Workers Start Removing Trump Name From Kennedy Center Building

Workers began the process of prying “Donald J. Trump” off the facade of the Kennedy Center in the early morning hours on Saturday, after a court found the president’s renaming of the Washington, D.C., landmark was illegal.

After crews set up scaffolding Friday in front of the Kennedy Center, they started pulling off the letters from the building just past 3 a.m. Saturday behind “heavy white tarps” that obscured views of the removal, according to the New York Times. They ended the work and departed the site about an hour later, the Times reported.

Crowds had gathered Friday in front of the Kennedy Center, taking pictures, occasionally breaking into cheers and chants of “Take it down,” per CNBC.

In a May 29 ruling, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Kennedy Center officials to remove Trump’s name from the building (as well as from its website and wherever else it appeared in connection with the center) within two weeks, with a June 12 deadline. The judge also blocked Trump and the center from taking any further steps to close the institution for repairs, after the president had said the Kennedy Center would shut down for two years starting July 4, 2026, to undergo a “complete rebuilding.”

The judge found that the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees — who were hand-picked by the president — had acted illegally in voting to add Trump’s name to the facility. The renaming, Cooper determined, was a clear violation of a 1964 federal law establishing its name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” and explicitly prohibiting the board from adding any other name to the building.

Earlier this week, the Kennedy Center had purged Trump’s name from its website, social-media handles and other areas. The Trump-appointed director of the center had requested a 12-hour extension to the July 12 midnight deadline to take Trump’s name off the physical building citing delays caused by storms in the area.

In ordering Trump’s name wiped from the Kennedy Center, the court ruled in favor of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), who in December sued Trump and the Kennedy Center’s board seeking to force the removal of Trump’s name from the center.

In a statement released Saturday morning, Beatty said, “Today’s victory is the beginning of returning the Kennedy Center to the American people. The rule of law prevailed, and that is worth celebrating. Let this send a message across the country: when we stand up, fight back, and defend our democracy, we can win. This is just the beginning.”

Shortly after last month’s ruling, Trump slammed Cooper (“appointed by Barack Hussein Obama”) and said the judge should “be ashamed of himself,” because the center is “structurally dangerous” and a threat to public safety. At the same time, Trump said he would order the Commerce Department to “transfer this failing Institution” back to Congress “so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.”