Thousands of protesters encircled the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on the evening of Friday, September 18, 2026, joining hands around the Potomac River landmark to defy President Donald Trump’s threat to tear it down.
They poured out of the subway in numbers big enough to spill into the streets of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood and bring traffic to a halt, all of them heading for a rally billed as “Hands Around the Kennedy Center.”
The signs carried the argument. One read “You’re No Jack Kennedy.” Another read “Hands Off the Arts.” A third borrowed from the musical “Wicked” with the line “Wicked: Starring DJT.” One man wore a hat reading “Make America Intelligent Again.” Another, in a crown and a Trump mask, held a placard written in the president’s imagined voice: “Restore my name in gold, you sycophants.” Some in the crowd turned out in costume, and boos went up when the president was mentioned during the program.
Hands Linked Around the Center
Organizers from the coalition Hands Off the Arts scheduled testimonials, musical performances and speeches on the center’s steps to run before demonstrators formed their chain. Lynda Carter, an actor who has criticized the president loudly and often, spoke to the rally. Placards reading “hands off Kennedy Center” bobbed above the crowd, and demonstrators sang in front of the facade where workers stripped Trump’s name in June under a court order. The protesters then ringed the building, clasped hands and lifted them overhead, demanding that Trump be removed as chairman for failing to protect and manage the institution.
Chalkboards, Hearts and What Was Lost
Bud Wilkinson, a member of the local arts community, carried a chalkboard on which Trump’s name had been written hundreds of times over. One after another, protesters rubbed the names out and chalked hearts in their place. The fight is not only about whose name goes on the facade, Wilkinson said, but about the censoring of performances and programming.
Laura Steinberg has volunteered at the Kennedy Center for the last 10 years. “This reminds me of that picture from Tiananmen Square, where that young man stood in front of the tank,” Steinberg said.
The Duke Ellington School of the Arts has plenty to lose, said Alina Baciu, a protester whose daughter attended the school. Its students have performed on the center’s Millennium Stage, and the Washington National Opera lent costumes for their performances at Duke Ellington, she said; all of that has gone away. Kerry Kennedy, a niece of the late President John F. Kennedy, told the BBC that demolishing the center would be a tragedy.
A Judge Intervenes
A week of escalation led up to the demonstration. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper halted the Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board’s effort to restore Trump’s name to the building; only hours later, on Tuesday, September 15, that board voted to shut the venue down for repair work expected to last about two years. Cooper followed on Thursday, September 17, with an order that requires the center to give 30 days’ notice before making any major physical change, including demolition, and to produce a detailed report on what it has called a temporary closure.
Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty sits on the board in an ex officio capacity, and the attorneys representing her had urged the judge to act. The president’s warning that the center could be ripped down figured in their argument, and they filed photographs shot on Wednesday night through a cabin window of Air Force One, after the plane landed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on September 16. Trump appears in them to be studying a placard that appears to read “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
What the President Wants
Dangerous condition and losses of hundreds of millions of dollars are what Trump has described at the center. Tax records show its revenue rose by millions in 2024, part of that a federal allocation. Conditions that his administration says require extensive renovations are what it blames for the building’s finances and structural problems, while critics point instead to the performers and private funders who left after he took control.
Hours before the crowd assembled, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he could save the Kennedy Center easily, then asked why he should keep raising money to sustain it without credit. “I think the Trump administration should be recognized as having saved the Kennedy Center,” he added.
The center opened in 1971, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Trump has kept it at the center of his remaking of Washington since 2025, when he removed its leadership, installed his own board and made himself chairman weeks after his second inauguration. That handpicked board voted in December 2025 to add Trump’s name to the institution’s official title — a change the White House shorthanded as the Trump-Kennedy Center. Cooper ordered Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center in May 2026, saying only Congress could change the name. David Barrows, 77, was one of the early protesters in that fight, taking to the street shortly after Trump became chairman.
In an interview, Hands Off the Arts co-founder Chris Raleigh said he hoped the rally would show how many people are prepared to fight the president’s plans for the building. Asked at the September 18 rally about the risk of a demolition carried out without notice, Raleigh told the Associated Press: “Look at the East Wing.” He added: “We got up one morning and there was a giant hole there.” The Kennedy Center is more in the public eye than the East Wing was, he said, and he does not believe the president fully understands why people are so upset, “but that’s our job right? This may be the line that no one expected but this is where the line is going to be.”
Formed after the leadership changes at the center, the coalition has mounted protest after protest outside the venue this year, and it says its goal is to reclaim the building from what it calls authoritarian overreach. The center remains closed. Cooper’s order stands, too: 30 days’ notice before anything comes down. Trump backed away from the threat on Monday, September 21, telling reporters he is “not ripping it down” and saying a renovation he said requires about two years of closure will reuse the building’s steel and some of its marble.
