，但事态接下来将如何发展仍不明朗。

周五深夜，政府在法庭上辩称肯尼迪中心必须关闭两年，并请求该案的联邦法官允许关闭，以便对这座“危险破败”的建筑物进行翻新。

据两位知情人士透露，同一天，肯尼迪中心裁掉了十几名员工，其中包括首席发言人，这使得本就人手不足的肯尼迪中心雪上加霜。肯尼迪中心拒绝就裁员一事置评。

乔纳森·恩斯特/路透社

特朗普曾表示，该中心糟糕的财务状况应归咎于前任领导层。在本周一次充满争议的董事会电话会议上，他还指责比蒂提起诉讼，称这些诉讼导致了该中心的垮台。

尽管总统及其董事会盟友认为需要将他的名字重新挂在建筑物上以重振筹款活动，但现任和前任官员、表演者和业内人士表示，正是特朗普的参与疏远了该中心的捐助者，并导致许多艺术家取消了演出。

一位熟悉节目安排讨论的消息人士表示：“百老汇的演出不会回归，艺术家们也不会回来。只要唐纳德·J·特朗普还是主席，那些捐助者就不会回来。”

现任和前任肯尼迪中心官员、音乐家、艺术家和其他与该中心有联系的表演者表示，无论特朗普的名字最终是否会出现在这座建筑上，他的接管都给肯尼迪中心留下了永久的印记。

“全国各地都有许多优秀的剧院，它们当然是文化生态系统的重要组成部分，”玛莎·格雷厄姆舞蹈团总裁兼执行董事拉鲁·艾伦说道，该舞蹈团与肯尼迪中心有着50年的合作历史。“但肯尼迪中心——它是我们国家的首都，是我们国家的门面。”

另一位最近离开肯尼迪中心的人士简单地说：“一切都回不去了。”

CNN已向白宫寻求置评。

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

特朗普对肯尼迪中心的关注，象征着他从第一届政府到第二届政府政策的显著转变。第二届政府将目标对准了全国各地的艺术、文化和教育支柱，此外，特朗普还一直不遗余力地想要按照自己的意愿改造国家首都。

特朗普在第一任期内大多避开此类场合，甚至在获奖者威胁称如果他出席将抵制肯尼迪中心荣誉奖颁奖典礼后，他本人也缺席了该活动。白宫在2017年的一份声明中表示，总统和第一夫人梅拉尼娅·特朗普不参加颁奖典礼是“为了让获奖者们能够不受任何政治干扰地庆祝”。

2020 年 3 月，肯尼迪中心最初获得了 2500 万美元的 Covid 刺激计划资金，特朗普为这项援助辩护说：“肯尼迪中心做得非常出色，非常了不起。”

然而，九个月后，他在批评 2020 年 12 月的一项新冠疫情援助法案时，特别点名批评了该中心 4000 万美元的拨款——这预示着他日后的不满。

到了2024年竞选期间，特朗普明确表示，打击所谓的“觉醒主义”将是他连任的支柱之一。虽然在竞选期间他似乎没有特别针对肯尼迪中心，但上任仅三周，他就已经启动了接管计划。

“在我的指示下，我们将让华盛顿特区的肯尼迪中心再次伟大，”特朗普在2025年2月在Truth Social上写道。

特朗普表示，他已解雇了鲁宾斯坦的董事会主席职务，以及“不认同我们对艺术和文化黄金时代的愿景”的董事会成员。

这次收购成为特朗普重塑美国首都的一系列举措中的第一张多米诺骨牌，其中包括拆除白宫东翼、关闭和改造华盛顿特区最繁忙的公共高尔夫球场，以及他持续努力在阿灵顿国家公墓附近建造一座 250 英尺高的凯旋门——所有这些项目目前仍在法庭上进行争论。

尽管特朗普对文化机构和博物馆进行了广泛的批评，但他对它们的控制力却十分有限，主要手段是削减联邦拨款。联邦政府大幅削减了包括国家艺术基金会和国家人文基金会在内的艺术资助机构，并拒绝或撤销了数千万美元的拨款，这些拨款原本应发放给与总统价值观不符的机构。

但肯尼迪中心是总统能够通过掌控董事会来充分施展权力的少数几个文化机构之一。他也曾试图让联邦政府资助的史密森学会服从他的控制，但结果却参差不齐。

特朗普接管董事会一周后，他被任命为董事会主席，并任命其长期忠实拥护者理查德·格雷内尔为执行董事。

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“所以我们接管了肯尼迪中心，”特朗普告诉记者。“我将担任主席，我们将确保它运作良好，并且不会受到‘觉醒’思潮的影响。这个国家已经不需要‘觉醒’了。”

他的新角色导致多场演出取消，其中最引人注目的是百老汇音乐剧《汉密尔顿》。

在 2025 年 12 月肯尼迪中心荣誉奖颁奖典礼（特朗普本人将主持该典礼）之前，总统开始将该建筑称为“特朗普肯尼迪中心”。

2025 年 12 月 18 日，董事会投票正式宣布将该设施更名为“唐纳德·J·特朗普和约翰·F·肯尼迪表演艺术纪念中心”，并表示此举是为了表彰特朗普接管该中心后所做的工作。

一天后，新的标牌安装完毕，将特朗普的名字添加到建筑物的正面。

随之而来的法律纠纷和取消演出的浪潮，给一家部分预算来自门票销售的机构带来了特殊的挑战。

肯尼迪中心作为一家非营利机构，根据最新签署生效的拨款法案，上个财政年度从国会获得了约3700万美元的拨款。但其大部分收入来自节目制作和私人捐款。根据提交给美国国税局的文件，在拜登执政的2024财年，肯尼迪中心报告的收入为3.07亿美元。

去年，格雷内尔试图调整中心的活动安排，用他自己的话说，增加更多适合家庭观看的节目。在第二夫人乌莎·万斯的推荐下，他引进了根据热门儿童漫画系列改编的音乐剧《狗狗侠》。

与此同时，该中心也成为了举办与特朗普关系密切的活动的场所，包括纪录片《梅拉尼娅》的首映式、查理·柯克纪念活动以及国际足联世界杯抽签仪式（该组织在抽签仪式上授予特朗普和平奖）。

但自从特朗普的名字被加在肯尼迪中心大楼上之后，一大批表演者纷纷退出，门票销售也大幅下滑。今年早些时候，多位消息人士告诉CNN，肯尼迪中心的观众人数低到几个月来不得不“铺场”（用免费或折扣票来填满座位）。

“演出笼罩在一片绝望的氛围中。没有人来看演出，”自 2021 年以来一直担任肯尼迪中心驻场作曲家的卡洛斯·西蒙告诉 CNN。

西蒙即将结束他在肯尼迪中心的任期，他指出，国家交响乐团现在在华盛顿的其他场馆演出。他说，他之所以留在肯尼迪中心，“是为了鼓舞那些仍然在那里努力做好音乐呈现工作的人们的士气。”

“我感到非常难过，音乐竟然沦为了政治工具或棋子，但音乐还是要继续下去，”他说。

在演出取消之际，特朗普于 2 月份宣布肯尼迪中心将于 7 月 4 日关闭两年进行翻新——批评人士怀疑此举更多是为了掩盖观众人数减少的问题，而不是因为真的需要如此戏剧性的关闭。

去年，肯尼迪中心也获得了大量资金，这要归功于特朗普的“一项伟大的法案”，其中包含 2.57 亿美元，用于该中心“进行必要的资本维修、修复、维护积压和安保设施建设”。

然而，董事会认为只有特朗普的帮助才能筹集到翻新这座建筑所需的资金——而特朗普已经明确表示，他的帮助只会以冠名权为条件。

与此同时，格雷内尔的继任者、执行董事马特·弗洛卡本周告诉比蒂案的法官，由于安全问题，该中心需要暂时关闭。

即使这座建筑得以幸存，官员们也表示，要恢复该中心的各项活动——尤其是百老汇演出——仍然需要数月甚至数年的时间。

参与该中心节目策划的一位消息人士表示，当然，这前提是演出活动愿意恢复。

“如果我们现在就开始与房地产公司接洽，反复磋商并达成协议，那么到2027年中期到2028年，百老汇巡演基本上就可以重返肯尼迪中心了，”消息人士说。“所有这些环节的落实需要这么长时间。”

CNN的凯特琳·波兰茨对本报道亦有贡献。