The Kennedy Center has removed Donald Trump’s name from its building, its executive director said Saturday, erasing a symbolic fixture of the president’s remaking of Washington, DC.
Crews placed a tarp over the signage on Friday, blocking any view of the progress made on the removal of Trump’s name. The tarp was still on the building’s facade Saturday after Executive Director Matt Floca said Trump’s name was taken off to abide by a judge’s ruling.
The removal marks a blow to the president’s bid to control the performing arts center and his broader effort to put his stamp on the nation’s capital. His takeover of the institution, a memorial to former President John F. Kennedy, began in the early days of his second term, when he gutted the existing board and installed loyalists.
A judge had granted the Kennedy Center’s request for additional time to fully remove Trump’s name from the building, giving the Washington performing arts institution until noon ET Saturday after the organization missed an 11:59 p.m. Friday deadline, citing thunderstorms.
Workers began removing Trump’s name from an exterior wall of the Kennedy Center early Saturday morning, video from a CNN crew showed.
On Saturday morning, a small crowd had gathered to watch the president’s name come down, some of them stopping to take photos. One man took a selfie with the tarp-covered building behind him, crossing his fingers.
“I just wanted to see (Trump’s) name gone,” JoAnn Jones told CNN. “When a person wants to put their name on a building that you had nothing to do with, you did no work, you just, you don’t deserve it.”
Crews began assembling scaffolding underneath the exterior signage of the building Friday. A little after 3 a.m. Saturday, crews appeared to be removing the letters, video shot through a small opening in the scaffolding covering showed.
An appeals court on Friday rejected a last-minute effort by the center to freeze the ruling by US District Judge Christopher Cooper that imposed the 11:59 p.m. deadline, arguing more time was needed for court proceedings play out.
The appeals court did not explain its reasoning for its decision in a brief, unsigned ruling. The panel included Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee; Patricia Millett, an appointee of former President Barack Obama; and Robert Wilkins, also an Obama appointee.
The judges asked for more written legal arguments to be submitted this month over the center’s bid to pause the lower-court’s ruling that said it must remove Trump’s name from its building, website, promotional materials and other areas. But even as the legal wrangling plays out in coming weeks, the center must work to comply with the judge’s directive.
The center took steps in recent days to reverse the change in some places but kept Trump’s name on the building’s facade as it sought to stave off compliance with Cooper’s ruling.
In their earlier 22-page filing to the DC Circuit, DOJ lawyers repeated many of the arguments they pushed before Cooper, including that restoring the original name of the center now may cause confusion to the public should they ultimately prevail in the legal challenge.
But they also raised the prospect that compliance with the judge’s ruling could jeopardize private donations to the center. The department pointed to bylaws that say money must be returned to donors if Trump’s name is removed from the center’s “filings, marketing, branding, façade, or any other affiliated location.”
“All of this money, hundreds of millions of dollars, will have to be immediately returned, or not received by the Center,” the department told the appeals court.
Friday afternoon, with the scaffolding partially assembled, crews paused their work as severe thunderstorms rolled into the area and the freeze request was filed before the appeals court. A small crowd of protesters, some arriving with bottles of champagne, observed the scene, shouting chants of “Take it down,” and at one point calling the workers “heroes.”
Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat who has led the legal challenge against the name change, stopped by to survey the scene and pose for a photo underneath the scaffolding.
“We know we’re on the right side of justice and the law,” Beatty said to applause from protesters. “No matter what happens, we’re going to continue to fight for the Kennedy family.”
“Of course they’re going to fight us. Every bit of the way, there’s going to be a legal fight,” she added.
On Saturday, after the Kennedy Center told a judge Trump’s name had been removed, Beatty posted a video of herself dancing on social media with the caption, “POV: When you protect the Kennedy Center.”
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As Trump was headed to his Virginia golf course Saturday, his motorcade drove by the Kennedy Center, according to reporters traveling with the president.
The signage bearing Trump’s name was installed in December after the board of trustees voted to include his name to honor the president, who has made sweeping changes to the institution’s leadership and programming. The name change drew criticism from the Kennedy family, as well as a legal challenge.
In a Thursday meeting, the board also voted to approve a resolution honoring Trump’s “profound dedication” to the arts center and establishing the “Trump Kennedy Center Fund,” which a Kennedy Center official told CNN would “raise additional private funds to endow the Center.” Those funds would be in addition to the $257 million allocated by Congress through Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
It’s unclear whether the president will be personally involved in donating any money to his namesake fund.
Several people stopped by the grounds outside the Kennedy Center on Saturday morning hoping that Trump’s name was removed from the exterior wall of the performing arts center.
Jones, who said she has been a patron of the Kennedy Center since she moved to the nation’s capital in 2007, said she felt “disgust” when Trump’s name was first added to the institution. “I don’t know if I was even angry. I was just disgusted that somebody thinks, who thinks and want to, to use their power to get what they want even though they don’t deserve it.”
Jon Knepp, who said he used to work at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, said the judge’s ruling sends a message to “get rid of the nonsense of just slapping your name on stuff that doesn’t belong to you.”
Susana Quinonez, who was at the center until 2 a.m. when the tarp was put up, returned hours later to check on the progress.
“This has nothing to do with security,” Quinonez, who has been a patron of the institution for 22 years, said about the tarp. She added that she thinks the removal is being hidden so that “people don’t enjoy … watching that.”
This story and headline have been updated with additional details.
