Kennedy Center Delays Trump Name Return to September

Justice Department attorneys, filing on the center's behalf, said the covering is structural: "Water testing and structural repairs to the roof overhang of the Center's front portico require the use of a scaffolding system, including a protective covering — a tarp — around that scaffolding." The center also said the tarp is part of the system needed to facilitate the removal of Trump's name.

Beatty's lawyers called that implausible in the same filing, noting the soffits are "some twenty feet or more above the scaffolding" and that no scaffolding has gone up anywhere else on the building in months. "Defendants tellingly have not done so for months, leaving only the Center's iconic name obscured — a strong indication that this structure has nothing to do with the roof and is, instead, meant to defy a return to the status quo," they wrote, adding that courts are "not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free."

Beatty says the real purpose of the tarp is to hide the fact that John F. Kennedy's name is back on the building — to "hide their embarrassment," as she put it in remarks reported by Raw Story.

Her attorneys called the Aug. 13 resolution a "breathtaking act of defiance," and described a related fundraising vehicle — the Trump Kennedy Center Fund, which claws back donations if Trump's name is ever removed — as a "contemptuous poison pill." Of the board's conduct overall, they wrote: "This case reeks of that kind of bad faith, improper motive, and formalism without consideration."