Joyce Beatty

Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is celebrating victory after federal judge ruled that federal law prohibited Donald Trump from slapping his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Today in Ohio podcast hosts noted Tuesday that Beatty was one of the chief forces trying to remove Trump’s name from the beloved institution, built to honor a slain president. She’s now making sure people know about her role.

“She’s going on cable news to say, we did this. We stood up to a tyrant, and we won,” Laura Johnston said on the episode.

The Kennedy Center is a national memorial to President John F. Kennedy, established by Congress in 1964. When Trump moved to rebrand it, he ordered name placed atop Kennedy’s. He replaced the center’s board with loyalists, who then began carrying out Trump’s orders to remake it.

“He was wrecking it in so many ways. He was painting over the original design. And the guy is such a despot. He wanted to put his name on it like he’s Mussolini or something, when it was a memorial to a slain president,” Quinn said.

The judge’s legal reasoning was direct: Congress named the center. Only Congress can rename it. The president has no authority to change that. It’s the kind of ruling that sounds obvious when you say it out loud — and yet it required a lawsuit to make it stick.

Quinn said the courts are the only place enforcing the rule of law with Trump, with Congress abjectly abandoning its duty to America to be a check on the president.

Except for Beatty. She’s a member of Congress who did do something, but she had to go to the courts when her Republican colleagues put loyalty to Trump ahead of doing their jobs. Johnston pointed out that artists and performers who had pulled back from the Kennedy Center due to its association with Trump may now return. The cultural damage may not be permanent.

Listen to the discussion here.

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