The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to appeal a federal judge’s order to remove President Trump’s name from the institution, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting.
The board, which is composed almost entirely of Mr. Trump’s allies, took the vote as a legal deadline loomed for taking the president’s name off the building’s marble facade.
Finding that the board did not have the power to unilaterally change the name of the arts center, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington ruled late last month that Mr. Trump’s name must be taken down by Friday. He said that only Congress had the power to alter the name of the center, which was dedicated to Kennedy in a 1964 law.
Representatives for the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At first, Trump-allied officials at the Kennedy Center announced that they would fight the ruling over the name change, saying they were confident that the court would uphold the “board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center.”
The plans for an appeal grew less certain after Mr. Trump responded to the judge’s ruling with a tirade on social media. Unless he had control over the center’s affairs, Mr. Trump wrote, he had “no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”
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