Trump administration lawyers said the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts may need to be “taken down” if Donald Trump-backed renovation efforts can’t move forward.

“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,” administration lawyers said in a court filing Monday in the litigation over putting Trump’s name on the center.  

They said that such a replacement “will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy, but would be simpler and more economical to build, operate, and maintain.”

They said the litigation “almost guarantees the continued decline and eventual demise of the Kennedy Center, probably leading to the construction of a new, but very different kind, of venue.”

Those claims came in a filing responding to an emergency motion from U.S. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who serves the board “ex officio” through her position in Congress and had successfully sued for the removal of Trump’s name from the center’s façade. After his name came down earlier this year, she brought the new motion because the board voted to return his name to the center.

“This time, Trump’s name will appear on the building’s front portico not once, but twice. Underneath President Kennedy’s name, it will say: ‘Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump’ and ‘Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund,’” Beatty said in an emergency motion to halt that defiance.

In the same resolution to add Trump’s name to the building, the board also voted to name the physical site and grounds of the center “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

In their opposition filing on Monday, administration lawyers said Beatty was “seemingly motivated by a partisan end to ensure the Kennedy Center does not succeed under President Trump’s leadership” and that she was asking the court to “prohibit those three crucial and plainly lawful initiatives adopted by the Board in order to recognize the Trump Administration’s unique contribution to the Center’s viability.”

They said that blocking the board from “appropriately recognizing President Trump will cause donors to flee, financial contributions to dry up, and structural rehabilitation to stop.”

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee in Washington who ordered the prior removal and is still overseeing the litigation over what happens next, has set a hearing for Thursday.

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