Trump-Controlled Kennedy Center Board Votes for New Scheme to Put His Name Back on Building Despite Court Order

AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

The Board for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts voted Thursday to approve trying again to add President Donald Trump’s name to the building, a move The New York Times arts and culture reporter Julia Jacobs characterized as “aggressively testing a federal judge’s order.”

Shortly after his second inauguration, Trump appointed himself to the Kennedy Center board, and added several of his allies to the board as well, who then named him chair. The new Trump-controlled board voted to change the center’s name to add the president’s name. The center’s website, social media, and other digital branding were updated to say “The Trump Kennedy Center,” and his name was added to the building’s façade.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), a Kennedy Center board member who objected to the renaming, filed a lawsuit in late December challenging the “illegal renaming,” arguing that “[b]ecause Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress.” She has been represented by a legal team led by Norm Eisen, along with the organization he co-founded, Democracy Defenders Action, and the Washington Litigation Group.

In May, Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled in Beatty’s favor, ordering Trump’s name to be removed from the Kennedy Center by Friday, June 12. After Trump’s last-minute appeals failed, workers spent hours slowly putting up scaffolding in front of the Kennedy Center to reach the letters, and then began hanging up large tarps that concealed their work removing the letters in Trump’s name and blocked the view of the Kennedy Center façade afterwards.

Cooper had also ordered the Kennedy Center not to go through with its declared plans to close for two years for renovations. The Trump-led board has appealed Cooper’s order on both issues; the tarps remain hanging on the front of the building in the meantime, and the board also voted on Thursday to again close for renovations.

The Times cited “two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings” regarding the board’s votes. The new inscription for the center will add “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” underneath Kennedy’s name on the façade as well as renaming a grounds area “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

The resolution enacting these changes credited Trump for rescuing the center “from the brink of disaster” and seeks “to recognize and honor President Trump’s existential and unprecedented contributions to the survival of the center by all legal means.”

Beatty’s attorney Eisen reacted to the news of the vote to try again to put Trump’s name on the building, describing it as Trump’s “handpicked board” having “defied the court by voting to put it back, rename the plaza after him, [and] close the Center for two years.”

“They’ll answer for it in court, again,” he vowed.

Eisen also shared a scathing statement from Beatty and the rest of her legal team, writing that they were “not done fighting.”

The board’s vote had “flouted a court order preventing the institution from being unlawfully renamed after President Donald Trump, and once again voted to shut down the Kennedy Center,” the lawyers argued, which was in violation of the federal statute that had created the Kennedy Center and “expressly prohibits erecting ‘memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials’ with few, very limited exceptions.”

“This morning’s decision to close the Center and the surprise agenda item to put Donald Trump’s name back on the building was more of the same,” said Beatty. “This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed. I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”

“A federal judge already rejected the board’s unlawful attempt to rename the Kennedy Center, and told Donald Trump’s handpicked board that its last closure vote was ill-informed and preordained. Today’s vote is more of the same, and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts,” said Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky of Washington Litigation Group. “The court already ruled against the board when it bowed to Trump’s demands. Now, the defendants must answer for their actions — again — in court.”

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!