President Donald Trump's name was officially removed from the Kennedy Center on Saturday after a federal judge ruled that the president cannot simply place his name on the building. Workers erected scaffolding throughout Friday to dismantle Trump's name and meet the 11:59 p.m. deadline. The Justice Department later obtained a 12-hour extension, citing thunderstorms in the D.C. area that caused delays.
Around 3 a.m. on Saturday, workers installed a large curtain to obscure the removal of Trump's name, disappointing a crowd that had gathered to celebrate. Thousands more watched via a livestream.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled against Trump in May, stating that only Congress has the authority to rename the building. “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's decision said. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Cooper also blocked the two-year closure of the Kennedy Center that a Trump-installed board had voted to implement for renovations in December. Trump was predictably furious about the decision.
“Can you imagine?” Trump posted on Truth Social in May. “A Barack Hussein Obama Judge named Christopher Cooper has stopped a magnificent structural and aesthetic rebuilding of The Trump Kennedy Center where Millions of Dollars of material, marble, furniture, steel, air conditioning, heating, and so much else was ordered, or soon to be ordered, with the end result being a structure that would no longer be in a potential state of collapse, rusted, rotted, and rat and bug infested, to one that would be the Finest anywhere in the World.”
The removal of Trump's name comes just one day before his 80th birthday, when he plans to host an outdoor UFC event on the White House South Lawn. The forecast for Sunday in D.C. is hot, humid, buggy, and includes scattered thunderstorms that threaten to disrupt Trump's $60 million birthday bash.
