President Donald Trump’s name was removed from the Kennedy Center building in the early hours of Saturday morning, six months after it was added to the nation’s marquee cultural center, which Congress had designated as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy.
Workers spent Friday evening erecting scaffolding in front of the building as crowds gathered below to watch. The workers then covered the scaffolding with plastic to obstruct the view of the giant letters being removed.
The removal of Trump’s name came after a federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to restore its original name by Friday. In recent days, Trump’s name had been removed from the center’s official website, phone voicemail, as well as YouTube channel. Last Thursday, an internal memo from the center’s Office of General Counsel and obtained by Politico directed staff to begin removing references to Trump from everything, from communication and promotional materials to signage.
In December, the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, which was packed with Trump’s allies, voted “unanimously” to rename the cultural center to the Trump-Kennedy Center. The move drew immediate backlash and a lawsuit from Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, one of the board’s ex officio members, who was stripped of voting power on the board. Beatty was reportedly spotted in the plaza next to the Kennedy Center among crowds waiting for the removal to begin on Friday.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it, ” District Judge Christopher R. Cooper said in a 94-page decision in May, while adding that the decision made by the Board of Trustees violated “Congress’s unequivocal mandate.” Judge Cooper rejected a last-minute appeal from the board to keep the name, finding it unlikely to succeed.
Judge Cooper also reversed the board’s decision to shut down the center for two years beginning on July 5, but the internal memo disputed the judge’s ruling, saying the court “did not ru
