Federal judge orders Trump's name removed from Kennedy Center

A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump's name was illegally added to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without congressional authorization, ordering its removal from the building within two weeks and blocking a planned two-year closure for renovations.

The ruling affirms that only Congress holds the authority to rename the federally chartered arts center, dealing a legal setback to Trump administration efforts that affixed the president's name and image to multiple government properties during his second term.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who held hearings in late April on parallel lawsuits challenging the project, ruled in favor of Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who sits on the Kennedy Center board as an ex officio member, according to ABC7 Los Angeles.

Cooper addressed the central legal question in unambiguous terms. "May the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be renamed absent Congressional authorization? The answer, plain from the face of the statute, is no. Nor can any other individual be memorialized on the front portico of the building," he wrote.

The judge also took aim at the board's conduct, calling its March 16 vote to temporarily close the facility "ill-informed and seemingly preordained." He wrote that "the trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one."

The Trump administration had planned to shut down the arts center beginning in July for approximately two years of renovations. Congress had already approved $257 million in restoration funding for the 1.5-million-square-foot building, which began construction in 1965 and has accumulated severe water damage along with decades-old equipment in need of replacement, the report said.

Kennedy Center Vice President of Public Relations Roma Daravi said Friday the administration was optimistic about its legal prospects, saying she was "confident that on appeal the court will uphold the Board's will to recognize President Trump's historic contributions to our nation's cultural center."

Rep. Beatty welcomed the outcome. "Now hopefully people can come back to work, we can continue to be the Kennedy Center that we were intended to be," she told The Associated Press.

The ruling is the latest legal challenge to the Trump administration's second-term effort to attach the president's name or image to federal landmarks, which also included demolishing the White House's East Wing to build a ballroom.