Rep. Joyce Beatty Fights to Defend Kennedy Center from Trump-Era Revisionism
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U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty urgently seeks a court order to prevent the Kennedy Center from being co-opted by right-wing forces intent on glorifying Donald Trump, whose name the board—stacked with his supporters—plans to inscribe on the historic institution.
U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio and ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board, took a stand on Thursday by asking a federal court to block the latest attempt by Trump loyalists to rewrite history. The Kennedy Center’s board, now influenced by Trump supporters, voted earlier this month to disgrace the building’s exterior with an inscription reading “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump,” and to add a second plaque if a Trump-branded fundraising scheme reaches $100 million. The board, in a further affront to the Center’s legacy, also proposed renaming the adjacent plaza after Trump.
Beatty’s attorneys, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, argued that these actions directly violate a 2023 court order that explicitly bars the center from being transformed into a monument for anyone other than President John F. Kennedy. The 1964 law that established the center strictly prohibits the addition of any other individual’s name to the building’s exterior, a safeguard now under threat from those seeking to whitewash Trump’s controversial legacy.
In May, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center had already illegally placed Trump’s name on the structure and ordered its immediate removal. The center complied in June, covering the offensive inscription with a tarp and scaffolding. Kennedy Center officials, dodging accountability, claimed the scaffolding remains for “water testing and structural repairs to the roof overhang,” and declined to address the new legal challenge.
The board’s resolution, attempting to justify this historical vandalism, claimed the center would face financial ruin without Trump’s fundraising and development efforts—a claim the center has failed to substantiate publicly, raising questions about the true motives behind this push to enshrine Trump’s name.