Ohio Democrat has twice defeated president in court over attempts to rename the venue
The Kennedy Center board approved a resolution last week to immediately close the performing arts venue’s main building for repairs. The Ohio Democrat, Rep. Joyce Beatty, has twice beaten President Trump in court over his efforts to rename the institution in his own honor.
The vote came during a virtual meeting with roughly 30 board members watching. Trump called Beatty “a destructive person” who has “never built anything” and accused her of hurting people by fighting to keep the venue open. Beatty told The Wall Street Journal that she responded: “I reminded him that he has us at war and people are dying.”
The 76-year-old lawmaker is the lone plaintiff in a lawsuit aimed at keeping the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts operating as a living memorial to the late president. Her case has wound through multiple court rulings since December, most recently with Trump suggesting the venue might “end up being ripped down.” After judges twice blocked board efforts to add Trump’s name to the building, Beatty’s case is now focused on keeping the center open.
The board cited a partial ceiling collapse in the Grand Foyer as making the main building unsafe for visitors and staff. Brian Ballard, a Republican lobbyist Trump appointed to the board in 2020, said the closure is not in dispute. “It’s not even a debatable point anymore,” Ballard told the Journal. He characterized Beatty’s opposition as political and said she “just wanted her 15 minutes of fame.” Beatty has not disputed that the center needs repairs, but she does not accept that the building is in such disrepair that it must close.
In court filings, Justice Department lawyers have characterized Beatty as a “troublemaking appointment” on the Kennedy Center board “from the beginning of her tenure!” The president has fumed that his efforts to rescue a cash-strapped venue have gone unappreciated. “I think the Trump administration should certainly have recognition,” Trump told reporters Wednesday evening, speaking about his Kennedy Center renovation efforts.
Photos also circulated online this week showing Trump aboard Air Force One looking at a poster reading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” A senior administration official told the Journal there are no immediate plans to tear the building down.
Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Kennedy Center, said the majority party in Congress — especially members of her subcommittee — should have objected to Trump’s takeover of the institution. “We shouldn’t be in a position where Joyce had to take it on personally with a group of lawyers,” Pingree said.
Beatty’s involvement traces to the board’s December vote to rename the center. She said the host muted her when she tried to object during that first vote, which convinced her the Trump-friendly board was prepared to “rubber stamp whatever the president wanted.” “If they can do this to me,” she recalls thinking at the time, “what’s gonna happen to the institution?”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Beatty to the Kennedy Center board in 2019, before Trump’s re-election and his subsequent stacking of the board with his own appointees and his installation of himself as chair. Beatty’s activism long predates that assignment. She has been pepper-sprayed while protesting the killing of George Floyd and arrested at a voting-rights demonstration on Capitol Hill. She previously chaired the Congressional Black Caucus and helped secure Juneteenth as a federal holiday. She is now best known as the unlikely leader of the opposition to Trump’s push to rebrand the Kennedy Center in his own honor.
All her life, Beatty said, she has felt compelled to stand up for her rights, especially as a woman of color. She remembers feeling that way as a young girl growing up in Dayton in the 1950s and 1960s civil rights era when Black people in some places weren’t allowed to use the same water fountains as white people. “My mother would squeeze my hands so tight because she thought I’d be defiant,” she said. “I’ve always been an out-front crusader, whether I stand alone or with a thousand.”
Beatty’s father worked in construction and held down multiple jobs to move the family to a white neighborhood with better schools. She served in Ohio’s state legislature for nearly a decade and spent the first part of her political career working from a wheelchair after suffering a stroke in 2000. She was elected to Congress in 2013 and represents a district that includes much of the state capitol, Columbus, and has a reputation for being feisty and hardworking. For years that was a pretty uncontroversial board post until Trump was re-elected and stacked the board with his own appointees, installing himself as chair. That thrust Beatty into one of the most heated fights of the 80-year-old president’s second term.
Even U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who is presiding over the case, appeared exasperated by the contentiousness at a recent hearing. “Is it possible to turn down the temperature a bit and come to ground on some of these issues?” Cooper asked.
Beatty has vowed to continue her legal fight. She has missed only one hearing since the case began in December, and people often approach her at public events to thank her for taking it on, she told the Journal.