President Donald Trump attends Amazon MGM’s “Melania” World Premiere at The Trump Kennedy Center on January 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
A federal judge on Friday ordered the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia wrote.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, sued the Trump administration over the renaming of the center in December 2025.
Cooper, who has ruled against the administration before, gave 14 days for the removal of the president’s name from all official center materials. The center’s board agreed to the name change in a December 2025 vote.
Cooper stated that the Kennedy Center was formally named in a statute passed by Congress in 1964. The center opened in 1971.
In 1994, Congress passed the John F. Kennedy Center Act Amendments, effectively outsourcing “overall facilities management in the hands of the Kennedy Center Board.”
Cooper cited the act, which states that no “change in the management and operation of the grounds may be made without the express approval of Congress and of the Secretary of the Interior.”
The plaintiffs in the case claimed that the board breached their fiduciary duties to Congress to establish the name change, and Cooper agreed.
“As stated at the outset, Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper said.
Cooper’s order also stops the Trump administration’s planned two-year closure of the building. The judge said his order does not prevent the Kennedy Center from moving forward with planned capital repair work that the record in the lawsuit “demonstrates is sorely needed.”
The board could still close the center, Cooper wrote, “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
