President Donald Trump’s allies are accused of a “new and breathtaking act of defiance” for voting to return his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts even after a judge ordered it removed.
“This time, Trump’s name will appear on the building’s front portico not once, but twice. Underneath President Kennedy’s name, it will say: ‘Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump’ and ‘Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund,’” U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, said in an emergency motion to halt that defiance.
Beatty, who serves the board “ex officio” through her position in Congress, had successfully sued for the removal of Trump’s name from the center’s façade, which she noted that the Trump-allied board only complied with at “the last possible minute” in the early hours of a morning in June.
“In an act of obvious petulance, however, [board] Defendants hung a tarp over the building’s iconic lettering, obscuring President Kennedy’s name from the face of the institution meant to memorialize his legacy,” the congresswoman said in her filing to U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee in Washington who ordered the prior removal and is still overseeing the litigation over what happens next.
In the same resolution to add Trump’s name to the building, the board also voted to name the physical site and grounds of the center “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
Beatty calls those latest actions “clear violations” of the law establishing the center. She wants Cooper to halt them from taking effect.
The board only agreed to hold off on taking them until Sept. 8, which the congresswoman called an arbitrary timeline that creates an “unnecessary fire drill.” Given that timeline, she also asked the judge to immediately halt the resolution until he issues a ruling on whether the latest actions are lawful.
“Enough is enough,” Beatty said in her filing, calling the board’s behavior “contemptuous” and saying that even if Trump’s allies don’t like the law, they aren’t above it and still must comply. She urged the judge to “put an end to this childish gambit.”
In a prior order setting a litigation schedule, Cooper gave the board until Monday to respond to Beatty’s motion.
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