Meet the Democrat who says the Kennedy Center fight isn’t just about the arts
By Michael Jones
It did not take long for Joyce Beatty to rebuke President Donald Trump’s announcement last Sunday that he planned to close the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years.
Weeks earlier, the Ohio Democrat took legal action in federal court against Trump, Kennedy Center interim executive director Richard Grenell, and other trustees after the board—reconstituted earlier in the year after Trump ousted previous members and installed his own allies—voted to add the president’s name to the institution’s official title, rebranding it in practice as the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Beatty’s lawsuit on the attempted renaming and pushback against the announced renovations are part of a broader backlash from Democratic lawmakers and members of the Kennedy family, who have similarly argued that the board had no authority to make the change without legislation.
“I think it’s being a voice. It’s more than the arts. It’s more than the Kennedy Center,” she told me in an interview at the U.S. Capitol this week. “But yet, it really is about what’s happening there.”
During our conversation, Beatty, who was first elected to Congress in 2012 and is chair emerita of the Congressional Black Caucus, connected the Kennedy Center fight to a wider set of concerns: the administration’s approach to ICE and DHS, the threat to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, and the erosion of public education and health care. These are all expressions of the same governing philosophy that sidelines law, transparency and diverse communities in favor of power and homogenous symbolism.
“If in each one of these areas, someone stands up and says that it’s just not about the Kennedy Center, but it’s about what he’s doing to Black performers, what he’s doing to people in their jobs,” she said. “When you have him say he’s going to close down the center, he’s scrambling because he’s embarrassed because now people are standing up. Non-traditional people are canceling contracts and they’re making a statement against him, and I think that’s bothering him.”
The Kennedy Center was named for the late President John F. Kennedy in 1964, less than a year after his assassination, through an act of Congress that designated the building as a national memorial. While plans for a national cultural center in Washington had been discussed for decades, Kennedy embraced the project during his presidency, arguing that the arts were essential to democratic life. After his death, lawmakers moved quickly to honor him by naming the center after him, a decision formalized in federal law—meaning any change to the institution’s name requires congressional approval, not unilateral action by its board or the executive branch.
When the illegitimate name change was announced, Beatty, who serves as an ex officio member of the board, contested both the process and the substance. She publicly disputed the White House’s claim that the vote was unanimous, saying she was on the call and had been repeatedly muted when she tried to voice opposition to renaming the center. Multiple sources who were on the call or learned about it after the fact confirmed that the board’s version of events didn’t match what she experienced and underscored what she saw as a procedurally illegitimate process.
In her lawsuit, she argues the board’s vote violated federal law by attempting to alter the name of a federally designated memorial without congressional authorization. She asks the court to declare the name change null and void. In the filing, she described the move as “a flagrant violation of the rule of law” and emphasized that only Congress can legally rename the Kennedy Center.
Beatty told me her advocacy is grounded in history, invoking Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and noting the resonance of the fight during Black History Month (In fact, Beatty led Ohio in becoming the first state to designate a holiday in honor of Parks.). She emphasized the Kennedy Center’s role in honoring Black artists and why that legacy makes the issue both personal and political in a moment when she believes silence equals complicity.
“I think everybody has a calling,” she said. “And I think I’m the person that found my space in doing that well.”
But the Trump administration argues the Kennedy Center needs a full reset.
The White House has described the building as ramshackle and says a complete two-year shutdown is the fastest and most effective way to carry out major renovations, rather than attempting phased construction while performances continue. Trump and his allies say they relied on recommendations from experts, though details of those reports have not been made public.
Administration officials also characterize the move as a broader modernization effort—both physically and culturally—casting the overhaul, leadership changes, and even renaming efforts as necessary to restore relevance and rebuild public interest. In Trumpworld’s telling, the closure is about efficiency, rebranding, and turning the Kennedy Center into what they depict as a revitalized, world-class institution.
It’s not just Beatty who’s not buying what the administration is selling, though.
House Democrats, led by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), are demanding that President Trump abandon plans to shut down the Kennedy Center, warning the move would likely violate federal law and wipe out more than 2,200 annual performances, exhibits, and roughly 400 free community events.
In a letter signed by 69 members yesterday morning, lawmakers accuse Trump of using a “vanity project” to undermine a congressionally mandated national memorial, arguing that the closure could destabilize, or even threaten, the existence of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra. The members cite Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center board, proposed renovations despite a recent 2019 expansion, and a string of artist boycotts as evidence of what they call a broader effort to “destroy independent art and music.”
“We do not presume to know what is true about another unannounced, unauthorized but apparently imminent demolition of an essential American memorial and institution,” the members wrote. “But if published reports are true, we urge you to halt this reckless and impetuous vanity project without the participation of the people’s representatives in the United States Congress.”
The members demand detailed legal, financial, and operational explanations by Feb. 10.
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
