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\n\tA federal appeals court on Wednesday denied President Trump\u2019s request to restore his name to the facade of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in the latest setback to the institution\u2019s legal battle against the federal courts. <\/p>\n
\n\tIn their decision, three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that President Trump had failed to prove that the arts complex would be \u201cirreparably injured\u201d by the removal, as his attorneys had argued in previous court filings. President Trump\u2019s name was affixed to the center\u2019s marble facade in December, after a board comprised of his allies voted to rebrand the institution.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe decision triggered swift backlash from Democratic lawmakers and created an existential\u2014and potentially financial\u2014crisis for the organization. More than two dozen performers subsequently canceled appearances at the center, including composer Philip Glass, who had been scheduled to premiere a new symphony.<\/p>\n
\n\tUS District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled on May 29 that the board had acted unlawfully, finding that only Congress had the authority to rename an institution dedicated as a memorial to President Kennedy. The judge also ruled that the board had acted unlawfully in approving a two-year closure of the institution for renovations.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Trump administration attempted to suspend that ruling last month, filing an emergency motion with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit just hours before the June 13 deadline to remove his name.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe motion was denied, and in the early hours of June 13, the center removed the letters spelling out the president\u2019s name. By then, all references to him had already been scrubbed from the center\u2019s letterhead, website, and other official branding. The facade\u2019s signage, however, remains covered by tarps and scaffolding, prompting a new court order: the Trump administration has until July 31 to explain why the institution\u2019s restored legal name is obscured.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThroughout this process, the institution has argued in court that removing the president\u2019s name from the building, only to later restore it, would waste both \u201ctime and money\u201d and risk the loss of millions of dollars in gifts from donors who \u201cwere only willing to do so with the name \u2018Trump\u2019 on the building.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe three-judge panel for the appeals court was evidently unmoved, again denying the Trump administration\u2019s request for a temporary stay of the removal. The panel noted in its Wednesday ruling that \u201csince that removal has already occurred, a stay would not avert those harms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2278616953.jpg?w=1024″] A federal appeals court on Wednesday denied President Trump\u2019s request to restore his name to the facade of John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in the latest setback to the institution\u2019s legal battle against the federal courts. In their decision, three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2037299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2037299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2037299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2037299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2037299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}