Kennedy Center leaders threatened payroll to push Trump naming, lawmaker alleges

Kennedy Center leaders jeopardized the institution’s operations by tying millions of dollars in funding to keeping President Donald Trump’s name on its building, a Democratic congresswoman who serves on its board alleges in a court brief filed Friday.

The Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation, a foundation created to raise money for the institution, transferred $17.5 million to the center this year, according to the brief prepared by lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio).

According to a Trump administration lawyer, that money came on the condition that the center be named after Trump - a condition barred by a federal judge in May.

Internal messages quoted in the document describe a paralysis that followed, with officials warning that returning the money would force immediate furloughs of Kennedy Center staff. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick rejected a request to let the center keep some of it without the naming requirement, the document said.

The Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation was created before Trump’s takeover of the center and since rebranded with his name. The latest allegations suggest that money intended to support the center became leverage in the effort to keep the president’s name on it.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who serves on the center’s board and is the ranking Democrat on the committee with oversight responsibility over the center, challenged the foundation’s rules in a separate letter Thursday. He accused officials of changing its name and governing documents without the trustees’ approval.

The center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The foundation’s finances have become part of a broader dispute over plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years of renovations. Beatty is asking U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to maintain his order blocking the shutdown.

Her lawyers argue that officials manipulated the information presented to trustees to secure approval for Trump’s closure plan. They contend that leaders put his interests ahead of the center’s, threatening its finances while citing financial problems as a reason to close.

On Sept. 5, the center’s chief financial officer warned its executive director, Matt Floca, that returning foundation funds would mean telling Kennedy Center and National Symphony Orchestra administrative staff “that they are immediately furloughed,” according to the brief.

In another message, the officer told Floca that the board’s vice chair, Jennifer Fischer, had asked Lutnick, who has acted as Trump’s go-between, whether the center could keep $10 million from the foundation and “avoid the naming.”

Lutnick said no, according to the account quoted in the brief.

The messages do not establish whether money was ultimately returned. And the brief acknowledges conflicting testimony: Floca denied that the foundation’s money was restricted or subject to repayment.

A Justice Department lawyer representing the center had previously told a federal appeals court otherwise.

In June, the department sought to pause Cooper’s ruling against the board’s December 2025 decision to add Trump’s name. Removing it, they argued, would trigger a foundation rule requiring the center to return every dollar the nonprofit had contributed.

The rule they quoted covered the removal of his name from the building, marketing materials or other affiliated locations.

“All of this money, hundreds of millions of dollars, will have to be immediately returned, or not received by the Center,” the lawyers wrote. Their claim included anticipated donations, rather than asserting that the foundation had already transferred hundreds of millions of dollars.

Whitehouse’s letter to the center’s general counsel, Elliot Berke, questions whether that repayment rule was properly adopted.

The Kennedy Center Foundation was incorporated in February 2024 to expand national and international fundraising for the center’s artistic and educational programs, according to its audited financial statements.

In March this year, however, Berke signed amendments renaming the foundation and changing its purpose to supporting an institution bearing both presidents’ names, Whitehouse wrote.

According to the letter, Berke attested that the changes were adopted “without member approval” and that approval “was not required.”

Whitehouse disputed that assertion, saying the Kennedy Center board had never approved changes to the foundation’s name, governing documents or directors as it should have.

“Either someone inserted that bylaw language without approval of the Center’s Board, or the language was simply created for the filing to a federal court of appeals,” he wrote.

Beatty’s lawyers had questioned the repayment provision in June, calling it a “poison pill.”