JC Whittington, Gershon Peaks and Blake Brittain
Washington: Workers stripped President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Centre early on Saturday, less than six months after it went up, complying with a judge’s ruling that the performing arts landmark cannot be renamed without an act of Congress.
The work began in the early hours after the Department of Justice said the government would miss a court-ordered deadline of 11.59pm on Friday to take Trump’s name off the Washington venue, created a half-century ago to honour an assassinated president.
The centre’s board, which Trump chairs, voted in December to rename it The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for the Performing Arts. Workers began affixing his name to the building the next day.
After erecting scaffolding late on Friday, workers draped tarps over the temporary structure in the predawn hours and were seen removing letters around 3.10am in an operation that took about 30 minutes.
Late on Friday, the DOJ had said in a court filing it would miss the deadline because of thunderstorms that could pose safety risks for the workers, seeking a 12-hour extension.
Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who brought the lawsuit that forced Trump’s name to be removed, called the request to extend the two-week-old deadline “inexcusable” and part of “a pattern of non-compliance,” according to the DOJ filing.
The centre opened in 1971 as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat assassinated in 1963. Trump, a Republican, has packed its board of trustees with allies since resuming office last year.
Hours before the DOJ filing, a federal judge in Washington had declined the department’s request to pause an order to remove Trump’s name.
Trump in February announced a two-year closure of the centre for a major renovation. He has made a broader push to reshape Washington’s monumental core, including plans for a ballroom on the site of the East Wing of the White House, which Trump had demolished in October.
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