If enacted, the lame-duck industrial-expediting bill BAAJA (S. 5653) will provide blanket permission for Trump’s destructive wishes in our nation’s capital. In BAAJA Follies, Hill Heat reviews several of the major legal battles against that takeover, and the implications of BAAJA’s possible passage during the lame-duck session.
Beatty v. Trump and DC Preservation League v. Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
If BAAJA passes, the Trump regime will have dangerous new legal tools to permit the threatened demolition of the Kennedy Center.
There are two separate cases against Trump’s renaming and proposed demolition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: trustee Rep. Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) suit, and the DC Preservation League’s case, which are being coordinated but handled separately by Judge Christopher R. Cooper.
Beatty’s suit challenges the renaming of the center after Trump and its arbitrary closure, whereas the coalition of historic preservationists and architects led by the Preservation League seeks to stop Trump from “proceeding with any demolition, new construction, major reconstruction, major renovation, or major aesthetic transformation of the Kennedy Center buildings or grounds that exceeds statutory limits, circumvents mandatory federal review, or fails to comply with fundamental historic preservation and environmental laws.”
The Trump-picked board, with Trump as chair, has repeated voted to put Trump’s name on the building and close down the center. In May, when the judge ordered the name removed and the center reopened, the board relented on the name. But then the board voted again to put Trump’s name on the building and to close down the center, claiming it was in a state of extreme disrepair, so the judge issued another injunction in September against any renaming and ordered status reports on the purported repair effort while the center remains closed.
The DC Preservation League case would be severely weakened by BAAJA, as its first two and eighth counts rely on Section 106 of NHPA, and its third count on NEPA. Furthermore, the passage of BAAJA would greatly strengthen the Trump regime’s claim that the plaintiffs lack standing to sue.
BAAJA’s provisions would radically empower Trump to commence demolition without public consultation, under the guise of Congressionally appropriated renovations and repairs.
“Unless the NHPA provisions are fully removed from the permitting bill, the President will have virtually free rein to implement his pet projects in DC and nationwide, with no input from the public,” Greg Werkheiser, a lawyer representing the Preservation League, warned in a written interview with Hill Heat. Werkheiser questioned why Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has been investigating Trump’s corrupt mismanagement of the Kennedy Center, is now “gutting the law that slows him down.”