Workers erect scaffolding in front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts sign, in Washington on Friday, June 12, 2026.Rahmat Gul/AP
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On Saturday morning, Kennedy Center officials confirmed that they had removed all signs with President Trump’s name from the building after a federal judge declared the previous day that the signs were unlawful. The officials also stated that they updated their website “to remove all reference to the institution as the ‘Trump Kennedy Center.’”
To justify his takeover of the Kennedy Center, Trump has repeatedly stated that the cultural center was no longer “going to be woke.”
On Friday, another federal judge ordered that the Trump administration must restore exhibits and placards on subjects like climate change, slavery, and civil rights that it had taken down following a March 2025 executive order that deemed them “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.”
In a preliminary injunction, US District Judge Angel Kelley ruled in favor of scientists, historians, and park conservationists and rangers, stating that the removal established a “dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.” Kelley gave the Trump administration a reinstallation deadline of 21 days, by the 250th anniversary of the US.
The US Department of the Interior said in a statement that “the ruling is from a liberal activist judge” and would evaluate options to appeal the decision while they “celebrate UFC Freedom 250.”
Both orders act as a massive blow to President Trump’s censorship campaign to take control over federal historical sites and cultural institutions. As my colleague Dan Friedman reported in February, the Trump administration’s efforts were shrouded in secrecy—the Interior Department has so far refused to disclose the number of signs and exhibits they are targeting as “non-conformant” with the president and signs were taken down without notice.
And as my colleague Jeffrey Kelly also wrote in February, local residents and government officials of targeted areas have been fighting back against this censorship through protests and even makeshift signs to replace the ones that’d been removed, because despite the administration’s best efforts, “nothing can change what happened at these places, and who it happened to.”
