President Donald Trump’s name still must come off the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., a federal judge ruled Friday in rejecting a last-minute bid to block an earlier order to remove the name.

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The Trump administration had asked that Judge Christopher Cooper stay his May 29 ruling in U.S. District Court in D.C. pending a new appeal of that decision.

Cooper’s rejection came on the day of the deadline of his order that Trump’s name be removed from the facade of the Kennedy Center, the performing arts landmark named after the late President John Kennedy.

The D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has yet to rule whether to stay Cooper’s order.

“Defendants have not carried their burden to establish that a stay of the Court’s … permanent injunction concerning the Kennedy Center’s renaming is warranted pending an appeal of the underlying ruling to the D.C. Circuit,” Cooper wrote in his order.

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“Most notably, for the detailed reasons laid out in the Court’s ruling, Defendants have not ‘made a strong showing that [they] are likely to succeed on the merits,’ ” the judge wrote.

The center had been renamed the Trump Kennedy Center in December, 10 months after Trump removed several trustees from the board and appointed himself as a trustee.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and ex officio Kennedy Center trustee, sued to block the renaming, as well as to block the closure of the center for renovations to reverse her being stripped of her voting rights by board in May 2025.

Cooper, in his May 29 ruling in Beatty’s favor, wrote, “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

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