Whitehouse Statement After Trump-Appointed Kennedy Center Board Approves Two-Year Closure and Again Votes to Illegally Affix Trump’s Name to Building

Whitehouse, an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, voted against both measures

Washington, D.C. - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, issued the following statement after the Trump-appointed Board voted to close the main building of the Center for two years, move the vast majority of programming offsite, and inscribe the President's name on the building. Whitehouse voted against both measures:

"Today's sham meeting makes clear the Trump-appointed Board of the Kennedy Center believes it is above the law. What happened today was nothing more than a rubber stamp on a decision the President made months ago that the Board already tried to effectuate without doing proper due diligence.

"To make matters worse, the Board is again openly flouting a court order in voting to put President Trump's name on the building to recognize his construction genius-a laughable idea given his abject failure in his efforts to renovate the Reflecting Pool. The decision to close the Center is clearly an effort to cover up the fact that President Trump and his minions have driven the Center into the ground, with plunging revenues and fleeing performers."

The Trump-appointees on the Kennedy Center Board voted to close the Center for two years without anything resembling an adequate financial assessment and based on a one-sided "independent" evaluation by an outside consultant - 100 pages of which the Center admitted was not provided to members of the Board. The Board also voted on a provision to add President Trump's name to the building and rename the area around the Center the "Donald J. Trump Plaza." The Center did not give notice to the Board before the meeting that this provision would be voted on, nor put it on the meeting agenda.