Judge Presses DOJ Over Bid to Put Trump's Name Back on Kennedy Center

A federal judge on Thursday pressed Justice Department lawyers on why the Kennedy Center's board needed to move quickly to put President Trump's name back on the performing arts center, hours after government attorneys warned in a court filing that the building could eventually have to be demolished if the plan is blocked.

The emergency hearing, before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, was the latest turn in a nine-month legal fight over control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the federally chartered institution on the Potomac that Trump seized control of in February 2025. Cooper repeatedly interrupted the government's lawyer, Brantley Mayers, at one point asking why the board needed to begin inscribing Trump's name on the building as soon as Sept. 8. "What's magic about that date?" Cooper asked, noting that judges sometimes travel over the Labor Day holiday. When Mayers returned to arguments about the renovation's staffing and financing needs, Cooper cut in again: "What does that have to do with what Congress intended in these statutes?" He did not rule from the bench, and the Kennedy Center's board has told the court it will not install any Trump signage before Sept. 8 — leaving the judge a narrow window to decide before the center's 55th anniversary.

A vote to rename the plaza, not the building

The dispute traces to a board vote earlier this month, when Kennedy Center trustees approved, 20-3, a plan to inscribe the words "restored and renovated by President Donald J. Trump" on the building's facade and to rename the surrounding grounds "President Donald J. Trump Plaza." The three dissenting votes came from the board's ex officio congressional members: Beatty, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), who said Trump himself called into the board meeting to speak in favor of the plan before his own vote was submitted by text message. In a joint statement issued after the vote, the three lawmakers said: "Beyond using the Kennedy Center to reward his friends and political allies, President Trump is now attempting to affix his name to yet another public institution without legal authority," adding that "federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without Congressional action."

The move came three months after Cooper ruled, in a 94-page opinion issued on May 29, that the board had broken federal law when it renamed the entire institution the "Kennedy Center, Restored and Renamed for President Donald J. Trump" without congressional approval. Cooper found that the center's founding statute permits only Congress to change its name, which he wrote must remain the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he ordered Trump's name stripped from the facade and the institution's website by June 12.

Beatty, who filed her original complaint against the board in December, argues the board's newer plaza-naming plan is an attempt to accomplish through the back door what the court already forbade directly. Her attorneys, Norman Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, told Cooper this week that renaming the plaza for the sitting president while retaining the center's formal name is a distinction without a legal difference, since the plaza signage would be the first thing visitors see. The Justice Department has separately appealed Cooper's May ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a case that remains pending before that court even as Thursday's dispute over the plaza proceeds separately in front of Cooper.

The money behind the fight

Government lawyers built their defense of the plaza plan partly around dollars. In a filing submitted this week, Justice Department attorney Brantley Mayers wrote that without the board's renovation plan — and the donor recognition tied to it — the center "will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down," and floated replacing it with "a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River." Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose wife Allison sits on the board, sat through the full hearing and told reporters outside the courthouse that Trump had committed to raising the money for a roughly $257 million renovation over two years and that Trump is "the most credible person in the world" on delivering it. "They want to acknowledge him, the way all these institutions do," Lutnick said of the board, comparing the plaza name to naming rights extended to major donors elsewhere. Asked why the recognition could not simply wait until the renovation was finished, he said of Trump's fundraising pledge: "You just need him to agree."

Federal taxpayers already underwrite a share of the center's operations, though the money is narrowly restricted. The Kennedy Center's fiscal 2026 budget submission to Congress requests roughly $37 million in federal appropriations for operations, maintenance and capital repairs, out of a total annual operating budget of about $260 million; by law, that federal money cannot be used for programming and covers only the upkeep of the building as a memorial to President Kennedy. Any renovation of the scale Lutnick described would rely almost entirely on private fundraising, which is the leverage the administration says justifies acknowledging its chief donor.

How the board changed hands

The underlying fight dates to February 2025, when Trump announced he was removing roughly half the center's appointed trustees, including longtime chairman David Rubenstein, saying the board did not "share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture." The reconstituted board, stocked with Trump appointees including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Usha Vance, then elected Trump chairman — the first time a sitting president has held that role — and installed former Trump administration official Richard Grenell as president, replacing Deborah Rutter. The shake-up prompted a wave of cancellations by performers and producers who pulled out of scheduled bookings, and it set off the litigation that produced Cooper's May ruling and has now, months later, brought both sides back for an emergency hearing over what that ruling actually forbids.

Beatty's lawyers have cast the demolition warning as retaliation dressed up as a funding argument. In a statement responding to the filing, they called it "a not-so-subtle threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the President doesn't get his way," and described the board's broader posture as "delusional" and a "breathtaking assault on the rule of law."

"This is a not-so-subtle threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the President doesn't get his way." — Norman Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, attorneys for Rep. Joyce Beatty

Who has a stake

The immediate parties are narrow — Beatty, the Justice Department and the Kennedy Center's board — but the case touches a wider circle. Congress created the center by statute in 1958 as the nation's official memorial to President Kennedy and has appropriated money for its upkeep every year since, giving lawmakers of both parties an institutional interest in how the building is branded regardless of who occupies the White House. The center's roughly 1,000 employees and its resident companies, including the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera, have operated for a year and a half under uncertainty about leadership, programming and now the physical condition of the building itself, after the demolition warning raised the prospect of major disruption to a working performance venue that hosts thousands of shows annually. Preservation advocates have watched the demolition talk closely given the building's landmark status as a 1971 work by architect Edward Durell Stone. And donors being courted for the renovation are, in effect, being asked to weigh in on a naming dispute still working its way through two federal courts at once, since the scale of the project depends on private money the administration says will not materialize without Trump's name attached to it.

What happens next

Cooper gave no indication Thursday of when he would rule, and both sides left the courthouse without a firm answer on whether the Trump plaza name will go up on schedule. The board's commitment not to install signage before Sept. 8 — the anniversary of the center's 1971 opening — effectively sets an informal deadline for a decision, though Cooper is not bound by it. A ruling against the board would likely draw an immediate appeal, adding to the case already before the D.C. Circuit over Cooper's May order. A ruling for the board would let the plaza renaming proceed while Beatty's broader challenge to the board's makeup and authority continues to play out. Either outcome leaves unresolved the question DOJ's filing raised explicitly: whether the center's federally mandated upkeep now depends on the administration's willingness to fund it.