A federal judge wants to know what's going on behind the curtain at the Kennedy Center—literally. On Wednesday, US District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the Trump administration to explain why a tarp and scaffolding are still obscuring the building's facade, weeks after he ordered President Trump's name removed from the Washington arts complex, per the Guardian. NPR notes that the administration has to give its update by July 31, or within seven days of the center's July board meeting, whichever comes first. The tarp went up as workers, acting under Cooper's ruling that the administration had unlawfully added Trump's name in December, stripped the lettering in a predawn operation. Recent photos show that the Trump moniker has indeed been removed.
The dispute stems from a lawsuit by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center board member, with Cooper giving her a win in asserting that the venue can't be renamed without an act of Congress. In recent filings, Beatty said the tarp was erected and being kept up in "petulant defiance" and to "massage broken egos," per Forbes. Her lawyers now call the "semi-permanent tarp" an attempt to block restoration of John F. Kennedy's name, while fellow Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has labeled it "a literal cover-up." Cooper's earlier ruling not only forced removal of Trump's name but also temporarily halted a planned two-year, $257 million renovation he criticized as "ill-informed." The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to pause Cooper's order. The White House and the Kennedy Center haven't commented.
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