Staff at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. have started to remove all references to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump‘s makeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., has hit some roadblocks as a federal judge ordered Friday (May 29) that the president could not add his name to the historic building’s title.
U.S. District Judge Casey Cooper stated in a new 94-page opinion that the Kennedy Center board — of which Trump is the chairman, as voted on in February last year by the members he appointed during his overhaul of the institution — violated the law by moving to change its name to “The Donald Trump and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” The judge also ordered the removal of any reference to the sitting POTUS’ name displayed on the building’s signage or website within the next two weeks.
“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 his opinion. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Additionally, the federal official permanently blocked the center from planned renovations that would close the Kennedy Center for two years, writing that the board had “neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations” to continue operating as a performing arts venue in memorial to President Kennedy, as well as the “potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions.”
