Thousands of demonstrators ringed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on the evening of Friday, September 18, 2026, clasping hands in a chain around the Potomac River landmark to protest President Donald Trump’s threat to tear the building down.
So many riders poured out of the subway that the crowd overflowed into the streets of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood and brought traffic to a halt as it converged on the building for a rally billed as “Hands Around the Kennedy Center.”
Much of the message came from the signs. “You’re No Jack Kennedy,” read one. “Hands Off the Arts,” said another. A third borrowed from the musical “Wicked” with the line “Wicked: Starring DJT.” One man’s hat read “Make America Intelligent Again.” Another demonstrator, in a crown and a Trump mask, carried a placard written in the president’s imagined voice: “Restore my name in gold, you sycophants.”
A Ring of Hands Around the Center
The center’s steps hosted musical performances, testimonials and speeches, all of it arranged by organizing coalition Hands Off the Arts before the chain took shape. Actor Lynda Carter, who has criticized the president vocally, spoke to the rally. Some in the crowd turned out in costume, and boos went up whenever the president was mentioned during the program. Placards reading “hands off Kennedy Center” bobbed above the crowd, and by the facade, where workers had stripped Trump’s name in June under a court order, demonstrators sang. The building was then encircled by the marchers, who joined hands and raised them overhead as they demanded that Trump be removed as chairman for failing to protect and manage the institution.
Chalkboards, Hearts and Lost Opportunities
A chalkboard covered with Trump’s name, written hundreds of times over, was hauled in by Bud Wilkinson, who belongs to the local arts community. Protesters took turns rubbing the names out and chalking hearts in their place. “The Kennedy Center is vital to the arts in Washington. We need it. We need this,” he said, adding that the fight “is not just about putting the president’s name on the Kennedy Center. It’s about censoring the performances.”
Laura Steinberg, who has volunteered at the Kennedy Center for the last 10 years, drew a starker parallel. “This reminds me of that picture from Tiananmen Square, where that young man stood in front of the tank,” Steinberg said.
Alina Baciu, a protester whose daughter attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, laid out what the school stands to lose. She said students from the school have performed on the center’s Millennium Stage and that the Washington National Opera lent costumes for their performances at Duke Ellington — all of it now gone. Demolishing the center would be a tragedy, Kerry Kennedy said in remarks to the BBC; she is a niece of the late President John F. Kennedy.
A Judge Steps In
A week of escalation preceded the rally. The Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday, September 15, to shut the venue for repair work expected to last about two years, a decision that followed by just minutes after a ruling from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper halting its effort to restore Trump’s name to the building. Cooper went further on Thursday, September 17, ordering the center to give 30 days’ notice before any major physical change, demolition included, and to produce a detailed report on what it has called a temporary closure.
Attorneys for Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who holds a seat on the board in an ex officio capacity, had urged the judge to act. They pointed to the president’s warning that the center could be ripped down, and they filed photographs taken from inside Air Force One on Wednesday night, shot through a cabin window 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
The center is in dangerous condition and losing hundreds of millions of dollars, Trump has said. Tax records, however, show its revenue rose by millions in 2024, and a federal allocation made up part of that. Conditions the 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, and it has been a focus of Trump’s remaking of Washington since 2025, when — weeks after his second inauguration — he removed its leadership, installed a board of his own and made himself chairman. A vote by that handpicked board in December 2025 added Trump’s name to the institution’s official title; the White House shorthanded the change as the Trump-Kennedy Center. His name went up on the building in December before a judge found it had been added illegally. Cooper ordered the name removed in May, saying only Congress could change it. David Barrows, 77, was among the early protesters in that fight, taking to the street shortly after Trump became chairman.
Hands Off the Arts co-founder Chris Raleigh said in an interview that the rally, he hoped, would demonstrate how many people stand ready to fight the president’s plans for the building. Asked why he feared the wrecking crews could arrive without notice from a court, he pointed to the White House East Wing. “Look at the East Wing,” he said at the September 18 rally. “We got up one morning and there was a giant hole there.” He said he doesn’t 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.”
The coalition formed after the leadership changes at the center and has staged repeated protests outside the venue this year, saying its goal is to reclaim the building from what it calls authoritarian overreach. The venue is still closed, and Cooper’s order holds: anything that comes down requires 30 days’ notice first. The main building will stay closed through at least September 30, Executive Director Matt Floca said in a September 24 court filing that cited corroded ceiling panels and water intrusion in electrical equipment areas. Trump said in February that he was “not ripping it down” and would reuse the building’s steel, but he has since warned that without recognition for his administration, the center will “end up being ripped down.” The main building will stay closed through at least September 30, Executive Director Matt Floca said in a September 24 court filing that cited corroded ceiling panels and water intrusion in electrical equipment areas. Trump said in February that he was “not ripping it down” and would reuse the building’s steel, but he has since warned that without recognition for his administration, the center will “end up being ripped down.”
