President Donald Trump’s move to shutter the Kennedy Center for renovation is “haphazard and irrational,” Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) argued in a legal filing urging a court to put a stop to the plan.
The president’s plan would close the famous performing arts venue for two years, following a disastrous year in which ticket sales plunged, and artists abandoned performances in protest of Trump seizing control of the facility and even having his appointees put his name on it.
Beatty, one of the few Democratic appointees to the Kennedy Center board, was initially iced out of even attending a board meeting to discuss the closure, but a judge rebuked this and ordered them to allow her attendance.
According to former CBS correspondent Scott MacFarlane, Beatty argued in a court filing that “Turning the Kennedy Center into a lifeless husk for two years would also constitute a fundamental breach of Defendants’ most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. On these grounds alone, the Court should hold that Plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits.”
Beatty further told the court that based on the documents presented to board members, “Defendants rushed to close the Kennedy Center without conducting any independent analysis — let alone the detailed planning that is necessary for a decision of this magnitude.”
The planned closure of the Kennedy Center is part of a series of efforts by Trump to put his physical stamp on public icons, one of the most notorious and controversial being the demolition of the White House East Wing to put up a massive ballroom, larger than the entire rest of the structure, financed by private donors who may have business before the administration.
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