A pretty short, pretty dumb era has come to a close. President Donald Trump’s name has been torn from the Kennedy Center.
The saga began in early 2025 when Trump installed new leadership at The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. In December, that team took action to have the current president’s name added to the center and all its official materials and outlets. That included tacking “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” onto the building.
Trump’s coup of the center prompted a slew of cancellations and protests by artists, sending the venue into chaos and ticket sales plummeting. Trump’s allies also tried to have the center closed for two years, claiming that renovations needed to be done. Ohio Democratic Representative and Kennedy Center Trustee Joyce Beatty sued in a Washington D.C. federal court to have the name changed undone and the planned closure stopped, arguing that by U.S. law only Congress has the power to enact changes at the venue.
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Trump’s takeover came to a halt in May when a Judge Casey Cooper agreed with the plaintiff, ruling that Trump’s allies illegally circumvent Congress in changing the Kennedy center’s name. In the ruling Cooper said that the law “makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President [John F.] Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so . . . Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.” Cooper gave the center 14 days to remove all vestiges of Trump’s name, from the building to the stationary. The judge also denied an 11th hour appeal by Trump’s team to reverse the decision.
Trump’s name was scrubbed from the center’s website, emails, and paper materials. The name on the building was the last remnants of the fiasco. An MS Now livestream captured the final moments.
This isn’t the only legal defeat at the Kennedy Center for Trump. In early June, a Washington D.C. judge trashed a lawsuit brought by Trump’s Kennedy Center team against jazz drummer Chuck Redd that had claimed the musician broke a contract when he canceled a Christmas concert. The judge ultimately found that no contract was in place and threw out the lawsuit.
