What happened
President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Thursday to add his name back to the building’s facade and follow through with his plan to close most of the center for two years of renovations. This apparent “attempt to find a creative workaround” to the federal law governing the Kennedy Center also “aggressively” tests U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May ruling that blocked the center’s closure and ordered Trump’s name removed, The New York Times said.
Who said what
The board decided the center’s facade would now read “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” and its grounds would be renamed “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” according to Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the ex-officio board member who successfully sued to get Trump’s name excised. The new decisions are a “transparent effort to circumvent the court’s ruling,” Beatty said in a statement.
The Kennedy Center has become an “unlikely — and highly visible — metaphor for presidential power” in Trump’s second term, The Associated Press said. His name was removed in June, but a “massive tarp” has shielded the court-ordered void from public view. Board member and longtime Trump ally Paolo Zampolli told the Times his goal was to reinscribe Trump’s name “as big as it can get.”
What next?
As with the Kennedy Center’s prior legal issues, the board’s decisions will be subject to Cooper’s approval.