In the early hours of June 13, in an action that turned out to be news around the world, workers hung massive tarps from scaffolding across the front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and under court order removed President Trump’s name from the marble facade.
Or did they?
True, the center’s operations chief, Matt Floca, filed a sworn declaration with a federal court later that day saying that Mr. Trump’s name had been removed. And true, a New York Times photographer captured evidence through an opening in the tarp that the letter “A” came off. Another photographer recorded evidence of the demise of a “D.”
But in a downer denouement for Mr. Trump’s critics, a week later the tarps are still there, prompting some to wonder whether at least some of the letters are, too. As of Friday evening, there was no visual evidence that the letters splashed across the building had been restored to “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Peering behind the tarps is impossible because they now lie tight against the building’s front.
“I don’t know if they took down the sign, because I can’t see it,” said Luna Woo, a violinist visiting from Portland, Ore., as part of the National Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Music Institute. She and other young musicians in the program have been trying to see behind the tarps from a practice room overlooking them. No luck.
So when will the tarps come down?
A Kennedy Center spokeswoman, Roma Daravi, emailed a terse response:
“The scaffolding and tarp will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels. Best, Public Relations.”
To the president’s supporters, the situation is “a lot of hoopla over nothing” as one theatergoer, who declined to give her name, said this week. To his opponents, the tarps are a towering symbol of Mr. Trump’s fragile ego.
“Donald Trump is embarrassed,” Representative Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement. An ex officio Kennedy Center board member, Ms. Beatty had sued to block the president’s takeover of the center, including the name change. “He lost in court, his name came down, and now he is trying to hide the result from the public.”
In a filing late Friday, Ms. Beatty asked the court overseeing the case to order the Kennedy Center to provide a sworn declaration explaining the tarps’ purpose and when they would come down.
“A literal coverup, to add to all the others,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, wrote on social media.
“How vain can one man be? It’s petty. It’s absurd,” Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, chimed in on social media, calling the edit of Mr. Trump’s name “a huge win.”
Skeptics pointed out that the center’s many other maintenance projects had not been shielded by tarps, including repairs to the marble facade.
“I think it doesn’t take that long to preserve marble, but also what do I know about preserving marble?” said Tommy Gedrich, an actor appearing in “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” at the center. The tarps block two backstage entrances, so the “Moulin Rouge” cast has to circumnavigate the center, two football fields wide, to reach its Opera House stage.
Mr. Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center’s board in February 2025, installing loyalists who in turn named him chairman. In December, the board voted to rename the Kennedy Center in Mr. Trump’s honor. A crew rolled a cherry picker up to the building’s facade and added “The Donald J. Trump and” atop the center’s original name.
The renaming accelerated boycotts by performers, ticket buyers and donors. In February, as audiences dwindled, Mr. Trump announced that the center would close for a two-year renovation project beginning in early July. The center’s board approved that plan, but Ms. Beatty, one of the few Democrats remaining on the board, objected to it in court.
In court filings, Mr. Floca said that removing Mr. Trump’s name would be “fundamentally destabilizing” to the center’s fund-raising efforts and cause “irreparable harm.”
In late May, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the removal of Mr. Trump’s name from the building and all official branding by June 12. He further ordered the board to re-examine its decision to close the center in July. The status of those plans remains uncertain while the court battle plays out.
Mr. Trump erupted in a fit of online pique. “The Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Mr. Trump vowed to cease his involvement in the Kennedy Center, so for a time it seemed he would not try to keep his name on it. As the deadline approached, news photographers and a webcam maintained by fired Kennedy Center employees kept watch, ready to document history. But in the final hours before the deadline, the center’s board sought to block the removal of Mr. Trump’s name. It lost, and by nightfall on June 12, a festival-like crowd of several hundred people had gathered on the plaza in front of the center.
Workers began covering the center with the tarps around 2 a.m. Saturday, amid bellows of “Don’t do it!” from the crowd. Later that day, spectators sat across from the draped signage, hoping the tarps would come down.
Disappointed, some began squatting on the ground beneath the sign, peering through a gap between the tarps and the building front, where photographers had earlier spied the letters.
But the tarps were soon adjusted, blocking the view.
Julia Jacobs contributed reporting from New York.
