Congresswoman Suing Trump Over Kennedy Center Name Change Accuses Administration of ‘Petty Defiance’

More than a week after President Trump’s name was pulled off of all materials related to the Kennedy Center, a congresswoman who sued the administration over the name change is accusing Mr. Trump and his allies of committing “an act of petty defiance.” She says that keeping up tarps to cover where Mr. Trump’s name used to be should not be acceptable. The lawmaker, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, serves as an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, which voted to rename the performing arts center to include Mr. Trump’s name. The center was named in an act of Congress to be a memorial to President Kennedy. A judge has ruled that Mr. Trump cannot put his name on the building or any other materials unless Congress chooses to change the name. After a court ruled that Mr. Trump’s name had to be taken off of the center’s website, promotional materials, shuttle buses, and the building itself, construction crews put up tarps to cover the east side of the center, which is where Kennedy’s name is displayed. Mr. Trump’s name had been put before Kennedy’s, with the name being changed to the “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Mr. Trump’s name was taken off the building, though only after the tarps had been put up. During the meeting where the Board of Trustees, comprising mainly Trump-appointed allies, renamed the center last year, Ms. Beatty was not permitted to speak and was unable to raise her objections, even though as an ex officio member, she herself does not cast votes at board meetings. She then sued to block the name change. Now that the Trump administration has appealed the case to the circuit court, Ms. Beatty is calling out the decision-makers behind the effort to shield the center wall.“There are difficult cases. This is not one of them,” Ms. Beatty’s attorneys write to the circuit court. “After President Kennedy’s assassination, Congress established the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as ‘a living memorial’ to the late President.”Her lawyers write that “it would send a particularly concerning message if the Court” were to allow Mr. Trump’s name to be put back on the center. They say the administration and the Board of Trustees “willfully flouted the statutes Congress passed; played chicken with the judicial system; now threaten to sabotage this sacred institution; and continue to obscure the Kennedy Center’s façade in an act of petty defiance.”Before Mr. Trump’s name was due to be torn off the building on June 12, the administration applied for an emergency stay pending appeal. The Justice Department said in a court filing that Ms. Beatty had not suffered any actual harm, and that her “lawsuit here implicates significant separation-of-powers issues by infringing on the executive’s sovereign prerogative to prioritize among and pursue different legal actions.”Lawyers for the government tried to get around the statute naming the center for Kennedy by arguing that Mr. Trump is not memorialized by having his name on the building. They argued that at no point did Congress ban “acknowledgments” for other people other than Kennedy. “The signage including President Trump’s name does not indicate that the text is intended to memorialize him, and the ordinary meaning of ‘memorial’ demonstrates that the statute is intended to forbid only an addition that ‘helps remember some past impression,’ not an addition that acknowledges the involvement and leadership of the sitting President of the United States,” the lawyers wrote. Congress has already declined on multiple occasions to add Mr. Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center. Last year, one congressman sought to rename the center’s main opera house for first lady Melania Trump, though that idea was later scrapped. In all of the government funding bills that Mr. Trump has signed since returning to office, Congress has explicitly funded “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Congresswoman Suing Trump Over Kennedy Center Name Change Accuses Administration of ‘Petty Defiance’

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