Judge orders Trump name removed from Kennedy Center

US President Donald Trump says his administration will transfer control of the Kennedy Center to Congress, after a judge ordered the removal of his name from the Washington venue and blocked his plans to close it for renovations. Mr Trump said on social media that he instructed the US Commerce Department to “make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution” and give lawmakers responsibility over its operation, maintenance and management. It was not immediately clear how Mr

Trump’s directive would be carried out. The Kennedy Center is run by a board of trustees that the president has packed with allies in his second term. Mr Trump’s announcement came after a judge on Friday, local time, ruled that the performing arts centre, which Mr Trump renamed the “Trump Kennedy Center”, cannot be renamed without an act of Congress. US District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Mr Trump’s name and to eliminate any

references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days. “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,” Justice Cooper wrote. The judge said his decision “does 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”. Justice

Cooper ruled in a lawsuit brought by Ohio Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty, a member of the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress. Ms Beatty said in a statement after the ruling that the “Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump”. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr Trump’s plan to renovate the centre is part of a broader push by the Republican leader to reshape Washington’s

monumental core. He also intends to erect a 76-metre-tall arch and to build a 8,360-square-metre ballroom at the site of the demolished East ​Wing of the White ​House. Those efforts also face court challenges. A federal appeals court has allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with building the ballroom as ​it considers the case. Justice Cooper’s order meanwhile also stops the Trump administration’s planned two-year closure of the Kennedy Center. The judge said his order does not prevent the moving forward of planned capital

repair works that the record in the lawsuit “demonstrates is sorely needed”. The board could still close the centre, Justice Cooper wrote, “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion”. Ms Beatty sued the Trump administration in December, calling the renaming of the building “a flagrant violation of the rule of law” that “flies in the face of our constitutional order”. Her lawyers in a statement applauded Justice Cooper’s decision. “This is a

powerful blow against the Trump administration’s corruption,” attorneys Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky said. The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a living memorial to the late US President John F Kennedy. ABC/Reuters

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