Kennedy Center lawyers on Thursday directed staff to strip President Donald Trump’s name from official signage and materials by June 12, moving the institution into direct compliance with a federal judge’s ruling that the board went beyond its authority when it added him to the center’s name.
The order reaches across the Kennedy Center’s everyday business. Staff were told to remove references to the “Trump-Kennedy Center” and “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” and to revert instead to “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” “the Kennedy Center” or “the Center.” The change applies to email signatures, letterhead, signage, brochures and website pages. Trump’s name still remained on the Kennedy Center exterior as of Thursday afternoon, even as the internal directive went out.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper gave the Kennedy Center 14 days from May 29 to remove all references to the center being named for anyone other than John F. Kennedy. The deadline lands on June 12. Cooper ruled last week that the board lacked authority to change the name after it voted in December to add Trump’s name. His order also said the board’s March decision to close the center for two years to complete $250 million in renovations rested on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and did not properly consider the full range of the board’s statutory obligations.
He stopped short of blocking the board from voting to close the building for a period of time. In his opinion, Cooper said the court does not dictate how the center should be run or prescribe any particular plan for the institution moving forward. He said it simply holds the board to minimum legal requirements and added that the center should act on those obligations if it comes to the matter again in a prudent way.
The fight over the name has already spilled beyond the boardroom. In early weeks of his second term, Trump replaced several members of the center’s Board of Trustees with senior members of his administration and close allies, and the board then elected him as chair. Lawmakers and legal scholars had said the December name change required congressional action, not just a board vote. Several artists canceled performances after the vote, and the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra later left for a new job.
The immediate question now is not whether the court has spoken. It has. The issue is whether the Kennedy Center takes the facade with it by June 12, or leaves the most visible piece of the dispute hanging outside while it rewrites the rest of the institution’s public face.
