Federal Judge Christopher Cooper has now demanded immediate answers from President Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center's board of trustees, after an emergency motion was filed by board member and Ohio Democratic House Rep. Joyce Beatty, as forklifts were spotted slamming into the building while surrounding it with fencing.
Judge Cooper signed the order just two hours after Rep. Beatty filed it, according to the court docket. He gave Trump and the additional defendants a deadline of 10 a.m. today to respond to Beatty's emergency motion. He noted that the court would schedule a prompt hearing, if necessary, after reviewing the response.
Beatty requested the hearing on the grounds of what she calls an unlawful closure of the famous, long-embattled performing arts venue and specifically requested that a senior decision-maker be ordered to attend.
In May, Judge Cooper ordered the Kennedy board to stop the venue from closing until it approved a shutdown in compliance with his order, and he lifted the freeze. Cooper cited that previous order in his newest order, noting that the board voted to close the Center on Tuesday, even though Cooper has not lifted the freeze—putting Trump and the Kennedy board in direct violation of a court order.
In her motion, Beatty's legal team wrote, "It seems Defendants may be violating the 'clear and unambiguous order of the court, quoting an appeals court ruling from 2025.
Trump publicly and dramatically announced the Kennedy Center's closure in one of his trademarked Truth Social posts on Tuesday, claiming that the board had voted "almost unanimously" to shutter the building for safety reasons and begin reconstruction and renovations.
He specifically noted that the famous venue would close "immediately," but renovations would not begin until the courts approved his highly controversial name change.
But according to a sworn declaration filed together with the motion, a staff member at the law firm representing Beatty in this case went to the Center on Wednesday morning and made a rather shocking discovery.
Bridget Kennedy-Bailey declared that she arrived at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts just after 10 a.m., a few minutes past the Center's posted opening time. She found the front doors locked.
A security guard opened the door with a badge and told her, "No, we're closed," adding that the building would stay shuttered all day.
Security operations specialist Shateik Jones came outside a few minutes later and told Kennedy-Bailey that the orders to lock the building up had come from "higher-ups," saying he was strictly instructed to keep the building locked but was not told why.
Kennedy-Bailey left the Center just before 11 a.m. and returned shortly before noon, when a guard stopped her while she tried to use the same drop-off area she had accessed earlier that day.
She wrote in her sworn declaration:
When I got out of the car, I saw that black metal gates had been placed in front of the building since I left. I walked around to both the north and south sides of the building and saw that the gates wrapped all around there, too, and blocked all the staircases leading to the building.
She added that four additional gates were now blocking the main walkway, the car drop-off area was filled with traffic cones, and a gap underneath some scaffolding was closed off.
"While I was standing outside the gates, I saw forklifts bringing more gates to the front of the building," she explained.
Patricia Haynes, a woman who told Kennedy-Bailey she worked security at the Center, said the gates were going up for "public safety" because of the construction inside the building. A man who identified himself as PJ and claimed to handle PR for the performing arts venue told Kennedy-Bailey that the building was "closed for repairs" and that staff "are not allowed in without a hard hat."
The closure was ultimately confirmed by Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi in an X post late Wednesday morning:
Compounding systemic infrastructure failures from decades of neglect have left a crumbling building and safety concerns require an immediate closure of @TKCOfficial main building.
Chairman @realDonaldTrump continues to support this great American institution while legal battles… https://t.co/VA2MHN4vaT— Roma Daravi (@romadaravi) September 16, 2026
In perhaps the most alarming portion of her sworn declaration, Kennedy-Bailey wrote: "Afterward, I saw a forklift carrying what appeared to be a more permanent form of fencing drive over to the north side of the building. I saw the forklift run into and hit the pillars on the building several times."
To say that this Trump temper tantrum has gotten out of control would be an egregious understatement. It's truly only a matter of time before the man levels the place out of sheer spite.
