Workers began the process of prying “Donald J. Trump” off the facade of the Kennedy Center in the early morning hours on Saturday, after a court found the president’s renaming of the Washington, D.C., landmark was illegal.
After crews set up scaffolding Friday in front of the Kennedy Center, they started pulling off the letters from the building at just past 3 a.m. Saturday behind “heavy white tarps” that obscured views of the removal, according to the New York Times. They ended the work and departed the site about an hour later, the Times reported.
Crowds had gathered Friday in the plaza in front of the Kennedy Center, breaking into cheers and chants of “Take it down,” per CNBC.
In a May 29 ruling, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered Kennedy Center officials to remove Trump’s name from the building (as well as from its website and wherever else it appeared in connection with the center) within two weeks, with a June 12 deadline. The judge also blocked Trump and the center from taking any further steps to close the institution for repairs, after the president had said the Kennedy Center would shut down for two years starting July 4, 2026, to undergo a “complete rebuilding.”
