The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees decided to hold off on adding President Donald Trump’s name to the facade of the performing arts facility until Oct. 8 as a federal judge deliberates on the matter.
Justice Department lawyers notified the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday evening that the board will not effectuate its plan to add “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the end of “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” until the beginning of October.
The notice comes as the latest development in the legal saga over the Trump administration’s plans to renovate the facility and honor Trump for his planned renovation efforts and securing $257 million for the facility in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper held a hearing on the case Thursday, warning DOJ lawyers that if the Trump administration did not delay its plans to rename the facility, he might issue a temporary restraining order.
“If the government doesn’t see fit to extend this deadline a bit, there may be a bit of a temporary holding pattern while we give these issues the attention they deserve,” Cooper said at the Thursday hearing.
The DOJ’s subsequent notice to the court applied only to the board’s resolution on adding Trump’s name to the facade of the building, as the court is still deliberating on the board’s plans for a major, two-year structural renovation of the facility.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex officio member of the board, filed the lawsuit against the Trump administration’s move to change the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center in December 2025, later adding a complaint against the facility’s plans to close for two years once Trump announced plans to do so.
Cooper ruled on May 29 that only Congress could change the Kennedy Center’s name, ordering that Trump’s name be removed from the facility and related materials. In August, the Kennedy Center board moved to acknowledge Trump’s efforts for the facility by adding his name as someone who “renovated and restored” the structure, while keeping “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” as the name of the facility.
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Beatty’s lawyers argued in court on Thursday that the Board’s August vote was an “outright defiance” of Cooper’s May order, while the Justice Department stood firm that the August resolution complied with Cooper’s ruling, saying, “There is no renaming here.”
The building’s rebrand will be delayed until at least Oct. 8 while the court weighs the new inscription plan and the board’s plans for a two-year renovation closure.