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Biden-era inspections flagged an obsolete fire alarm and weak terror defenses at Kennedy Center

Photo: NOAA / Public domain (source)

Biden-Era Inspections Found an Obsolete Fire Alarm and Weak Terror Defenses at the Kennedy Center

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 20, 2026 · 4 min read
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Two inspection reports from the first years of the Biden administration documented an obsolete fire alarm system, leaking sprinkler pipes, rusted electrical gear and weak protection against vehicle and ballistic attacks at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, according to documents reviewed by Just the News. The reports, from 2021 and 2022, describe a national landmark in serious physical decline years before President Trump moved to close it for a two-year overhaul.

The findings land in the middle of a court fight over whether that closure can go forward, and they undercut the argument that the renovation is a vanity project in search of a problem.

What the inspectors found

According to Just the News, which published the documents’ findings on September 19, 2026, the reviews were maintenance and structural assessments prepared by architectural experts. The security findings are the most striking. One of the reports warned that “Property and building access has limited resistance to vehicular and ballistic threats,” that the “Video Surveillance System is inconsistent in capabilities and application,” and that “egress doors aren’t monitored.”

For a building that hosts presidents, foreign dignitaries and crowds of visitors on a busy night, that is not a minor footnote.

Fire protection was in no better shape. The reports described the fire alarm system as obsolete and in need of replacement, a condition noted since at least 2021, and found fire sprinkler pipes leaking. The 2021 assessment found the electrical system had its own long list of problems: deteriorating feeder insulation, some aluminum feeders that failed an insulation test, wiring that did not meet the National Electrical Code, and active water leaks in transformer vault rooms with staining near electrical equipment. One report stated: “Distribution equipment (switchboards, panels, etc…)are damaged and rusted in many areas throughout the building.”

The health findings were just as bad. The 2022 report said the building’s steel structure was coated with lead paint and that caulk and sealants contained PCBs, a chemical linked to cancer. A 2021 presentation noted bluntly: “Many bathrooms are not properly ventilated.” Inspectors also documented cracks in walls and roof panels and a roof membrane near the end of its useful life, and a 2022 assessment blamed high turnover and staffing shortages in the center’s Project Management Office, including the director’s job, for slowing project work.

“They did not want to do the work”

Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for communications, told Just the News that the previous leadership ignored the warnings. “They did not want to do the work that was necessary,” she said. “It took a complete overhaul of the institution in order for anyone to care that the building was crumbling.”

Daravi also pointed to how the center spent its money instead: “Actually, instead, they had $250 million that they used to build a separate complex just next to the main building.” That separate complex is the REACH, the Kennedy Center’s riverside expansion. For the record, the REACH officially opened on September 7, 2019, after its budget grew from an original $100 million to about $250 million, according to the Washington Classical Review, with private donors pledging the funds needed to finish it. In other words, the expansion was planned and paid for before the 2021 and 2022 inspections, not in response to them. But Daravi’s broader point is borne out by the documents: within two years of the annex’s ribbon-cutting, the center’s own reviews were describing the original building’s fire alarm as obsolete and its wiring, electrical gear and roof as failing.

The fight over fixing it

In February 2026, President Trump announced a two-year renovation of the Kennedy Center, and the board approved it the following month. The plan was challenged in court by Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex officio member of the center’s board. On May 29, 2026, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the planned July 5 closure and any wind-down of programming until the board approves a closure consistent with his order, and he ordered President Trump’s name removed from the building’s signage. He said the trustees’ renovation vote “represents a dereliction” of their duty of prudence. The Justice Department appealed, and on June 12 Cooper refused to pause his ruling while the appeal proceeds.

Cooper allowed the renovation work itself to continue but found that its scope did not justify shutting the center down entirely, according to WJLA. Just the News reports that two court cases, one in Washington and one in Florida, have intervened to slow the plan.

Whatever one thinks of the name on the building, the inspection reports raise a question the public debate has largely sidestepped: if the people who ran the Kennedy Center before 2025 were told in writing that its fire alarm was obsolete, its electrical gear was rusting and its doors were unmonitored, what exactly is the status quo that opponents are fighting to preserve?

Why it matters

The Kennedy Center is not a private club. It is a national institution whose name, as Judge Cooper himself noted, was given by Congress, and a Kennedy Center official told Spectrum News that $257 million was allocated to the institution in 2025. Taxpayers have a right to know what condition it was in and who knew. The 2021 and 2022 reports answer the second question: the center’s leadership did. What remains unanswered is why so little of it was fixed until a new administration made it an issue.

Critics of the renovation are entitled to argue about scope, cost and timing in court. They are not entitled to pretend the building was fine.

The warnings about the Kennedy Center were written down years ago; the only new thing is that someone finally decided to act on them.

Sources

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