Judge orders Trump's name removed from Kennedy Center

Congress first authorized a national performing arts center in 1958 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Cultural Center Act (Public Law 85-874). The 1958 law created the governance structure but left the facility unnamed. Two months after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Congress passed a joint resolution renaming it. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Public Law 88-260 on January 23, 1964, giving the facility its statutory name and committing an additional $15.5 million in federal matching funds. The statute designated the center as 'the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.' That statutory name stood for 62 years.

The law is codified at Title 20 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 3, Subchapter V. It gives the Kennedy Center board broad authority to manage operations but says nothing about the power to rename the institution.

For most federal buildings, Congress has delegated naming authority to the General Services Administration under 40 U.S.C. § 3102, which lets the GSA Administrator name or redesignate any building under GSA custody. That delegation doesn't reach buildings named by an act of Congress. The GSA's own policy states that spaces named by acts of Congress can only be renamed by superseding legislation. The Kennedy Center was named in statute, not through administrative designation, so GSA's delegated authority doesn't apply and neither does any executive discretion. Only a new act of Congress can change the name.

No previous administration had successfully renamed a congressionally chartered institution whose name was embedded in federal statute. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing review of Smithsonian Institution programming and exhibitions. Legal scholars at the Yale Law Journal noted the order broke with longstanding precedent under which presidents deferred to the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, which holds statutory authority over the institution. The Smithsonian was established by Congress in 1846; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967; the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by Congress in 1980. Each carries its name in federal statute and requires an act of Congress to be renamed.

After taking office in January 2025, Trump replaced the Kennedy Center's leadership, appointed himself board chairman, and oversaw the removal of longtime chair David Rubenstein, who donated $111 million total to the center during his 15 years as chairman. In May 2025, the new board revised its bylaws to strip ex officio trustees of their voting rights, limiting votes to presidentially appointed trustees only. Ex officio trustees are designated by Congress, not the president. The board stripped five categories of congressional designees: the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House, the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and additional members appointed by House and Senate leadership.

The presidential appointees who voted to strip those rights included Susie Wiles, Dan Scavino, Usha Vance, Pamela Gross, Mindy Levine, Lynda Lomangino, John Falconetti, Cheri Summerall, Sergio Gor, Allison Lutnick, and Dana Blumberg. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) were among those whose voting rights were stripped.

On December 18, 2025, the Trump-appointed board voted unanimously to rename the institution the 'Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.' The Kennedy family publicly objected. Rep. Beatty was muted when she attempted to speak during the vote.

Rep. Beatty filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, case number 1:25-cv-04480, challenging three board actions: the renaming, the planned closure, and the stripping of ex officio voting rights. Her lawsuit argued that the 1964 act of Congress established the Kennedy Center's name and that the board had no authority to change it unilaterally.

The Justice Department, represented by lawyer William Jankowski, argued that the 1964 statute doesn't speak explicitly to the voting rights of ex officio trustees and distinguishes them from governing general trustees. Cooper rejected that argument: he found the statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees, and that trust law presumptively places all trustees on equal footing when administering the trust. Beatty's legal standing as a sitting ex officio trustee gave her a direct, concrete injury when her vote was stripped, satisfying the Article III standing requirements the government also contested.

On March 16, 2026, the board met at the White House, with Trump in attendance for lunch, and voted to close the Kennedy Center for a two-year renovation beginning July 4, 2026. Congress had appropriated $256.7 million for the project through the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the FY2026 budget reconciliation process. Trump described the plan as a 'complete rebuilding' that would 'fully expose' the building's steel skeleton. The board also installed Matt Floca as CEO and executive director, replacing Richard Grenell.

Cooper's ruling found the March 16 board vote was the result of an 'ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision.' Board members had been given only an eight-page 2022 report on soffit failure and a 2021 building review as documentation for a decision affecting hundreds of employees and partner organizations.

A separate coalition of eight architectural and cultural heritage organizations, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects, filed their own lawsuit on March 23, 2026, arguing the federal government must comply with historic preservation laws and secure congressional authorization before any demolition or substantial alteration.

By early 2026, the Kennedy Center was losing artists, audiences, and revenue rapidly. Dozens of performers canceled, including Philip Glass, who withdrew the world premiere of his Symphony No. 15; the New York City Ballet, which canceled a six-day residency; the Washington National Opera, which announced a full departure from the venue; and the touring production of Hamilton.

The center employed nearly 2,500 people during the 2023 calendar year. By April 2026, the Kennedy Center United Arts Workers union had seen its potential membership fall from approximately 180 staff to fewer than 60 people. Ticket sales dropped roughly 50 percent from pre-change levels. Subscription revenue fell 36 percent between June 2024 and June 2025, from $4.4 million to $2.7 million. IATSE filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board in May 2026 after the center laid off 25 workers from its ticketing and group sales departments before the planned July closure. IATSE President Matthew D. Loeb said: 'The Kennedy Center appears to be using a temporary closure as cover to permanently eliminate union jobs in violation of its contract and federal labor law.'

The Kennedy Center receives separate federal appropriations each fiscal year to maintain it as a federal memorial. The FY2025 appropriation was $45.73 million, split between $32.30 million for operations and maintenance and $13.43 million for capital repair and restoration. The FY2026 appropriation was $37.2 million. That annual funding flows through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, both of which include ex officio Kennedy Center trustees among their leaders. The $256.7 million renovation appropriation was a separate, one-time package passed through budget reconciliation, not the regular appropriations process.

Judge Christopher Cooper, nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed 100-to-0 by the Senate on March 26, 2014, issued his 94-page ruling on May 29, 2026. He granted a on the name change and a preliminary injunction on the closure.

On the name, Cooper wrote: '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. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.' He ordered all signage and online materials using the Trump name removed within 14 days.

On the voting rights question, Cooper found the board's May 2025 bylaw change violated the Kennedy Center's own governing statute. He wrote that 'the Center's organic statute makes no distinction between the powers of general and ex officio trustees' and that 'stripping ex officio trustees of their voting rights runs afoul of common-law trust principles incorporated into the statute.'

The ruling restored Beatty's voting rights as an ex officio trustee, directly reversing the board's unilateral action.

On the closure, Cooper applied a preliminary injunction standard, finding Beatty was likely to succeed on the merits. He found the board 'based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure.'

Cooper noted the injunction wasn't a permanent bar to renovation: 'this preliminary relief should not be understood to enjoin the necessary maintenance and repair work that Congress authorized.' The board could still pursue renovations if it followed a proper deliberative process.

Trump reacted on social media, calling Cooper a judge who 'should be ashamed of himself' and later saying the judge 'should be brought up on charges.' Trump said he would instruct his administration to 'make all necessary arrangements' to transfer the Kennedy Center to Congress, and declared he had 'no interest' in continuing the renovation. He said the center would 'soon be closed, probably never to open again.'

The Kennedy Center's vice president of public relations, Roma Daravi, said the institution was 'confident that on appeal the court will uphold the Board's will to recognize President Trump's historic contributions.' Conservative commentator Jonathan Turley challenged Cooper's closure holding, calling it 'Grossly Short of Prudent Decision-Making,' while acknowledging the name-change ruling had stronger statutory footing.

Rep. Beatty called the ruling 'a 1-2 punch against Trump's corruption.' The ruling applies the same logic to the Kennedy Center that courts would apply to any congressionally named institution.