You don’t have to care about the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. But the president clearly cares a great deal about it, and now the Trump administration is arguing in court that unless the president’s name remains on the building, the Kennedy Center will need to be demolished.

The Justice Department suggested in a court filing Tuesday that the Kennedy Center could face demolition in the event a federal judge issues an order permanently blocking President Donald Trump’s push to renovate the facility with additions intended to recognize Trump personally. In an extraordinary filing that at times reads like a post from Trump’s social media platform, Brantley Mayers — a top official in DOJ’s Civil Division — argues the “decrepit” Kennedy Center faces an imminent “death spiral” without Trump’s intervention. “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years,” the filing said. “Such a replacement will fail to adequately honor President John F. Kennedy,........

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