Trump's Name to Stay on Kennedy Center: How Loophole Will Be Challenged
Newsweek · C · trust 62/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The Kennedy Center board has proposed a new way to put President Donald Trump ’s name back on the building — but the move is set to face renewed scrutiny in federal court.
The board voted Thursday to inscribe beneath the Kennedy Center’s main signage the words “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” while also approving a plan to close the center’s main building for two years for renovations. The board is directing officials to pursue “all legal means” to honor Trump and is considering naming the grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
The maneuver comes only two months after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center, ruling that the board lacked authority to change the name of an institution Congress established as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy.
The Kennedy Center removed Trump’s name from the facade in June, after workers erected scaffolding and tarps around the building. The board’s latest action appears designed to avoid repeating the precise name change that Cooper rejected while nevertheless putting Trump’s name prominently back on the building.
But opponents argue the distinction between renaming the Kennedy Center and memorializing Trump on its facade may not survive scrutiny under the same federal law that produced Cooper’s earlier ruling.
Norm Eisen, the former White House ethics lawyer who represents Beatty alongside Nathaniel Zelinsky, sharply criticized Thursday’s vote. “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,” Eisen said.
“Today’s vote is more of the same, and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts.”
Eisen added in another statement that “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.”
Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat who sits on the Kennedy Center board through her congressional position, also condemned the vote.
“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed,” said Beatty, who brought the initial lawsuit challenging Trump's name on the Kennedy Center.
“I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”
The board is no longer attempting to call the institution the “Trump-Kennedy Center.”
Instead, the resolution would leave the Kennedy Center’s official name intact while adding a separate inscription crediting Trump for its restoration and renovation.
That distinction could be central to the legal battle.
Judge Cooper wrote in May that the Kennedy Center’s governing statute “makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy” and that Congress, rather than the board, has the authority to change that name. His order required Trump’s name to be removed from the Center's physical and digital branding.
The board's latest resolution, however, goes beyond the wording on the facade. It also proposes honoring Trump through other physical spaces, including a possible President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
Democracy Defenders Action, which represents Beatty in the litigation, argues that the statute expressly restricts additional memorials or plaques in the Center's public areas.
The name isn't the only issue headed back before Judge Cooper.
The board also voted to close the Kennedy Center's main building for two years while a roughly $250 million renovation takes place. The newer Reach building would remain open for limited programming.
The judge had previously blocked the closure, saying the board's initial decision was based on a “one-sided presentation of information” and that the trustees had neglected their broader statutory obligations to the institution. He characterized the original decision as “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”
The judge did not say the Kennedy Center could never close for construction. Rather, he left open the possibility that the board could reach that conclusion after conducting a genuinely independent assessment of its competing obligations. Reuters reported after the May ruling that Judge Cooper specifically said the board could close the Center if it reached that decision anew after independently balancing those obligations.
The board says it has done precisely that: it considered alternatives and received outside analysis supporting a full closure.
But Beatty's legal team is likely to ask whether the process was sufficiently independent — particularly because Trump announced the two-year closure months before Thursday's supposedly fresh decision.
Trump announced plans to close the center for a two-year renovation project in February, following a wave of cancellations by musicians and performers after he added his name to the building and ousted previous leadership.
“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
There is another potential problem for the board's strategy.
Democracy Defenders Action argues that the Kennedy Center's governing statute expressly prohibits additional “memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials” in public areas, subject to narrow exceptions. The organization says that provision could independently undermine Thursday's proposed inscription and the proposed Trump Plaza.
That means the board may have created a legal argument that is actually broader than the original naming dispute.
If…
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