By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday again blocked the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in Washington from inscribing President Donald Trump’s name on its facade, dealing the Republican president a fresh setback in his effort to reshape the iconic cultural institution.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington issued an order temporarily halting the center’s latest proposal to put Trump’s name on the memorial to the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
In addition, Cooper said the center’s board cannot proceed with plans to rename the campus where it sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote in an order issued shortly before the center’s board was scheduled to vote on whether to shut down the famed performing arts venue for two years of repairs and renovations.
The board, composed of Trump appointees with Trump himself serving as president, has argued that adding Trump’s name in honor of his efforts was necessary to ensure his continued commitment to its survival.
“The Board understands that without such appropriate recognition it is unlikely that President Trump will provide the fundamental oversight of the renovation of the main building and lead the fiscal rescue of the Center,” the board wrote in a draft resolution ahead of the meeting.
Trump’s campaign to remake the center is part of his broader effort to leave his cultural and aesthetic mark on the U.S. capital, including a large new ballroom to replace the White House East Wing he ordered demolished, a troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and a planned “triumphal arch” near the nation’s main cemetery honoring its war dead.
Cooper had previously ordered the center in May to remove Trump’s name from the building after the center changed its marble facade in December to read: “The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Workers stripped Trump’s name from the center in June and left the center’s exterior masked by scaffolding and a white tarpaulin.
Tuesday’s ruling came as part of a lawsuit filed by Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty, who serves on the center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella and Bo Erickson in Washington; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Joseph Ax in New York; editing by Scott Malone and Aurora Ellis)
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