Judge Gives Trump Administration Deadline to Explain Tarp Covering Kennedy Center

A federal judge has given the Trump administration until July 31 to explain why a tarp still obscures the facade of the Kennedy Center, days after the president’s name was removed from the building by court order.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the administration must report “the purpose and status of the tarp and scaffolding” currently obscuring the institution’s full name, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Workers erected the scaffolding and tarp in the early hours of June 13 as they prepared to comply with a court order to remove Trump’s name from the building. The president added the words “The Donald J. Trump And” to the facade in December despite public outcry. A flurry of lawsuits seeking to block the move followed, citing federal law reserving to Congress the authority to alter national monuments.

Staff at the Kennedy Center began removing references to the president from the institution in early June, in accordance with a May 29 ruling by Judge Cooper. Effective immediately, his name was scrubbed from signs, letterheads, and email signatures, while the restoration of the institution’s legal name was ordered to be completed by June 12. 

The decision was not well received by the president, who promptly took to social media to describe Judge Cooper as an “anti-Trump hater” and predict that the center would “soon be closed, probably never to open again.” The remark referred to the president’s proposed two-year closure of the institution, a plan that Judge Cooper also blocked in his ruling.

However, the ruling was well received by some Washington, D.C., residents and visitors. According to the Washington Post, roughly 200 people gathered outside the building on June 13 to watch the removal Trump’s name, chanting, “Take it down.”

The celebration appears to have soured as the tarp remains in place. One tourist described the obstruction to the Post as “the last gasp of a sore loser,” adding, “[President Trump] is thumbing his nose at the court, he’s thumbing his nose at the people.”

Just days after the president’s name was removed, the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees—chaired by Trump and populated with his allies—voted to establish a new endowment in his name, creating an additional source of private funding to complement its existing endowments and roughly $257 million in federal funding appropriated for building renovations.