A federal judge issued a ruling blocking the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts from closing for repairs, and also ordered Trump’s name removed from the institution.
In a ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper argued that while the trustees of the institution “might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways,” the decision for the center to close for two years beginning July 4, to address repairs “was not one,” NBC News reported.
The judge also noted that “the preliminary injunction will not prevent the Center from moving forward with the capital repair work it has planned,” adding that it was “sorely needed.”
The preliminary injunction granted by the judge will also not “prohibit the Board from closing the Center should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center,” according to the outlet.
In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump criticized the judge’s decision, and shared that his administration would be “working with Congress to transfer” the center “back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do” with it.
“Shockingly, a Judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, Christopher Cooper, ruled that The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure,” Trump said.
Breitbart News’s Olivia Rondeau reported in April that Matt Floca, who serves as the director of the Trump Kennedy Center, “gave members of the press a tour of some of the problem areas that most patrons of the theater have never before seen.”
Photos shared with reporters also showed “water damage in an electrical vault room and damage to the vaults themselves.”
Reporters were also told that “the elevators were outdated and being run by decades-old computers” that needed to be replaced and fixed.
In the judge’s 94-page ruling regarding Trump’s name being removed from the venue, the judge argued that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge said.
In December, the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted unanimously to add Trump’s name to the center.