Oh, there is going to be a red tsunami at the White House this evening — meaning a deluge of ketchup. Donald is going to be hopping mad. The Washington Post is reporting that a federal judge has ordered that Trump’s name be removed from the building (within two weeks, do you love it?) and that the proposed closure of the Center for two years not take place at all.
In a pair of rulings, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper granted in part Rep. Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block Trump from taking any further steps toward closing the institution. The judge also ordered Kennedy Center officials to remove Trump’s name within two weeks.
The ruling throws the Kennedy Center’s near future into uncertainty, blocking leaders from shutting down the performing arts venue in July after they have canceled most performances in anticipation of the closure.
The decision is the most significant point in two lawsuits filed against Kennedy Center leadership over the Trump administration’s involvement in affairs big and small at the performing arts institution.
In December, Beatty, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board, sued her fellow trustees days after they voted to rename the institution “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Beatty said she was muted during the virtual board meeting when she tried to voice opposition to the name change, a claim the center disputed. She later amended the lawsuit to seek a broader halt to the closure, and the court granted her request for key documents related to the renovation plan, including building assessments and budget materials.
Both cases landed before Cooper, who has been pressing both sides on a central question: whether the Kennedy Center renovations must follow the same review process that governs nearly every other major federal construction project in the capital.
A lawsuit filed in March by a group of eight architectural and historical preservation organizations, including the DC Preservation League and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, argues that the center must complete several steps of federal review before work can begin. Those steps include historical preservation consultation under the National Historic Preservation Act, environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, and formal approval from the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. No such reviews have begun, the plaintiffs said.
Naturally, Trump never took any of this into account. He just did what he felt like doing, most of all changing the name of the Center to the Trump/Kennedy Center. Wrong, Donald. I wonder if Trump still plans to name the Opera House after Melania?
Now what remains to be seen is if Trump contests the court order or simply goes along with it and hopes that the news ends up in the back of the newspaper. Talk about embarrassing.
Trump is an embarrassment to the nation.