Federal judge orders Trump’s name be removed from Kennedy Center, blocks closure
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge said Friday that President Donald Trump can’t close or rename the Kennedy Center, ruling that it cannot be officially named for anyone else unless Congress approves it.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the rebranding of the Kennedy Center as the “Trump Kennedy Center” violates the law, and ordered that Trump’s name be removed from the building within two weeks.
Cooper wrote that the administration “violated the Kennedy Center’s organic statute in purporting to rename the Center for President Trump, and in taking steps to effectuate that official renaming, such as installing signage with Donald J. Trump’s name on the front portico of the Center, altering the Center’s website to name the Center for President Trump, and in issuing official materials naming the Center for President Trump.”
Cooper also wrote “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Congress created the famed cultural institution in a federal statute, designating it as a living memorial in 1964 shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s death.
Trump announced in December that the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, which the president himself now chairs and filled with his hand-picked appointees, had voted “unanimously” to rename the building. Workers added signage with his name shortly after.
Trump also announced earlier this year that the Kennedy Center would be closed for two years starting in July for major renovations.
Cooper blasted the board for making an “ill-informed” and “seemingly preordained” decision to close the center.
“Finally, the Court is preliminarily persuaded that the Board’s March 16 vote to close the Kennedy Center pending a years-long renovation represents a dereliction of its common-law- derived duty of prudence,” Cooper wrote. “The current record reveals that the Board rendered this ill-informed and seemingly preordained decision without regard for how it would accomplish its full array of statutory responsibilities. The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one.”
The changes are being challenged in court by Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sits on the Kennedy Board of Trustees as one of its ex-officio members. “Today’s ruling rightly affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename and close the Center have no basis in law,” Beatty said in a statement Friday. “The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump. He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”
The Trump administration has defended the renovation as fulfilling the board’s “responsibilities to repair and improve the Center.”
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling, according to sources familiar with the matter.
ABC News has reached out to the White House for comment on the ruling.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous and Steven Portnoy contributed to this report.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appears on ABC News’ “This Week” on April 26, 2026. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that “the system worked” and kept President Donald Trump and other leaders safe from a shooting outside of the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday night that they were attending.
“The system worked; law enforcement and the Secret Service protected all of us. The man barely got past the perimeter. And so when you have a perimeter designed to keep people safe, like President Trump, and it works — that’s something that should be applauded,” Blanche told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos when asked about the fact that the president and many members of the presidential line of succession were there.
“Secondly, as President Trump said, we are not going to stop doing what we’re doing. We’re not going to stop living; we’re not going to stop being out there,” Blanche added. “President Trump is going to continue communicating with the American people in public, and the fact that the vice president and other leadership were there last night in one room, is why we had such a robust security [operation] surrounding the place, inside the place, and it’s why we are all safe.”
Blanche spoke to Stephanopoulos the morning after a shooting incident outside the dinner.
The incident took place near the main magnetometer screening area at the event, according to the Secret Service. A suspect, whom law enforcement sources identified to ABC News as Cole Allen of Torrance, California, is in custody, officials said.
Blanche said the suspect was likely acting alone, although investigations are ongoing, and that “we believe that he traveled by train from Los Angeles to Chicago and then Chicago to Washington, D.C.”
Asked by Stephanopoulos how the suspect may have gotten a firearm into the hotel, Blanche replied, “It’s a good question. And listen, I’m not sure. It appears that he checked in on the 24th [of April] to the hotel, and we’re still looking at video surveillance and footage of where he walked and how he got in and how those firearms got in, but at the end of the day, I expect we’ll have a lot more about that in the coming days.”
Poll workers place a sign outside a polling station for the New Jersey Primary at a firehouse in Hoboken, N.J., June 4, 2024. (Gary Hershorn/ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — Amid President Donald Trump’s repeated unsubstantiated accusations of rigged voting and calls to nationalize elections, an updated version of the GOP’s signature piece of election reform — now called the SAVE America Act — is set to reach the House floor for a showdown vote later Wednesday.
The original, called the SAVE Act, was sponsored by Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, passed out of the House in April, but has stalled in the Senate since — attracting intense pushback from Democrats, who say the bill would damage voting accessibility and discriminate against low-income voters who are unable to get government ID.
Trump and top Republicans have argued the revised bill is necessary to protect the country’s election process before the 2026 midterm elections in November.
“America’s Elections are Rigged, Stolen, and a Laughingstock all over the World,” Trump wrote on social media. “We are either going to fix them, or we won’t have a Country any longer. I am asking all Republicans to fight for the following: SAVE AMERICA ACT!”
There has been no credible evidence of widespread fraud or substantiated claims of U.S. elections being rigged.
What is the SAVE America Act?
Republican lawmakers tout the SAVE America Act as the next step in securing what they call “election integrity.” The bill would restrict mail-in ballots, require photo ID at polling places and mandate states obtain proof of citizenship before registering a person to vote in a federal election.
Citizenship documents include:
A valid United States passport
A Real ID
A birth certificate
United States military ID card, together with a record of service showing that the applicant’s place of birth was in the United States
Federal, state or tribal government ID card showing the applicants place of birth
A driver’s license without a Real ID stamp would not be accepted as proof of citizenship.
This process would include mail voter registration applications, requiring people to provide documented proof to an appropriate election official before being approved.
The bill would also require states to scrub noncitizens from their current voter records and create programs to identify individuals who are not U.S. citizens by using data from various state agencies, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
On Election Day, voters would be expected to bring a valid photo ID which they would be required to present before getting access to the ballot box. If an ID does not have a photo, a voter would have to prove U.S. citizenship or provide the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.
Along with ID requirements, Trump has called for restrictions on voting by mail, disallowing mail-in voting except for instances of illness, disability, military or travel.
Several high-ranking Republican leaders allege the bill would stop instances of noncitizens voting in elections, an issue they argue has damaged the credibility of election results.
Noncitizens are already prohibited from voting in federal and state elections, though some cities allow noncitizens to vote on some local elections.
“A number of states deliberately don’t want to check whether or not somebody’s here legally when they register, and then they mandate in some states that they can’t show picture ID. That’s a recipe for voter fraud,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said during an interview on Fox News. “…one person, one vote only matters if you’re having these protections like the SAVE America Act.”
Experts have long insisted that noncitizen voting is a rare problem. Voter roll audits before the 2024 elections in Georgia found only 20 registered noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters statewide. Nine of those actually cast a ballot.
The president has suggested noncitizen voting has allowed Democrats to win elections when they otherwise shouldn’t have, including unfounded claims that Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election.
“We need fair elections. We need elections where people aren’t able to cheat. And we’re going to do that, I’m going to do that, I’m going to get it done,” Trump said.
Why the controversy?
Implementing voter ID is not a novel idea in the United States. The National Conference of State Legislatures tracks 36 states that require voters to show some sort of identification at the polls.
Sentiment over voter ID is also recorded as mostly positive, with a Pew Research Center poll citing 83% of the 3,554 Americans surveyed as in favor of requiring all voters to show government issued photo IDs before voting.
In that same survey, 58% of respondents said they were in favor of maintaining mail-in voting.
Still, key Democrats on Capitol Hill have been strongly opposed to the bill, arguing it makes voting more difficult and less accessible.
“Our elections are key to our democracy. The SAVE Act would make it harder for registered, legal voters to vote,” California Democrat Rep. Mike Thomson said. “At a time when the president is talking about nationalizing elections, we must protect our democracy and every voter’s choice.”
Though the bill made it through the House with a 220-208 vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the bill would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
“The Republicans’ SAVE Act reads more like a how-to guide for voter suppression. It goes against the very foundations of our democracy,” Schumer said. “Mark my words: This will not pass the Senate.”
Others, such as Democrat Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), argue Republicans are deliberately timing the change in voter rules before consequential midterm elections.
“Republicans will stop at nothing to interfere with the 2026 midterms — including leveraging ICE to gain access to sensitive voter information or pass their anti-democratic SAVE Act,” Padilla said. “We’re not going to let them get away with their attempts to suppress the right to vote.”
In the Senate, the bill would need to garner support from some Democrats in order to overcome a 60-vote threshold to advance over an expected Democratic filibuster.
In this Feb. 10, 2026, file photo, Sen. Chris Murphy speaks to reporters as he returns to his office at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, FILE)
(WASHINGTON) — Despite President Donald Trump saying that the United States and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire, congressional Democrats are pushing forward to hold the president accountable.
“The president has promised to commit war crimes. He’s promised to eradicate an entire civilization we have never ever seen that in the history of this country. That’s why I and many other people have been talking for the last 24 hours about the 25th amendment,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said on CNN Tuesday of the potential vehicle for removing the president from office.
Murphy said Trump has “lost touch with reality” — mentioning the president’s Tuesday morning social media post in which he threatened that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
However, hours before an 8 p.m. ET self-imposed deadline for Iran to make a deal to fully reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz or face broad strikes on its critical infrastructure, Trump said he had agreed to suspend planned bombing for two weeks if Iran agreed to reopen the strait.
“We just can’t accept a president who is literally promising to destroy an entire civilization, to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings. That alone should be grounds for the removal of this President,” said Murphy, who was one of several lawmakers who mentioned the 25th Amendment after Trump’s latest threats.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that Senate Democrats will once again force a vote on an Iran war powers resolution when they return from recess next week. The resolution would call on the president to terminate the use of U.S. armed forces in hostilities against Iran or any part of the Iranian government or military unless a declaration of war or authorization to use military force is enacted.
“Republicans will once again have the opportunity to join Democrats and end this reckless war of choice. The public must demand that Republicans join with us to approve a war powers act,” Schumer said at a New York press conference.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House’s top Democrat, said that “as soon as it becomes available to us to do so,” Democrats will present a war powers resolution on the House floor.
“A two-week ceasefire is insufficient. We need a permanent end to Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice, which is why House Democrats have demanded that Speaker Mike Johnson immediately reconvene the House back into session so we can move a War Powers Resolution that will end this conflict permanently,” Jeffries said on CNN Tuesday night.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have not yet commented on the matter.
In a statement on Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said he would support the House’s war powers resolution when it comes up for a vote – a change after Cueller was one of four Democrats who voted against it last month.
Cueller, in a post on X, said the war powers resolution is “a reaffirmation of Congress’ constitutional role and our shared responsibility to the American people.”
The Senate and the House have both failed several times to advance war powers resolutions.
Republican Sen. John Curtis said last week that he won’t support military operations in Iran beyond the 60-day window without congressional approval. He had previously voted with Republicans, aside from Sen. Rand Paul, to block the Iran war powers resolution from advancing, arguing Trump was within his legal authority to act.
In an April 1 op-ed for Deseret News, Curtis wrote that 60 days is a “sufficient window” for Trump to take emergency measures to combat the threat Iran poses, but that a declaration of war should be authorized by Congress for operations to continue.
There are no indications that other Republicans would change their votes on the war power resolution.
Democratic Rep. John Larson on Tuesday filed articles of impeachment to remove Trump from office – however, without Republican support, his effort is not likely to move forward and serves more as a signal of Democratic aspirations if they win back the majority in the midterm elections this fall.
A number of Senate Democrats have continued their calls for Congress to return early from their recess to “vote to end this war.”
Democratic Sen. Andy Kim posted a video on Tuesday night from inside a train he was taking back to Washington — imploring his fellow members of Congress to return as well.
“We need to have answers immediately for the American people. What Trump said earlier is unacceptable, it’s dangerous, it is absolutely unhinged and we should all be concerned about him helming this war, this illegal unconstitutional war. We need Congress back in session immediately,” Kim said in the video. “I call on all my colleagues to get back so we can have a vote to end this war and stop this insanity before it goes any further.”
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell echoed calls for congressional action.
“A return to diplomatic regional discussions will save lives and dollars and protect America’s long-term interests, while President Trump’s irresponsible words and actions undermine them Congress must impose constraints on this President’s wrongheaded use of force,” Cantwell said in a post on X.
For some Republicans, Trump’s announcement on the ceasefire seemed to be met with cautious optimism.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a top Trump ally, said he is hopeful the “reign of terror” can be ended through diplomacy but that he is “extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs fiction.”
“As I stated before, I prefer diplomacy if it leads to the right outcome regarding the Iranian terrorist regime. I appreciate the hard work of all involved in trying to find a diplomatic solution,” Graham posted on X. “At this early stage, I am extremely cautious regarding what is fact vs. fiction or misrepresentation. That’s why a congressional review process like the one the Senate followed to test the Obama Iranian deal is a sound way forward. Fair and challenging questions with a full opportunity to explain, and a healthy dose of sunlight is generally the right formula to understand any matter. Simply put, kick the tires.”
ABC News’ John Parkinson and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
