Donald Trump’s race to shutter the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which has floundered after his takeover, reached new heights late Sunday with pressure on the trustees to rush a vote on Monday.
According to a report from the Washington Post, while most of the country was watching the Academy Awards ceremonies taking place in Los Angeles Sunday, the president’s handpicked trustees on the board that he chairs received a last-second agenda containing action items for their Monday meeting.
Trump plans to move swiftly Monday to push through his controversial plan for closing the Kennedy Center for up to two years as part of a sweeping transformation, according to meeting documents that a federal judge forced the board to disclose after a Democrat sued to prevent the administration from conducting the overhaul in secret.
The documents revealed that Trump — who has already purged much of the Kennedy Center’s board and assumed control as chairman — plans to ram through a vote on the closure despite fierce opposition from Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), who serves on the board and who argued the president is attempting to rebuild the iconic cultural institution to his own specifications.
Federal Judge Christopher R. Cooper in Washington issued a strongly worded order on Saturday blocking the board from concealing details about the Monday meeting or barring Beatty from attending to voice her objections. Cooper demanded the board release budgets, financial documents, and all decisions related to the meeting’s agenda.
The agenda includes remarks from Trump and Richard Grenell, who recently stepped down as the center’s president, as well as a resolution that appears to gut the Washington National Opera’s independence from the institution.
Yet despite the forced transparency, the released documents shed little light on Trump’s actual plans for the Kennedy Center—raising fresh questions about whether the president’s claims of conducting a thorough “one year review” with contractors and arts experts hold any weight.
Court filings show the materials circulated Sunday included only old building health assessments from 2021 and 2022, along with a contracting policy adopted in November — scant evidence of the comprehensive evaluation Trump claimed to have completed before deciding on closure.
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