Ceremony will not be hosted at its traditional home for the first time since awards began in 1978 The Kennedy Center Honors will take place away from its traditional home this year for the first time in its history as the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remains in jeopardy amid Donald Trump’s ongoing battle to have it named…
Page D2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 3 October 2026
Kennedy Center Honors flee Kennedy Center, first time in 48 years, over fight to rename it for its chief antagonist
As it ran on the front
The Kennedy Center Honors died this week at 48, of a venue change. Born in 1978 on the stage of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Honors spent every December since in that same house, honoring the culture the building was raised to hold. It is survived by Capital One Arena, which will host the ceremony on December 7, the first time in the award's history it has not happened at its own address.
It was not a natural death. On September 15, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked, for a second time, an effort to put the president's name on the building's exterior, ruling the move unlawful even when dressed up as an honor for his "current" term. The president answered that the Kennedy Center was "destined to doom." The next day, one of JFK's nieces called the fight "hostage taking" and accused the president of bankrupting the institution he could not rename. The day after that — one day, not two — a photographer caught the president on Air Force One studying a printout of the building's name under the word "DEMOLISHED." On September 18, the Kennedy Center board, which the president had handpicked, voted to close the main building for renovations the president himself said would not happen while the fight continued.…
…(cont) The Honors are survived also by the honorees, not yet announced this year, who will take a stage borrowed from a hockey arena instead of the one built for them. They are preceded in death by forty-seven ceremonies that never had to ask where they were being held.
A whippersnapper might call this a scheduling matter. It is not. A building does not need its name changed to keep operating; it needs a board that will not close it over a word. The board here is not keeping the lights on and arguing about a name at the same time. It is doing one by way of the other, and the judge who told it to stop has been told, politely, to go to hell.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you read the ruling yourself, and that you remember the Honors were named for a dead president, not a living one, and that this was the entire, modest point.
“You don't torch a federal courtroom to rename a building, you just starve the building until it can't argue back. First they lose in court, twice, then the board they picked votes to shut the place down anyway — that's not a renovation, that's a hostage note with a ribbon-cutting date. Nobody's cultural legacy is safe if a handpicked board can close the building the day after a judge says no.”
“Look, the board voted to close for renovations, that's a facilities decision, totally separate from — okay, the timing is not great. But a judge blocking one renaming attempt doesn't mean the center is in "jeopardy," it means due process is working exactly as — did I just defend the thing that moved the ceremony out of the building? That's not where I meant to land.”
The receipts
· Trump Says Kennedy Center Is 'Destined to Doom' After Judge Stops Him From Slapping His Name on It from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· Trump 'Narcissism and Incompetence' Denounced After Kennedy Center 'Demolition' Plan Exposed from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· JFK's family slams Trump over Kennedy Center: 'How small minded, how narcissistic' from the morgue, 18 Sep 2026
· Kennedy scion accused Trump of ‘bankrupting’ Kennedy Center as ‘hostage taking’ name change battle persists from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.