A federal judge has set an emergency hearing after the Kennedy Center’s board voted to put Trump’s name back up.
The hearing was set for Thursday as Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) challenges the Trump team’s plan to re-add his name to the facade and close the center for two years, according to a post on X by journalist Scott MacFarlane.
Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board, filed an emergency motion last week to stop the move, NPR reported. Beatty is asking U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to block the board from re-inscribing the president’s name on the front portico, this time twice, and from renaming the grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” according to the filing.
Her motion also targets the board’s August 13 vote to shutter the venue for two years for renovations, which critics fear masks a broader effort to remake the complex in Trump’s image, according to The Associated Press.
“It’s deja vu all over again,” Beatty’s lawyers wrote in the filing. They argued that only Congress can rename an institution dedicated as a living memorial to Kennedy in 1964.
Cooper, an Obama appointee, made a similar ruling in the long-running battle over Trump’s efforts to rename the Kennedy Center. In May, he ruled that the board lacked the authority to rename the center and ordered Trump’s name stripped from the facade. Cooper called the earlier closure vote “ill-informed and seemingly preordained,” NBC News reported. Trump’s name came down in June, though a tarp has covered the portico since June 13, Forbes reported.
The board has said it won’t add Trump’s name back before September 8, NPR reported. Beatty’s team called that an “arbitrary deadline” and a manufactured emergency. Cooper gave the board until Monday to respond, according to Forbes.
“The board’s repeated efforts to break the law are a breathtaking act of defiance,” Beatty said.
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