A tarp covers the facade of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Sept. 3, 2026.
Graeme Sloan | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from inscribing President Donald Trump’s name on the center’s main building to honor him and from renaming its campus after Trump.
The judge’s order came after a renewed push by the Kennedy Center’s board to get Trump’s name on official markers after the same judge ruled the board could not add Trump to the center’s official name.
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his order in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
“The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted,” Cooper wrote.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex officio member of the center’s board, had asked Cooper to block the effects of the board’s Aug. 13 resolution, which was “to recognize and honor President Trump’s future existential and unprecedented contributions to the survival of the Center.”
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