Federal Judge Again Rules Trump Cannot Add Name to Kennedy Center

A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts could not inscribe “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” on the venue’s facade, dealing another setback to the Trump-appointed Kennedy Center’s months-long campaign to memorialize the president somewhere on the institution’s premises.

US District Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who has presided over several legal challenges brought by Trump over the issue, wrote that any such change to the Kennedy Center would violate his earlier ruling, which held that his name was illegally inscribed on the building last December.

“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote in his recent decision. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

The Kennedy Center board voted in August to change the venue’s name to “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” in recognition of what the board characterized as the president’s philanthropic contributions. The board has also proposed naming the center’s plaza after Trump and, if the newly established Trump Kennedy Center Fund reaches $100 million, adding a separate inscription that would read, “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

Hours before Judge Cooper released his ruling, Trump turned to social media to describe the Kennedy Center as in a “virtual state of collapse,” denounce the judge as “very hostile and conflicted,” and predict that the venue was “destined to doom” unless it was allowed to close for renovations, as the board had previously sought to do.

Cooper has rebuffed successive attempts by the Trump administration to intervene at the center. In May 2026, he ruled that only Congress had the authority to rename the center, dedicated as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, or close it for two years of renovations, as the board sought to do that February.

In his Tuesday ruling, Cooper called the board’s August decision “linguistic gymnastics” and declined to rule on whether the proposed “Endowed by The Trump Kennedy Center Fund” inscription was legal, since the board said it depended on reaching a fundraising goal. But he suggested he would likely reject the addition if the goal were reached, saying it would violate his prior order “just as plainly” as the initial name change.

The Justice Department has argued that the president’s name should be added to the building to honor his “ongoing” contributions to its upkeep, including $258 million in congressional funding for capital restoration in 2025. Trump’s lawyers said his “efforts and prestige” offer the “sole hope for the Center’s financial survival and structural renewal,” arguing that without his involvement, the Kennedy Center will “continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral.”

The president’s opponents in the Capitol disagree. “The law is extremely clear: The John F. Kennedy Center is named for President Kennedy — and no one else,” lawyers for U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board, said in a statement to press Tuesday. “But President Trump is holding the Kennedy Center hostage unless he can put his name on this sacred memorial. The Court just rejected this proposal for the second time. This unlawfulness is as breathtaking as it is wrong, and it needs to stop.”