President Donald Trump’s name remained affixed to the Kennedy Center on Friday, the deadline a federal judge had set for the letters to be taken down. But a federal judge denied a last-minute effort by the Center’s Board of Trustees to keep the signage in place for now, as workers were putting up scaffolding under the sign, suggesting removal could be imminent.
On Thursday evening, the Board of Trustees of the Kennedy Center appealed a ruling that ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the center’s building and the center’s online materials and accounts by Friday. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper previously ruled that only Congress, not the Board, has the authority to change the center’s name. In recent days, Trump’s name had been removed from the center’s official website, voicemail and YouTube channel. Nonetheless, a person with knowledge of the legal fight expressed skepticism that Trump’s sign would come down Friday.
In the filing, the Kennedy Center said the court should grant a stay of the judge’s order, because it has “strong arguments to raise on appeal,” and that removing Trump’s name would be “both wasteful for the Center and confusing for the public.”
“The far more sensible course is to allow the D.C. Circuit to adjudicate this appeal before requiring these sorts of compliance measures,” the center argued.
The latest legal back and forth stood to lengthen a drama that began six months ago, when the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, which is packed with Trump’s allies, voted “unanimously” to rename the cultural center to the Trump Kennedy Center. Instead of replacing the building’s signage, workers added the words “The Donald J. Trump and” above the existing lettering, changing the building’s name to “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
The move drew immediate backlash and a lawsuit from Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, one of the board’s ex-officio members who had been stripped of voting power on the board.
Norman Eisen, one of the attorneys representing Rep. Beatty, said the center’s last-minute appeal “evinces desperation.”
“That is what they should be feeling because they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. We are vigorously contesting this latest ploy, as we have throughout the case, on behalf of Congresswoman Beatty and the American people,” Eisen added.
Washingtonians have been keeping a close eye on the Kennedy Center as the court-ordered deadline nears. A live camera mounted outside of the Watergate hotel balcony has been monitoring the exterior wall of the Kennedy Center for days. The livestream is set up by Hands Off the Art, an activist group that has been leading weekly protests outside the center this spring.
Andrew Martin, a DC resident also known as “Drybrarian” on Threads, has been taking a daily picture outside of the Kennedy Center since the beginning of June. The account quickly garnered thousands of likes each day and more than 30,000 followers.
“We are so hungry for even the tiniest smidge of hope,” Martin told The Washington Post, “of something that indicates that the bad days might be over.”
