By Blake Brittain, Mike Scarcella and David Thomas
WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) – The Trump administration missed the court-mandated deadline to remove President Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, saying it expected to complete the work on Saturday morning.
The Department of Justice said in a court filing ahead of the midnight Friday deadline that the delay was due to thunderstorms that could pose safety risks for the workers, requesting an extension until noon (1500 GMT) on Saturday.
Democratic U.S. Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, who brought the lawsuit, called the request to extend the two-week-old deadline “inexcusable” and part of “a pattern of non-compliance,” according to the DOJ filing.
Beatty “would strongly oppose any further extensions” to taking Trump’s name off the half-century-old arts landmark, the filing said.
Hours before the filing, a federal judge in Washington had declined a DOJ request to pause an order to remove Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said he would not lift the order while a federal appeals court considers his ruling that only Congress could rename the venue memorializing the assassinated President John F. Kennedy in the nation’s capital.
The Trump administration appealed that order to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which also rejected the government’s request for a pause on Friday.
Attorneys for Beatty said in a statement that “the law is clear: only Congress can change the Kennedy Center’s name.”
“We are standing by for whatever Trump may try next, but his desperation is only making the spectacle worse for him,” said Norm Eisen, co-founder of Democracy Defenders Action, a Democratic-leaning legal advocacy group, and Nathaniel Zelinsky of the Washington Litigation Group.
The White House and the Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cooper ruled on May 29 that only Congress could rename the arts center. His order had required Trump’s name to be removed from the building’s facade, its website and other materials by 11:59 p.m. on Friday.
Lawyers for the administration had asked the appeals court to pause the order, arguing: “It does not make sense to alter the Center’s name and signage now, only to potentially revert the name again after what should be a successful appeal.”
The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a memorial to the Democratic president, who was slain in 1963. After Trump last year replaced several members of the board, the group voted in December to alter the center’s name to include him.
Trump in February announced a two-year closure of the center for a major renovation. The Republican leader has made a broader push to reshape Washington’s monumental core, including plans for a 250-foot (75-meter) arch and a 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom on the site of the East Wing of the White House, which Trump had demolished in October.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain and Mike Scarcella in Washington, and David Thomas in Chicago, additional reporting by Angela Christy M; Editing by Mark Porter, Sergio Non; Tom Hogue, Kim Coghill and William Mallard)
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