A judge on Friday ordered the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the prestigious Washington DC venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.
US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and to eliminate any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote in a 94-page opinion. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
The judge added: “The Court has concluded that the Board overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center after President Trump.”
Not long after the ruling, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would work with Congress on transferring ownership of the Kennedy Center.
“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” he wrote.
Cooper also temporarily blocked the center from closing this summer for proposed renovations, two months after Trump announced its two-year closure.
He said that “in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center”.
“More specifically, the Board based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions,” Cooper went on.
He called the decision to halt operations during the renovation “ill-informed and seemingly preordained”.
Touting his vision for the proposed renovations in his post, Trump added: “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”
The lawsuit was brought by Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democratic US representative and a member of the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress.
“Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” Beatty said in a statement welcoming the decision. “The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity.”
Shortly after taking office last year, Trump sparked controversy when he appointed himself chair of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees in February, calling it a “take-over”. He purged the board and replaced them with his own appointees.
The board of the Kennedy Center then voted in favor of the proposal to add Trump’s name in December, culminating an aggressive effort of his administration to remake Washington’s arts and culture institutions to his liking.
John F Kennedy’s grandnephew Joe Kennedy III, a former congressman for Massachusetts, said at the time that he doubted the center’s name could legally be changed.
“The Kennedy Center is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law. It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” Kennedy III wrote on X.
The move also led to a wave of artists and performing groups canceling bookings in protest, including a run of the Tony award-winning musical Hamilton. The executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. And in March, Richard Grenell, a Trump appointee, who played a key role in the push to overhaul the institution and target “woke” culture, announced he was stepping down as president.
The center, which receives federal funding, is one of the US’s leading arts venues with a huge cultural profile in the US capital and has long enjoyed bipartisan support. But under Trump, it has become an extension of the White House’s cultural agenda.
Trump persuaded Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, to hold the World Cup draw there in December. Trump hosted the Kennedy Center Honors there himself, addressed House Republicans and premiered the documentary about the first lady, Melania Trump, there in January.
Trump’s other grand plans for the nation’s capital include a vast “Victory arch” near the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington national cemetery, and a 100,000 sq ft ballroom at the site of the demolished East Wing of the White House.
Those efforts also face court challenges. A federal appeals court has allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with construction of the ballroom as it considers the case, though some of its federal funding is now in jeopardy following a Senate Republican rebellion.
Last year, House Republicans also proposed changing the name of the Kennedy Center’s Opera House to the “First Lady Melania Trump Opera House”. It has also ordered a review of the Smithsonian Institution.