An attorney for a US lawmaker yesterday urged a federal judge to again block the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington from inscribing President Donald Trump’s name on the facade.
The hearing before US District Judge Christopher Cooper marks the second time the court has been asked to stop the Kennedy Centre from putting Trump’s name on the building that Congress named as a “living memorial” to Kennedy, the 35th US president, who was assassinated in 1963.
In May, Cooper ordered the entertainment and cultural venue to remove Trump’s name from the building, siding with Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio in a lawsuit challenging the renaming. Cooper said the US Congress established the Kennedy Centre’s name and that “only Congress can change it.”
On August 13, the Kennedy Centre board, composed of Trump-appointed members, voted to again alter the building’s signage, this time to read “The John F Kennedy Memorial Centre for the Performing Arts Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump,” while naming the centre’s grounds the “President Donald J Trump Plaza.”
“We view this as outright defiance” of the court’s prior order, a lawyer for Beatty, Nathaniel Zelinsky, told the judge at yesterday’s hearing. Beatty, who serves on the Kennedy Centre’s board by virtue of her position in Congress, sued after the centre changed its marble facade in December to read: “The Donald J Trump and John F Kennedy Memorial Centre for the Performing Arts.”
The Kennedy Centre in June removed Trump’s name from the facade, and a large tarp has covered the wall since then.
The administration lost an early effort in a federal appeals court to put Trump’s name back up while it appeals Cooper’s order.
Beatty has asked the court to block the new renaming plan by September 8.
The administration has said it would not take action until then on the renaming.
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