Kennedy Center board set to head back to court after exploiting loophole to keep President Donald Trump’s name on the building
The Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted in a meeting to add an inscription reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” beneath the institution’s main signage, a move that could test a federal court order barring the board from renaming the building after the president.
The same meeting produced a second vote to close the Kennedy Center’s main building for roughly two years for a $250 million renovation, according to Rep. Joyce Beatty.
The votes set up a new confrontation with U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who ruled that the board lacked authority to rename the institution after Trump and ordered his name removed from the Center’s physical and digital branding. Cooper wrote that the law governing the institution “makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy.”
The legal workaround
Rather than formally renaming the institution, the board’s resolution exploits a loophole, keeping the Kennedy Center’s official name intact while adding a separate inscription crediting Trump for its restoration.
According to Axios, the inscription will appear beneath the Kennedy Center sign and read “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The physical site will also be renamed the President Donald J. Trump Plaza.
The strategy follows Cooper’s ruling in a lawsuit filed by Beatty challenging the board’s earlier decision to rename the venue the Trump-Kennedy Center. Cooper found that move violated federal law requiring the Center to honor “President Kennedy and President Kennedy alone.”
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name and only Congress can change it,” Cooper wrote.
Beatty said in a statement to NPR that the decision to restore Trump’s name is “a transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed.”
“I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument,” she vowed.
Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, who represent Beatty, also criticized the move. “A federal judge already rejected the board’s unlawful attempt to rename the Kennedy Center and told Donald Trump’s handpicked board that its last closure vote was ill-informed and preordained,” Eisen said. “Today’s vote is more of the same and a show of blatant disrespect to the courts.”
Statutory obstacles beyond the name dispute
Beatty’s legal team has identified another potential obstacle to the board’s plan. Federal law prohibits adding “memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials” to the Kennedy Center, the same provision Cooper cited when ordering Trump’s name removed from the building in May.
That restriction could apply to both the proposed inscription and the President Donald J. Trump Plaza if they are considered memorials to a sitting president rather than restoration credits.
The closure vote revisited
The decision to close the main building also revives an issue Cooper previously rejected.
In his May ruling, Cooper said “none of the board members had sufficient information in advance of the meeting to make a well-considered decision to close the center,” adding that “the evidence of any such review is nil.”
He found that the original closure vote relied 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 on programming and memorial functions.”
Cooper did not prohibit a future closure. The court “did not purport to dictate how the Center should be run, nor does it prescribe any particular plan for the institution — construction, closure, or otherwise — moving forward.”
Instead, he said the board must meet “certain minimum requirements imposed by law” and could close the Center “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion.”
Under the plan approved, the main building would close for about two years, with reopening targeted for summer 2028. The REACH, a 2019 addition, would remain open for limited programming and as a memorial to Kennedy.
Keeping the smaller venue operating would also allow some ticketed events to continue, including performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, the Center’s primary tenant.
Court deadlines now in play
The board has five days to report the outcome of the meeting to Cooper, giving him an early opportunity to determine whether the new inscription and plaza plan comply with his previous order or amount to the same statutory violation in a different form.
The votes also follow a separate ruling requiring the board to file a status report on future construction and operations, as well as the tarp and scaffolding still covering parts of the building’s facade.
The Trump administration appealed Cooper’s May ruling, which concluded that the board had “overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming” the Center after Trump.
That means the latest move could face scrutiny on two fronts: Cooper’s review of whether the inscription violates his existing order and an appellate court’s consideration of the underlying dispute over the Center’s name.
How the dispute began
Congress created the Kennedy Center as a living memorial following President John F. Kennedy‘s assassination. It formally named the institution in his honor in 1964.
Trump’s effort to add his name to the building triggered litigation that has continued for more than a year and generated significant public backlash. Several performers boycotted the venue after Trump’s name was added, and Trump himself was met with boos when he attended a performance of Les Misérables at the Center.
Trump also hosted the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, becoming the first sitting president to do so.
Following Cooper’s initial ruling, Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi defended the board’s position.
Daravi said the Center 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,” adding that “we will review the decision carefully, though the reality remains [that] the Center requires an urgent and significant restoration — a truth that even the plaintiff acknowledges.”