A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to explain why it placed a tarp over the Kennedy Center’s facade after the Republican leader’s name was removed from the building under a court order.
The US district judge Christopher Cooper said the administration must report by 31 July “the purpose and status of the tarp and scaffolding” now in place at the building. The tarp was installed as workers stripped Donald Trump’s name in a predawn operation this month following an order from Cooper that the Trump administration unlawfully added his name to the facade in December.
The White House and Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a lawsuit brought by Joyce Beatty, a Democratic representative and Kennedy Center board member, the judge last month ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the Washington theater complex’s signage and blocked his plans to close it for two years of renovations starting on 4 July. The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to put that order on hold.
Beatty’s lawyers this week in a filing told the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit that the “semi-permanent tarp” obscuring the late president John F Kennedy’s name from public view at the center appears to be the Trump administration’s “effort to frustrate the restoration of the status quo as it existed prior to the renaming”.
Beatty called the obstruction of the facade an “act of petty defiance”
Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin had previously referred to the tarp “a literal coverup”.
“A literal coverup, to add to all the others. Nobody’s fooled,” Raskin wrote on X. “Trump and his team got caught vandalizing federal property by posting graffiti with his name on the Kennedy Center and a judge shut them down. It will be a beautiful day when the name of the Kennedy Center is restored to visibility. And the vandal should pay for all the repair work – not the taxpayers.”
Last month, the center’s general counsel issued a memo with orders to remove all references to the president by 12 June.
The memo referred to Cooper’s order to take down all references to a “Trump Kennedy Center”, telling employees: “To comply with this order, you must immediately change email signatures, letterheads, and other documents to reflect the name such as ‘The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,’ or ‘Kennedy Center’.
“Other changes, such as to templates and forms, signage, brochures and website pages, must be completed no later than Friday, June 12, 2026,” the memo added.
According to Cooper’s ruling, the venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.
“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,” Cooper wrote in his 94-page opinion.
As part of that ruling, Cooper also temporarily blocked the venue from closing down this summer for renovations, a decision the judge called “ill-informed” and “seemingly preordained”.
Trump had previously announced plans approved by his handpicked board at the center to begin a $257m “revitalization project” that would have shuttered the center for two years.
