He Deserves This Bad Week

US district judge Christopher Cooper has ruled that Donald Trump's name must come down from the Kennedy Center.  He has also ruled that Trump's 2-year shutdown to remake the building into a gold plated grotesque will not go forward.

A judge on Friday ordered the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the prestigious Washington DC venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.

US district judge Christopher Cooper in Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Trump’s name and to eliminate any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials within 14 days.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote in a 94-page opinion. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

The judge added: “The Court has concluded that the Board overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center after President Trump.”

Not long after the ruling, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would work with Congress on transferring ownership of the Kennedy Center.

“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution, giving them the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management,” he wrote. 

Ummm....wut?  Transfer?  You do not own the Kennedy Center.  Neither does Congress.

The American people own it.

Cooper also temporarily blocked the center from closing this summer for proposed renovations, two months after Trump announced its two-year closure.

He said that “in ratifying President Trump’s closure announcement, the Board was derelict in discharging the full range of its responsibilities to the Center”.

………

The lawsuit was brought by Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democratic US representative and a member of the Kennedy Center’s board by virtue of her position in Congress.

Thank you Representative Beatty.