Left inset: President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House, July 16, 2026, in Washington (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP, File). Main: The front of the Kennedy Center remains covered as U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to add his name to the front of the building despite court rulings against his efforts. (Photo by Dominic Gwinn / SOPA Images/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
The lawmaker suing to stop President Donald Trump's majority-handpicked board from putting his name on the Kennedy Center has asked a judge to unseal a construction plan and a PowerPoint presentation "riddled with internal inconsistencies."
The 11-page motion to unseal from board member and Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, urged U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to publicize documents that defendants "transmitted" to the board of trustees before an Aug. 13 meeting.
Those items include a "construction plan" and a PowerPoint presentation that board members were sent 48 hours before the meeting at issue.
"The first document—the 'JLL Plan'—is a building plan that assumes the Center must close and outlines the construction plan Defendants intend to undertake once they completely close the Center. The JLL Plan contains no cost-benefit analysis of closure," the motion said. "The second document—the 'Delta Consulting Group PowerPoint'—is a five-slide PowerPoint presentation—only two slides of which contained any purported analysis—that was the sole assessment of whether to close the Kennedy Center that was presented to the Board."
"As Plaintiff detailed in the August 18 joint status report, the two substantive slides are riddled with internal inconsistencies and do not identify even a single benefit to remaining partially open while renovating," Beatty added.
Crucially, the plaintiff claims, the DOJ lacks legal justification in keeping these documents hidden from the public because it "failed to file the necessary motion to seal."
Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee, months ago ruled that the board — of which Trump himself is a member and chairman — "overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center" after Trump. He ordered Trump's name removed, and an appeals court upheld that ruling. The president, meanwhile, has taken aim at the jurist as "highly conflicted," emphasizing he is married to one of former President Joe Biden's attorneys.
Last week, the judge held an emergency hearing, during which Beatty's attorneys alleged a "new and breathtaking act of defiance of Congress and of this Court."
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper (U.S. District Court).
"This time, Trump's name will appear on the building's front portico not once, but twice," Beatty said, slamming the "cocktail of fabulous pronouncements and stunning inaccuracies" about the Kennedy Center's purported "death spiral."
After the hearing ended without a ruling, the DOJ said it would accommodate the judge's "wish for additional time" and represented that the "resolution by the board of trustees will not be effectuated before October 8, 2026."
Beatty argued Tuesday that there is "no plausible justification" for sealing the documents, and asked the judge to either unseal them in full or order the government to "propose and substantiate any narrowly tailored redactions."
"The question at issue is whether to close the nation's preeminent performing arts center for two years as part of a renovation being conducted with appropriated public monies. This Court has already found that the first attempt at this decision fell 'grossly short of prudent decision-making,'" the motion stated. "The public has an incredibly strong interest in ensuring that Defendants do not commit a second unlawful shutdown."
The DOJ has claimed that the Kennedy Center "is in terrible trouble," in "crisis […] so acute that, without the Trump Administration, its people, and President Trump, the Center cannot survive, either structurally or financially."
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