The Trump administration just raised the stakes in the fight over the Kennedy Center, warning a federal court that blocking the building's renovation could end with the building itself being knocked down.
Can you hear the triggered lefties screaming?
In a Tuesday filing, Justice Department lawyers said the Kennedy Center's "dangerously dilapidated, outdated, and decrepit" condition and millions in financial losses have put the JFK memorial building in a "financial and structural death spiral," requiring two years of closure to fix.
"Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years," the lawyers wrote.
There's no official plan to tear the building down…yet. But the threat comes amid the ongoing legal fight over the Trump-backed renovations and repairs, which, of course, raises the stakes considerably.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a Kennedy Center board member, filed the lawsuit challenging the renovation. Her attorneys, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, didn't hold back.
"This is a not-so-subtle threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the President doesn't get his way," they said. "This is unconscionable, it is unbecoming of the Department of Justice to even put this in a filing, and we will answer in court."
Poor babies.
Democrats have spent months treating the Kennedy Center like a sacred memorial to JFK that Trump has no business touching. It isn't one. Congress created it in 1958 as the National Cultural Center; it only became the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after his assassination. Calling it a "memorial" makes Trump's renovation sound like sacrilege instead of basic upkeep.
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And upkeep is exactly what Democrats let slide. If this were the sacred memorial Democrats claimed it to be, they wouldn’t have let the building go into such disrepair. The board voted this month, for the second time, to close the Kennedy Center and restore Trump's name to the facade, three months after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the name removed. Crews took it down, but a tarp has covered the portico ever since. Cooper's May ruling called the board "derelict" and the closure decision "ill-informed and seemingly preordained."
At a mid-August meeting Trump called into, the board approved closure again and voted to rename the site "President Donald J. Trump Plaza," having already tried renaming the whole organization the Trump-Kennedy Center before Cooper's ruling.
The administration agreed to pause further changes until Sept. 8. Beatty is again fighting Trump's name going back up, calling it "déjà vu all over again," and arguing only Congress can rename the building. I’m not really invested in the building name change, to be honest, but the effort being put into preventing the building from being renovated is just absurd. Trump’s enemies will sue over anything. Whether it’s a much-needed ballroom, a reflecting pool repair, or renovating the Kennedy Center, they just fight what Trump does for the sake of fighting Trump.
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