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Last week, a federal judge struck down one of President Donald Trump’s most egregious branding attempts, ruling that he lacked the authority to tack his name onto the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — the storied Washington, D.C., institution that first opened in 1971. Now Trump is wasting little time washing his hands of the whole affair.
CBS News reports that an internal memo from the center is circulating, which directs staff to begin dropping Trump’s name from anything associated with the institution. Per the outlet, the center’s general counsel informed employees that signage both inside and outside the building displaying the president’s name as well as any furniture featuring his moniker must be changed by Friday, June 12.
The internal order even extended to the clerical. Per Politico, the memo states that “email signatures, email communications, letterhead, website, brochures, promotional materials, press releases, signs, references in contracts, MOUs, and other agreements” must revert back to the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts or “Kennedy Center” name.
Trump railed against Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling overturning the name change, issuing a lengthy tirade on Truth Social that ended with the president huffily agreeing to transfer back control of the performing-arts center to Congress after taking it over last year.
“Therefore, based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” Trump wrote. “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”
Soon after taking office in 2025, Trump began an overhaul of the Kennedy Center, removing members of the institution’s board and installing his own, who later voted to elect him as chairman. In December, the board voted to rename the center “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” prompting backlash and criticism that the move violated the congressional statute that established the center in Kennedy’s honor. Judge Cooper came to that conclusion in his ruling last week, writing that the law was “crystal clear.”
“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. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” he wrote, per NPR.
