Kennedy Center Board Votes To Appeal Judge Casey Cooper’s Order Removing Donald Trump’s Name

A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to remove Donald Trump’s name, and the center’s board moved to respond by voting to file an appeal to challenge U.S. District Judge Casey Cooper’s ruling.

“President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board of trustees convened Thursday for a board meeting to discuss plans to appeal a judge’s ruling — hoping to halt the ordered removal of Trump’s name from the building and go forward with a planned closure for the storied arts center”

CNN

The ruling gave the center 14 days to remove all references to the name “Trump Kennedy Center” or “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” and the first steps included changing the website logo while outdoor billboards remained.

CNN

CNN reported that Trump joined the board meeting from the Oval Office and, according to a CNN source, “spent part of the session lambasting Cooper.”

CNN also said Cooper’s order paused the ordered removal timeline while the board discussed whether renovations to the decades-old building could proceed and whether the center could later decide to close after considering its statutory requirement to maintain some programming at all times.

In a Thursday board meeting, the Kennedy Center board of trustees voted to file an appeal contesting Casey Cooper’s decision, with a source telling CNN that the board violated the law when it added Trump’s name to the historic performing arts venue.

CNN said the appeal was expected to be filed tomorrow, and it described Trump dialing in from the Oval Office via Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s iPhone.

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The Washington Examiner reported that an activist group called Hands Off the Arts was livestreaming the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, which it said was expected to happen by Friday.

The Washington Examiner quoted the group’s press release saying, “The executive branch has no role in censoring or curating art at the nation’s premier performing arts institution.”

The Washington Examiner said the judge ruled May 29 that the center had until June 12 to take Trump’s name off the nameplate and paused scheduled renovations that would’ve closed the center for two years.

“(CNN) —President Donald Trump’shandpicked Kennedy Center board of trusteesconvened Thursday for a board meeting to discuss plans to appeal a judge’s ruling — hoping tohalt the ordered removalof Trump’s name from the building and go forward with a planned closure for the storied arts center”

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Washingtonian reported that staffers removed Trump’s name from documents and the center’s website, but the question of when Trump’s name will come off the building’s walls remained unclear.

The Washingtonian described the livestream effort as being organized by Hands off the Arts, with a camera mounted on a balcony in the Watergate complex and Chris Raleigh saying, “We wanted to make sure that the President complied with the court’s order.”

In the same account, Raleigh said the DC area had been “kicked in the teeth, and this was President Trump trying to project his power over us,” as he framed the name’s removal as something “equally powerful for the city and the people to see it come down.”