A federal judge has ruled that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts cannot be renamed without an act of Congress, ordering all references to President Donald Trump's name removed from the building and its website within 14 days.
On Friday (May 29), U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper signed the preliminary injunction, which also blocked the Trump administration's plan to close the Washington venue for two years of repairs.
"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. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” wrote Cooper in his 95-page opinion explaining the decision.
Upset over the decision, Trump released an extremely long statement about it on Truth Social. In it, Trump announced that he’d “transfer” the Kennedy Center back to Congress so they could “make a determination as to what to do with it.”
“Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump wrote. “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 Kennedy Center's board had voted last year to add Trump's name to the facility. Cooper found that the same board's decision to close the center for two years was the product of an "ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision," adding: "The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one."
The injunction does not freeze all activity at the venue. Cooper wrote that it "will not prevent the Center from moving forward with the capital repair work it has planned, which the record demonstrates is sorely needed," and left open the possibility of a future closure if the board revisits the decision through a proper deliberative process.
