The John F. Kennedy Center’s board voted this week to close the site for renovations and place President Trump’s name on the site. Instead of making Trump’s name part of the building, an inscription will be placed below the Kennedy Center sign that will read, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” and the physical site will be renamed “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
NBC News reports that the final vote on the matter was 20-3. Those who voted against the renaming were ex officio members from Congress: Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Rep. Rick Larsen, (D-WA).
“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed,” Beatty said in a statement.
The Kennedy Center removed references to President Trump in June. The move followed a 94-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the D.C. District Court, who found that the Kennedy Center board violated federal law when it voted to rename the center and attach Trump’s name to the building’s facade.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote in his decision. “May the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts be renamed absent Congressional authorization? The answer, plain from the face of the statute, is no. Nor can any other individual be memorialized on the front portico of the building. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
