BREAKING: Rep. Beatty asks federal judge to strip Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) has taken the fight over the Kennedy Center to federal court, asking a judge to block the renaming of one of America’s most iconic cultural institutions after Donald Trump.
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Beatty, who serves as an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, filed a motion for partial summary judgment arguing that Congress explicitly and permanently designated the center as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, and that no board, no matter who appointed its members, has the legal authority to change that.
“There is no clearer or more significant breach of fiduciary duty than the Board flouting the central purpose of the institution it is charged with protecting and which Congress enshrined into law: to maintain the Center as a memorial to John F. Kennedy, and to no one else,” her attorneys wrote.
Beatty first sued Trump and other board members in December after the Trump-appointed board voted to rebrand the institution and update its exterior signage to include Trump’s name above Kennedy’s. Her legal team has since argued that the board has failed to offer any coherent legal justification for what they describe as nakedly unlawful conduct.
The statute that created the Kennedy Center is unambiguous, her lawyers contend. It directs the board to construct a building “designated as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” and bars trustees from installing additional memorials or plaques in public areas, with only three narrow exceptions, none of which cover slapping a sitting president’s name on the building’s facade.
Beatty is also fighting Trump’s separate plan to shut the Kennedy Center down entirely for two years for what the administration has called a complete rebuild. A federal judge earlier this month allowed her to participate in the board meeting where that plan was formalized, though the court stopped short of granting her a vote on the proposed closure.