The order to remove Trump's name from the building came on what would have been the 35th president's 109th birthday
NEED TO KNOW
- Maria Shriver celebrated a judge’s ruling to remove President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center on what would have been her uncle John F. Kennedy’s, 109th birthday
- Shriver, the daughter of Kennedy’s younger sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, called the decision from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper “a great birthday gift” for her uncle
- Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ordered that Trump’s name be removed from the cultural institution within 14 days and halted plans to close the building for renovations expected to take two years
Maria Shriver celebrated a federal judge's order on Friday, May 29, to remove President Donald Trump's name from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on what would have been her uncle John F. Kennedy's 109th birthday.
“An appropriate birthday present on my uncle's birthday today,” Shriver, the daughter of Kennedy's younger sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, wrote Friday on social media in response to the decision from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
“I know they'll probably appeal and the story isn't over,” she added, “but for today let's celebrate a great birthday gift.”
In a 94-page ruling, Cooper wrote that the Kennedy Center's board of trustees violated the original law that named the cultural institution for Kennedy in 1964, shortly after Kennedy's assassination in November 1963. He ordered that Trump's name, installed on the building's exterior in December, be removed within two weeks, and halted plans announced by the president in February to close the center for a “complete rebuilding.”
“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,” Cooper wrote on Friday.
Credit: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it," he added.
Trump raged against Cooper's decision in a lengthy Truth Social post on Friday, but appeared willing to acquiesce.
“Based on the fact that the Radical Left Democrats care more about opposing your favorite President, ME, than saving a dying Performing Arts Center, almost all of which lose large amounts of money throughout the Country, we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” he wrote.
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“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,'” Trump added.
Shriver, a frequent and outspoken critic of the president, has been highly critical of the effort to add his name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to the 35th president, since its board of trustees took a unanimous vote to do so late last year.
“It is beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy,” Shriver wrote on Instagram after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had announced the vote in December 2025. “It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy's name is acceptable. It is not.”
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