A federal judge issued an order Thursday forbidding the demolition of the Kennedy Center’s main building, moving to prevent a repeat of what President Trump did to the White House’s East Wing last year.
Judge Christopher Cooper’s order came hours after photos emerged of Mr. Trump on Air Force One looking at a poster that seems to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
The judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he wanted to “avoid any confusion” about what was allowed — and tearing down the historic building without permission is not allowed.
He said the center must provide 30 days’ notice before demolition or any other changes to the current plans for renovations.
The order came after an intense few days that began with the center’s board, led by its chairman, Mr. Trump, and stocked with Trump loyalists, voting for a two-year shutdown for a full renovation.
Mr. Trump declared the shutdown would take place “immediately,” and the doors closed to the public and fencing went up around the center. But the center now says that’s a temporary safety closure, not the start of the renovation.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat who has already twice defeated in court Mr. Trump’s plans to slap his name on the building, said the entire situation is fishy.
She said the shifting explanations are an attempt to weasel out of liability for defying Judge Cooper’s previous orders, which blocked a previous board shutdown vote. Judge Cooper had said if the board re-voted to shut the center down, it needed to come back to him.
That didn’t happen.
“The Trump administration would rather defy the court than admit they broke the law by closing the Kennedy Center,” the congresswoman said in a statement Thursday. “The Kennedy Center is a sacred, living memorial to President Kennedy, not collateral damage in placating Trump’s ego.”
In her court filings, she pointed to photos on social media showing Mr. Trump on Air Force One seemingly studying a poster about the demolition of the center.
She said that’s particularly worrying after Mr. Trump last fall had the White House’s East Wing razed without seeking permission from Congress.
A federal judge has ruled that likely illegal, but the Supreme Court has allowed Mr. Trump to continue with construction of his new ballroom in the location of the old East Wing.
The Kennedy Center closed Tuesday, hours after the board voted for the two-year shutdown.
Mr. Trump has said it is impractical to try to keep one of the center’s two large theaters open while refurbishing the other.
Ms. Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board, said she was initially told Tuesday’s closure was the result of a mistaken fire alarm.
On Wednesday morning, one of her lawyers visited and was told it was shut down indefinitely.
Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, then sent an email to center staff just before 5 p.m. — hours after the closure — saying he had decided to shutter the building to the public because of emergency safety risks. He said it was not related to the shutdown vote hours earlier.
“I came to the conclusion that acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration at the center necessitated a temporary closure of most public spaces in the main building of the center to general public access,” he said.
He called it a “temporary closure” that would allow time to assess the risks. He said he would decide on a weekly basis whether to keep it closed.
Ms. Beatty said the timing was odd because no mention of the emergency risks was made at the center’s board meeting, hours earlier.
She also said Thursday that the nature of the closure — moving the gift shop and shuttle buses to another building on the site — doesn’t sound like a week-long pause.
“One does not relocate retail and transit operations or install barricades (which seemingly would have needed to be acquired in advance) for a one-week inspection. These measures are consistent with an open-ended shutdown,” her lawyers said in a new legal filing.
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