Kennedy Center Seeks Court Ruling To Keep Trump’s Name On Facade

UPDATE, 12:11 p.m. PT: A federal judge denied the Kennedy Center‘s effort to retain Donald Trump‘s name on the facade of the complex, just hours before a deadline to strip the arts institution of the president from its official designation.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote that the center’s board has “not carried their burden to establish that a stay of the Court’s May 29, 2026 permanent injunction concerning the Kennedy Center’s renaming is warranted pending an appeal of the underlying ruling to the D.C. Circuit.”

Outside of the center, scaffolding has gone up, drawing spectators and news crews in anticipation of the name being removed.

The board of the Kennedy Center filed a motion for a stay late on Thursday, with 24 hours left for the center to strip the president’s name off the facade and in any other references. Cooper ruled last month that the center had to revert to its original name, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

The center, represented by the Justice Department, stated in a filing, “Defendants have strong arguments to raise on appeal, and the equities and public interest cut against requiring Defendants to remove the Center’s signage only to put it up after prevailing on appeal, as that would be both wasteful for the Center and confusing for the public.”

The Kennedy Center board had voted earlier in the day to appeal the judge’s decision. Trump serves as the center’s chairman, after engineering a takeover of the arts institution just weeks into his second term.

Cooper ruled that the board of the center overstepped its authority when it added Trump’s name to the center last December. The judge wrote that the center was named by Congress for John F. Kennedy in 1964, and “only Congress can change it.” He gave the center two weeks to remove references to Trump from the name of the center.

The center has since reverted back to simply “Kennedy Center” on its website and social media, among other places. But the signage for Trump remains on the facade of the building, with one camera monitoring when it will be removed.

The board argued in its filing that “removal of the name threatens to impede the Center’s fundraising efforts and contribute to the financial decline of the Center. This loss of fundraising time and potential is also definitionally irreparable, and the public interest weighs in favor of an economically viable Center. Moreover, requiring a name change now, only to potentially revert back to the current name after appeal, would be incredibly confusing for the public. The far more sensible course is to allow the D.C. Circuit to adjudicate this appeal before requiring these sorts of compliance measures.”

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Since’s Trump’s takeover, and later the name change, the center has seen an artist exodus and a falloff in ticket sales, according to sources from the institution. Its primary audience is in Washington, D.C., northern Virginia and Maryland, which voted heavily in favor of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.

The judge also ruled that the board’s plan to close the center for two years for renovations — which was to start next month — failed to consider the full impact of shuttering for such a lengthy period of time. The judge ruled that the center could proceed with renovations, but the board had to conduct a more comprehensive review of the closure plan.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, had sued the center seeking to remove Trump’s name and halt the closure plans.

Her legal team, led by Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, filed a response on Friday morning calling the center’s motion for a stay “frivolous.” They argued that the center provided “no support” for its assertion that removing the name would hurt fundraising efforts, while the board’s “own conduct—waiting two weeks and within hours of the deadline for compliance before seeking extraordinary relief from the Court—underscores that they suffered no harm.”