President Donald Trump’s fight to keep his name emblazoned on the Kennedy Center collapsed again this week, after a federal appeals court on July 9 refused to block a lower-court order stripping his name from the storied Washington venue. The decision marked the second time the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the administration’s request, and it dealt a fresh blow to a signature vanity project the president has pursued since initiating a takeover of the institution last year.
At the center of the appeal was Trump’s claim that scrubbing his name from the building’s exterior would inflict “irreparable harm” on the center’s fundraising. The three-judge panel found the argument empty. Trump’s lawyers, the court said, had failed to support the assertion with any specific facts or evidence, leaning instead on what the judges described as the conclusory claims of the venue’s executive director in a factually unsupported declaration.
A Second Rejection From the Bench
The panel also dismissed a separate argument that the Kennedy Center could be compelled to refund donations if Trump’s name were not restored, noting that the claim had never been raised before the lower court. Circuit Judges Robert Wilkins and Patricia Millet, both appointed by former President Barack Obama, considered the appeal alongside Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas. The White House was contacted for comment.
The ruling arrives as the venue struggles under the weight of the president’s takeover. Since Trump moved to remake the institution last year, the Kennedy Center has weathered declining ticket sales and a wave of artist cancellations — a backdrop that undercut the administration’s insistence that Trump’s name was a fundraising asset worth defending in court.
Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio trustee of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, initiated the lawsuit. Beatty said the decision reaffirmed that the renaming effort was unlawful and called on the administration to comply. His name, she said, no longer desecrates a memorial that belongs to the American people, and it was time to take the tarps down.
The Tarps That Won’t Come Down
Those tarps have become a flashpoint. Large sheets of covering and scaffolding went up on the front portico hours before Trump’s name was set to be removed, obscuring the building’s facade. Kennedy Center Executive Director Matt Floca stated in a court declaration that the lettering bearing Trump’s name had been taken down. Yet weeks later, the exterior remains hidden behind the same construction materials.
District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by Obama in 2014, has now ordered the board of trustees to account for the shrouded facade. The trustees were directed to provide an accounting by the end of July regarding the construction materials covering the building’s front entrance, including their intended use and current condition.
The dispute traces back to December, when Trump’s handpicked board voted to add his name to the D.C. landmark. Fresh signage appeared the following day, rechristening the venue “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Trump affixed his name to the historic building that same month, folding it into a broader effort to leave a permanent imprint on the capital.
Congress and the Question of Authority
That imprint proved short-lived. In a May 29 ruling, Cooper ordered the name removed from both the building and the center’s website, and he barred the venue from shutting down for renovations — a decision the administration is expected to appeal. The judge grounded his order in a simple constitutional point: Trump had never sought congressional approval for the change. Cooper wrote that the venue’s designation was established by congressional action and can only be altered through the same legislative process.
The renaming saga is one chapter in a wider string of second-term projects aimed at reshaping Washington in the president’s image, from a proposed 250-foot arch to a new White House ballroom. Many of those efforts have run into the same obstacle now confronting the Kennedy Center dispute — the argument that Trump bypassed the approvals such changes require.
For now, the appeals court’s refusal to intervene leaves Cooper’s order intact and the president’s name off the building. What remains is the scaffolding, the tarps, and a court deadline at the end of the month demanding answers about why a facade meant to be visible to the public continues to sit behind a curtain of covering. Whether the administration presses its expected appeal of the May ruling — or finally removes the obstructions — will shape the next act in a fight that has repeatedly gone against the president in court.