U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee, directed the administration to respond by Thursday to Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty’s claim.Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Wednesday ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to tell the court by Thursday morning whether the Kennedy Center’s emergency shutdown of its main building violates his earlier injunction, the latest move in Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty’s months-long lawfare campaign against the president’s effort to rebuild a rotting national landmark.Cooper, sitting in Washington, directed the Justice Department to respond by 10 a.m. Thursday after Beatty’s lawyers, including veteran Trump antagonist Norm Eisen, filed an emergency motion claiming the board’s Tuesday vote to close the main hall for safety and reconstruction “may be violating the ‘clear and unambiguous order of the Court.’”The judge said he would schedule a hearing if he thinks one is needed, the Washington Post reported.Fencing and construction barriers went up around the Potomac River complex as the building was locked to the public. Kennedy Center officials say the main structure faces imminent life-safety risks.Beatty’s team sent a staffer to the doors Wednesday morning and was told the place was closed.This is the same Obama judge who, in May, blocked a two-year renovation closure the board had already approved, ordered Trump’s name ripped off the marble facade, and accused the trustees of acting in a “derelict” and “seemingly preordained” way.As The Gateway Pundit reported at the time, Cooper, nominated by Barack Obama, ruled that only Congress can change the statutory name Congress gave the living memorial to John F. Kennedy in 1964. He also left a narrow door open: the board could come back with a more “prudent” closure decision and ask him to modify the injunction.They did. Twice.On August 13 the board, after receiving more than 160 pages of engineering and cost analysis, again voted to close the main building for about two years and to inscribe that the center had been “Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.”Cooper shot down the inscription on Tuesday. Hours later the board voted almost unanimously to shut the main building immediately, citing structural danger and a recent ceiling failure.As The Gateway Pundit reported last week, a section of plaster in the Grand Foyer came down after storms, falling roughly 60 feet onto an unoccupied floor. No one was hurt.The center itself called it another warning that could not be ignored after decades of deferred maintenance. President Trump had been saying the same thing since he took the board chair: rotting systems, unsafe conditions, and a building that needed to be closed, fixed properly, and reopened as a world-class hall, not patched around paying audiences for years.Congress already put more than $250 million into the project through the president’s spending package. Consultants told the board a full two-year closure is faster and cheaper than a four-year partial shutdown that would cost more than twice as much and leave large parts of the building dark anyway.President Trump was blunt on Truth Social after Tuesday’s vote:The Board of The Kennedy Center today agreed, almost unanimously, to close the Building for Safety reasons, and so that it can begin the process of Reconstruction.The closing will take place immediately, however, the Renovation and Reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name.If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.The Gateway Pundit covered that board vote here. Trump also noted that $17 million he helped raise is sitting in the center’s account to keep operations afloat while the courts grind on.A D.C. Circuit panel already refused to stay Cooper’s order stripping the president’s name from the building. The Gateway Pundit reported that loss in July.Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who sits on the board only because of her House seat, has been the face of the lawsuit from the start.Her lawyers now argue that even an emergency safety shutdown is illegal unless Cooper first lifts his May injunction.They want a senior Kennedy Center official hauled into court. Eisen’s statement declared that “no one — including the president — is above the law.”The post Leftist Obama Judge Demands Trump Administration Explain Why a Crumbling Kennedy Center Was Closed After Ceiling Collapse appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.