It was a tumultuous week on the marble arts center beat. Last Tuesday, a federal judge ruled against the Kennedy Center’s latest bid to put President Donald Trump’s name on the building. Judge Christopher Cooper’s determination did not require parsing arcane legalese; as 1983 federal legislation states, “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Congress could also, the judge noted, change the law.
Trump responded to Cooper’s ruling with a social media diatribe, asserting without evidence that the Washington cultural center was “losing hundreds of millions of dollars” and “destined to doom.” He pledged to withhold a $257 million congressional appropriation intended for deferred Kennedy Center maintenance, particularly to repair HVAC issues. If the courts do not allow his name to go up on the building, the president wrote on social media, “the Reconstruction and Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”
Because it’s a nonprofit chartered by Congress, its bankruptcy would look much different than any the president has experienced — and he does have plenty of bankruptcy experience.
More ominously, on Wednesday, a Getty photographer zoomed in on Trump looking at a large photograph appearing to be emblazoned with the heading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
The all-caps proposition prompted lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio Kennedy Center trustee, to sprint back to Cooper. Late Thursday, the judge granted discovery rights into the alleged planned demolition, and warned that any changes to the Kennedy Center’s current plan for a face-lift must come before the court, with 30 days’ notice.
Following the reports, an advocacy group called Hands off the Arts gathered a crowd of hundreds Friday night. Actor Lynda Carter, drag queen Tara Hoot and a city councilman spoke before the protesters formed a chain around the building, as if symbolically warding off a wrecking crew.
It may feel obvious to say, but the Kennedy Center is not the Trump Plaza Hotel, to name one business formerly owned by the president that did become a pile of rubble.
Both may be landmark waterfront edifices, one in Atlantic City, one in Washington, D.C. Both have been run by Trump. But one was a business that declared bankruptcy and one is a Congressionally charted nonprofit. If these buildings rack up debt, can’t handle some creaky plumbing and want to stop operating, they do so under an entirely different set of laws.
That’s a distinction the president of the United States, former owner of the Plaza Hotel chain and current chair of the Kennedy Center, does not appear to care to make.
Allies of the Kennedy Center still fear the bulldozers, and it appears that for the remainder of Trump’s presidency, the cultural center will remain central to a constitutional game of chicken. In addition to Beatty’s lawsuit, the Trump administration has been sued by a coalition of preservation groups, which on Thursday urged Cooper to place the Kennedy Center in receivership.
Fences went up around the complex midweek. Tour guides received an email saying they would no longer lead visitors through the building. The Kennedy Center looks, by all accounts, like a facility that is shutting down and filing for bankruptcy.
But because it’s a nonprofit chartered by Congress, its bankruptcy would look much different than any the president has experienced — and he does have plenty of bankruptcy experience. For nonprofits, filing for Chapter 7 requires dissolving all assets in addition to going through bankruptcy proceedings. When a nonprofit “dissolves,” laws prohibit the board and employees from making any money. The Kennedy Center couldn’t even keep its curtains. And dissolving a nonprofit that was chartered by Congress is entirely uncharted territory.
Chapter 11 is on the table too, but that would not allow a court to discharge debts, and given the president’s claim that the Kennedy Center owes “hundreds of millions of dollars,” it appears reorganizing would not help.
The president didn’t show his work. The Kennedy Center did.
Like a kid who asked Alexa for help with math homework, the president didn’t show his work. The Kennedy Center did. As a nonprofit that receives more than $975,000 in federal funding each year, it must not only publicly release its 990 tax forms, but also undergo a lengthy outside audit. So we know that unless the bean counters of Virginia-based BDO International are bald-faced liars, the Kennedy Center ran a $40 million budget surplus the fiscal year before Trump took over.
The accountants also disclosed an open $10 million line of credit with U.S. Bank, set to expire on Dec. 13, 2025. At the time of the audit, the balance was zero. But former employees of the center believe that with attendance in free fall through the fall of 2025, the Kennedy Center drew on that the line of credit to make payroll.
The Kennedy Center also allegedly owes Washington National Opera $17 million in stolen endowment funds, according to a lawsuit filed by the newly independent company.
So while it may not be “hundreds of millions” in the hole, it does appear that the Kennedy Center has debt. And Trump, the man who allegedly caused that debt to accrue, says he is also the only one who can course-correct.
“I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct, that few others have,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
This from the man who bankrupted at least four corporations — including the Trump Plaza Hotel.
Like several other 1990s businesses, the hotel retained Trump’s name even after the family reduced its ownership. Perhaps distant memory is why he thinks carving his name in stone is the only way to save the Kennedy Center. Here again, he does not appear to understand how corporate branding differs from nonprofit norms. When a nonprofit hangs a name on its brick-and-mortar space, it usually does so only after a long history of personal and family investment.
Lincoln Center’s 2008 renaming of the New York State Theater after fossil fuel billionaire David R. Koch is a prime example. That year, the politically conservative philanthropist pledged $100 million to renovate the theater and provide an operating and maintenance endowment. Some dance fans, and dancers, weren’t thrilled. But there was no mass exodus, no boycott. Koch put his personal money where his name was and never appeared to meddle with the programming.
Trump has done no comparable thing, and the days when Trump’s name led to foot traffic on U.S. soil are long over. New Jersey’s Trump Plaza Hotel was demolished in 2021. The company’s newer branded projects are in places like Tbilisi, Georgia; Cluj, Romania; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Not exactly hotbeds of democracy. Not exactly places where checks and balances hold real estate investors accountable. Not exactly places where nonprofits issue 52-page audits to account for public funding.
So the Trump name may still carry cache, if he’s building a hotel in bombed-out Belgrade. But not on the shores of the Potomac, where, at least for now, a marble memorial stands to honor another president.
The post Why the Kennedy Center stands out from the corporations Trump has mishandled appeared first on MS NOW.
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