Close the Center

Fight comes to a close? For the last almost two years, President Donald Trump has been working to get the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to bear his name instead of Kennedy’s. Yesterday, the Kennedy Center’s board voted to close the building for a two-year, $250 million renovation, starting right now. Trump, never a man of principle but frequently a man of follow-through, threatened to block the renovations unless his name was added. Note that nobody’s opposing the renovation on the grounds that it’s a poor use of public funds. No, this is a petty battle through and through.

Some background: Basically, the Kennedy Center was designated, by federal law in 1964, to bear the name of President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated the year before. That law barred the board from renaming the center or putting another person’s name on it. Only an act of Congress could change the name.

Trump, you see, did not like this. In February 2025, he replaced all of the center’s board members who had been selected by former President Joe Biden and replaced them with Trump loyalists. The board then elected Trump as chairman. Later in 2025, he renamed the center after himself. “In May [2026], U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump’s name had been illegally added to the Kennedy Center and blocked plans to close the venue for major renovations,” reports Newsweek. But “rather than abandoning the effort, Kennedy Center trustees returned with a revised strategy. On August 13, the board approved language that would recognize Trump’s role in renovating the facility without formally renaming the institution. The proposed inscription would read ‘The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.’” They also proposed renaming portions of the grounds after Trump.

Yesterday, a federal judge blocked the board’s effort to return Trump’s name to the center. Now, Trump is saying “the closing will take place immediately” but that renovations will only start if a federal appeals court or the Supreme Court rules that his own name can be restored as the center’s official name.

It’s all a hot mess. And the most insulting thing might be the fact that it’s public funds that will be used to renovate the center. Your hard-earned dollars!

If you’re a D.C. resident, perhaps the Kennedy Center is of some value to you. If you live literally anywhere in the rest of the country, it’s a little bananas that an arts center you will probably never visit is being renovated with your forcibly seized cash.

Originally a Dwight D. Eisenhower project, the center was first envisioned as “an artistic mecca,” with plans for it signed into law in 1958. “Art and the encouragement of art is political in the most profound sense,” said Kennedy in a speech in 1962. “Not as a weapon in the struggle, but as an instrument of understanding of the futility of struggle between those who share man’s faith.”

So true, king. The political nature of art is precisely why we shouldn’t have government funding for it. The very thing it perhaps most needs to criticize—the state—cannot be the one underwriting it.

Of course, the Kennedy Center today is not really quite what Eisenhower and Kennedy envisioned: It’s very much a performing arts center for very established acts, which is of course a huge benefit to D.C. residents but not exactly an incubator for new talent. “Art is the great democrat calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color,” said Kennedy, many decades ago. I agree. If only the Kennedy Center actually served that role! And, even if it did fulfill that vision, there’d still be an outstanding question as to whether taxpayers ought to be forced to fund it.

---

Scenes from New York: “Beginning this spring, the New York City Mayor’s Office started assigning a roughly six-month response date to nearly every records request made under the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), without regard to the subject matter of any given request,” reports City Journal. “The Manhattan Institute is asking a court to put an end to the practice.” Excellent! Though some Reason colleagues have noted that pretty much all New York City mayoral administrations have been violating this law. Still: Good to try to put an end to it, because it’s illegal and wrong no matter who does it.

The Mamdani administration has simply stopped filling FOIL requests in a timely fashion.

Every request automatically gets a six-month delay, regardless of content.

That’s illegal—and we’re suing to force the admin. to be transparent.https://t.co/NMSFTly40K https://t.co/PfPm7o8gK9 pic.twitter.com/elwMmWYsyv

— Charles Fain Lehman (@CharlesFLehman) September 15, 2026

---

QUICK HITS

• “The first five months of the Iran war cost the U.S. $38 billion, according to Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper, the most comprehensive look at the extended military conflict ahead of the midterm elections,” reports Politico. “The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the conflict—which has cost more than half of the Trump administration’s total war spending request—would reach about $2 billion to $3 billion a month. The agency also confirmed that the war has depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles, including critical interceptors for air defenses.” To break down that $38 billion figure further: “The bulk of that estimate is consumed by the costs to replace missiles and air defenses, which the agency pegs at $21.7 billion—including $13.1 billion for missile interceptors, $7.3 billion for cruise missiles and $1.2 billion for other munitions.”
• “What do we owe the embryos we leave behind?” asks Leah Libresco Sargeant at The Argument. “IVF and the ever-growing number of embryos on ice have the potential to pose a moral form of technical debt. As someone who considers these frozen embryos to be just as human as the siblings who were carried to term, there’s no solution I feel totally comfortable with.”
• The Federal Reserve is likely to announce today that they’re raising interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, up to 4 percent. This will be the first rate increase since summer 2023. We’re two months out from midterm elections, and President Donald Trump—who naturally wants his party to remain in control of both the House and Senate—is likely to be rather pissed at new Chair Kevin Warsh.
• Speaking of: “Democrat James Talarico holds a narrow lead over Republican Ken Paxton in the state’s high-profile U.S. Senate race, according to a recent survey ahead of the November election,” reports Newsweek. “The poll, conducted by SoCal Strategies, shows Talarico ahead with 50 percent of the vote compared to Paxton’s 45 percent. The figures mark a shift from the pollster’s June survey, which had Paxton leading 49 percent to 47 percent.”
• If you’re in New York City, come to the screening of Jim Epstein’s new Venezuela documentary on October 13:

Blackouts. Starvation. Censorship. This is what socialism did to a once-prosperous nation.

Reason’s upcoming documentary, ESCAPING VENEZUELA, follows one family’s fight for survival during the collapse. Get a first look at the trailer below. pic.twitter.com/olsVGvNwBN

— reason (@reason) September 15, 2026

The post Close the Center appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Source: https://reason.com/2026/09/16/close-the-center/