On what would have been John F. Kennedy’s 109th birthday, a federal judge ruled that Donald Trump’s name must be taken down from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—the Washington, D.C. venue designed by Edward Durell Stone.
The Kennedy Center was renamed the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in December 2025. Trump subsequently shared renderings of proposed renovations to the center the following March.
But now none of that will come to pass, per the judge’s ruling. Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece, called the judge’s reversal an “appropriate birthday present on my uncle’s birthday,” and “a great birthday gift” on social media.
On Friday, May 29, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that only Congress can change the Kennedy Center’s name and also halted the Trump administration’s plans to close the center for two years.
The judge ruled that the Kennedy Center Board members, appointed by Trump, acted unlawfully in renaming it “Trump Kennedy Center,” and tacking Trump’s name onto the exterior.
Signage of Trump’s name on the building facade and Kennedy Center website must be taken down within 14 days of Judge Cooper’s ruling. All trademark applications for the name “Trump Kennedy Center” must also be withdrawn.
After the ruling was made public, Trump aired his grievances with the verdict on Truth Social, and affirmed he had “canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center [sic].”
The court case over the naming started when Congresswoman Joyce Beatty filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its meddling in the Kennedy Center last December.
Then, in March, eight cultural organizations supported by three law firms filed another lawsuit against the Trump administration in regard to the Kennedy Center.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit were the AIA, ASLA, Committee of 100 on the Federal City, DC Preservation League, Docomomo US, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Society of Architectural Historians, and The Cultural Landscape Foundation.
These cultural organizations were represented by Cultural Heritage Partners, Lowell & Associates, and Foley Hoag.
After the ruling on May 29, Congresswoman Beatty said in a statement that Judge Cooper’s decision “rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law.”
“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” Beatty continued. “He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”
On behalf of all eight plaintiff cultural organizations, Greg Werkheiser, of Cultural Heritage Partners, said that, “Taken together, the two rulings constrain the President to making only the necessary repairs to the Kennedy Center that Congress authorized when it appropriated funding—and not the wholesale demolition and reconstruction that the President stated was his desired intent.”
Werkheiser said that, if the judge’s ordered changes do not go into effect in the next two weeks, they will again take legal action.
“If the [Kennedy Center] executive director’s assurances turn out to be inaccurate,” Werkheiser affirmed, “we will be right back before the judge, who has ordered that the case be kept open to allow for that possibility.”
