President Donald Trump’s name was removed from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge blocked the renaming and an appeals court declined to stop the reversal.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
President Donald Trump’s name was removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on June 13 after the Trump administration failed to stop a court-ordered reversal of the venue’s renamed title.
Crews worked overnight at the Washington landmark, and a large white tarp covered parts of the building Saturday morning as letters were taken down from the exterior.
The removal followed a May 29 ruling by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who found that the Kennedy Center’s board did not have authority to formally rename the institution. Cooper ruled that only Congress can change the name of the venue and also blocked a planned two-year closure that was scheduled to begin after July 4 for renovations.
“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,” Cooper said.
The Trump administration appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 11. The appeals court denied the request the next day in an unsigned order, clearing the way for the official name reversal.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who filed a lawsuit in December 2025 seeking to block the name change, visited the venue Friday after the latest ruling and credited the court outcome as a victory for opponents of the renaming.
“We were on the side of justice,” Beatty told a small crowd.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also praised the removal in a June 13 social media post, criticizing Trump’s name on the building as “presidential graffiti.”
The dispute began after Trump returned to office in early 2025 and appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees. He then removed and replaced the board chairman and every board member who did not share his stated vision for “a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.”
The reconstituted board, which included administration figures and prominent supporters such as Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, voted unanimously in December 2025 to rename the institution the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
Trump welcomed the name change at the time but said he had not requested it.
After Cooper blocked both the renaming and the planned two-year closure, Trump said he wanted Congress to take control of the venue’s operations.
“The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on May 29.
Trump accused Democrats of caring “more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center.”
“[Therefore,] we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” he said.
The court rulings left the Kennedy Center’s formal name intact and stopped the planned closure, while leaving unresolved the broader fight between Trump, the venue’s board and lawmakers over the center’s future operations.
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