Trump faces legal scrutiny after he tries to plaster his name on a sacred institution, and a congresswoman gets muted trying to stop it

President Trump is facing a tough new legal challenge after he affixed his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the lawsuit claims a congresswoman was intentionally muted while trying to object to the change, as per The Hill. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio, filed the lawsuit late Monday night.

She is an ex-officio member of the center’s board, which voted to add Trump’s name last week. The center soon updated its signage to include the president’s name. Trump officials have contended that the board’s decision to unveil The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts was made “unanimously.” That is a mouthful, so many people are calling it the Trump-Kennedy Center, which Trump himself used before changing its name officially.

Beatty asserts that the “unanimous” claim is just not true. She said the board meeting was held at a Trump-supporting board member’s home and came without any notice that a name change would be considered. She claims that those who might have opposed the update were barred from giving input. When she tried to speak out as a remote participant, she says she was actually muted.

President Trump’s bid to secure his legacy is taking on a new name, or, rather, his own

Her lawyers wrote in the complaint that the proceedings were “mere window dressing for a predetermined decision.” They stated that this was a “transparent effort to prevent any disagreement with the Board’s actions.” The core of Beatty’s legal challenge is that Congress named the center by statute. Months after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the center was made into a “living memorial” to the late president through an act of Congress signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in January 1964.

Beatty is asking a judge to find the renaming unlawful and order the immediate dismantling of the new signage displaying Trump’s name. Her lawyers contend that the effort to “corrupt the Kennedy Center into a vanity project for Defendant Trump will continue to harm the institution” unless the court steps in.

This Kennedy Center situation is not the only place the president is meeting resistance over his branding efforts. Weeks before this drama, Trump stuck his name onto the headquarters for the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), renaming it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. This move came despite ongoing litigation between the administration and the institute itself after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effectively dismantled its operations.

A federal judge ruledthat Trump and DOGE, which has recently disbanded with eight months left in its mandate, used “brute force” to take over the building and purge the institute. She described those moves as a “gross usurpation of power.” George Foote, a lawyer representing former USIP leadership, said that the institute’s new name “adds insult to injury.” He noted that the government only maintains control of the building because a federal appeals court panel paused the lower court’s ruling while it reviews the matter.

Earlier this month, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the president, asking a judge to bar him from replacing a “beautiful picture” of Glacier National Park with a “closeup of his own face” on a National Parks pass. Legal experts are also warning of lawsuits over the pricy visa fast-track, the so-called “Trump Gold Card” and “Trump Platinum Card,” which was rolled out by the White House in September.