Judge blocks Trump's Kennedy center plan and halts renovation plan • FRANCE 24 English

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]The Donald Trump on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts was not to be a judge ruled on Friday as the power to change its name lies with Congress.

[00:00:10]Also cancelled the center's imminent two-year closure for renovations judged ill-informed and preordained. This to the outrage of Donald Trump who ushered in a new age for the public performing arts institution last February sacking the president and instating a new board with himself at the helm to overhaul the center's management.

[00:00:30]>> 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.

[00:00:45]>> With its concert hall, opera house, theater, and lecture hall, the 70-year-old cultural mastodon shuttered its social impact scheme last year, ended programming deemed woke, and in December, soon after he hosted the center's annual honor ceremony, added President Trump's name to the facade.

[00:01:03]The center has already seen backlash to the president's interference with artists canceling concerts. Critics even suggest that the two-year closure was to save face as the institution floundered under his membership. Thwarted by an Obama-appointed district judge, President Trump [music] announced the complete transfer of the institution to Congress in an angry tirade on Truth Social.