By Mike Scarcella
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to explain why it placed a tarp over the Kennedy Center's façade after the Republican leader's name was removed from the building under a court order.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the administration must report by July 31 "the purpose and status of the tarp and scaffolding" now in place at the iconic building.
The tarp was installed as workers stripped Trump’s
name in a predawn operation this month following an order from Cooper that the Trump administration unlawfully added his name to the facade in December.
The White House and Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a lawsuit brought by Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center board member, the judge last month ordered the removal of Trump's name from the Washington theater complex's signage and blocked his plans to close it for two years of renovations starting July 4. The Trump administration has asked a federal appeals court to put that order on hold.
Beatty’s lawyers this week in a filing told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the “semi-permanent tarp” obscuring the late President John F. Kennedy's name from public view at the center appears to be the Trump administration’s "effort to frustrate the restoration of the status quo as it existed prior to the renaming.”
Beatty called the obstruction of the facade an "act of petty defiance."
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
