Posted in: CBS, Opinion, Paramount+, streaming, TV | Tagged: Kennedy Center, trump

Kennedy Center Finally Removes Trump's Name in Time for His Birthday

Heading into his birthday, the Kennedy Center board had Donald Trump's name removed from the center - as required by law. Here's a look...

Just before May wrapped up, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper handed the Trump Administration two major legal losses regarding its attempts to rename the Kennedy Center to the ego-stroking "The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts," and its efforts to shutter it for two years. First up, Judge Cooper ordered Kennedy Center officials to remove Trump's name from the building within two weeks, citing the 1964 federal law that prohibits anyone but Congress from changing the center's name. "Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," Cooper wrote in his finding. In addition, Cooper granted a request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block Trump from taking further action toward closing the center. Well, those two weeks wrap up today, and although some changes have been made and scaffolding is in place to restore the Kennedy Center to its rightful name, Donald Trump's lackeys aren't giving up without a fight.

While a whole lot of folks await on any number of livestreams, Judge Cooper denied a request to stay his ruling on Thursday, noting that steps had already been taken to comply with the ruling – undercutting the Kennedy Center board's case. "These efforts undermine the notion that Defendants face irreparable harm in complying with the order in full," Cooper wrote. At this point, the only hope Trump has is that the D.C. Circuit Court grants the Justice Department's (yup, Trump's politicizing the Justice Department again) request for a stay. Except that didn't happen – with a three-judge appeals court panel giving a thumbs-down to Trump's last-ditch effort to keep his name illegally on the building, a little after 7 pm ET on Friday, meaning the Kennedy Center board had five hours remaining before it would be in violation of the law. And as the day neared its end, the crew was back out, getting the scaffolding up to pop those letters off and get the center back to its legal name.

But wait! Trump's personal Justice Department filed for a 12-hour extension to have Trump's name removed from the building – which it hadn't been by the time it was ordered to be removed by judge's order. Trump's lawyers claim that the work "has been delayed because of thunderstorms … presented safety concerns for workers." To be clear, the Kennedy Center Board had up to two weeks to comply with Judge Cooper's ruling. The wall would eventually be tarped off as Trump's last-ditch effort to the moment for the hundreds who waited in lines for hours, with The Washington Post and The New York Times both reporting that the letters were removed.

"Workers spent about eight hours on Friday building towering scaffolding in front of the section of the facade bearing Mr. Trump's name. Then, in the early hours of Saturday, they hung heavy white tarps from the structure. It obscured views of the removal, which was a significant symbolic victory for opponents of Mr. Trump's takeover of an iconic performing arts center," read the NYT piece. "But a gap in the tarps allowed a New York Times photographer to observe a worker pulling the letter "A" from the wall. There was no sound of power tools; the letter appeared to come off by hand."

Judge Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center board's decision in March to close the center was "based its decision on an insufficient, one-sided presentation of information and neglected to consider the full range of its statutory obligations and potential adverse consequences of closure on programming and memorial functions." The renovations are allowed to move forward, but regarding closing the center, Judge Cooper noted that the board should "come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion."

In response, Trump took to his version of social media to rant against the judge's decision. Believing he should be "ashamed of himself," Trump claims that "Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it [Kennedy Center] DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life" (though he doesn't explain why the name of the center would need to be changed for the facility to be renovated. As for what his plans are now, moving forward, Trump is sounding a little dejected: "I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight."

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