Judge Gives Trump Administration Deadline to Explain Tarp Covering Kennedy Center
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the Trump administration to explain by July 31 why a tarp and scaffolding still cover the Kennedy Center’s facade, obscuring the building’s full name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Workers erected the covering in the early hours of June 13 as they prepared to comply with Cooper’s May 29 ruling requiring removal of “The Donald J. Trump And,” which had been added to the facade in December and challenged in lawsuits citing Congress’s authority over national monuments. The court order required restoration of the institution’s legal name by June 12, and staff removed Trump references from signage and communications in early June; about 200 people gathered on June 13 to watch the name come down, according to the Washington Post. Afterward, the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees—chaired by Trump—voted to create a new endowment in his name, alongside existing endowments and roughly $257 million in federal funding appropriated for building renovations.
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This story was covered in Restitution Reckonings and a Heat-Strained Art World