New Mystery Exposed in Trump's Kennedy Center Battle

[Zorro]

The Justice Department claims that stripping the president’s name from the arts center could torch millions of dollars in donor cash.

Justice Department lawyers are arguing that Donald Trump’s name must go on the Kennedy Center, or it will risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in donations.

Trump’s handpicked board at the center voted last December to add his name to the prestigious Washington, D.C., venue, and fresh signage went up the next day to rename the building “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

A federal judge ordered the name removed in May, ruling that only Congress has the authority to rename a building it designated as a tribute to the late President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. Trump’s name came off by a June 12 deadline, and a tarp has since covered the building’s facade, feeding weeks of speculation.

The president’s lawyers have now asked an appeals court for an emergency stay while they work on having the earlier ruling reversed. They argue that donor gifts will have to be “returned, refunded, or terminated” if Trump’s name is stripped from the venue or its branding, The Atlantic reports.

That obligation is apparently written into the bylaws of a foundation nobody had heard of before this month: the Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Foundation. Business records reviewed by the outlet show it was created this spring as the product of a March 18 relabeling of the nonprofit Kennedy Center Foundation, established under President Joe Biden in 2024.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-mystery-exposed-as-trump-battles-to-keep-his-name-on-the-kennedy-center-in-washington-dc/