A US judge has \u2060ordered the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ruling that the iconic Washington venue cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.<\/p>\n
US District Judge Christopher \u200cCooper in \u2060Washington directed the Trump administration to take down all physical signage bearing Mr Trump\u2019s name and to eliminate any references to a “Trump Kennedy Center” from official materials \u200cwithin 14 days.<\/p>\n
“The Kennedy Center\u2019s organic statute makes crystal \u2060clear that the Center is to \u200cbe named for President Kennedy, and it cannot \u2060bear \u200cany other formal name or public memorial based on the Board\u2019s unilateral say-so,” Mr Cooper wrote.<\/p>\n
“Congress \u2060gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only \u2060Congress can change it.”<\/p>\n
Mr Cooper ruled in a lawsuit brought by Democratic US Representative Joyce Beatty.<\/p>\n
The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as “a living memorial to John Fitzgerald Kennedy”.<\/p>\n
Since its opening in 1971, it has remained a complex public-private enterprise that is both a part of the federal government and a tax-exempt nonprofit.<\/p>\n
The centre was built with a and long-term revenue bonds held by the Treasury Department.<\/p>\n
Its ongoing operations have always been funded by a mix of public money, private contributions and earned revenue from ticket sales, events, food service, parking and the like.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump announced on 1 February that he would shut down the centre for two years.<\/p>\n
He said this closure would begin on 4 July and was necessary for “Construction, Revitalization and Complete Rebuilding.”<\/p>\n
The next day, he denied that this meant he would demolish the facility altogether.<\/p>\n
The multi-venue arts centre has endured cancellations by performing artists and boycotts by patrons throughout the first year of Mr Trump’s second term, during which he made himself chairman of its board.<\/p>\n
The US president handpicked board members then voted to rebrand the centre to include his name.<\/p>\n
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US judge has \u2060ordered the removal of President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-473712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}