Washington DC—They rode up late at night along the silent driveway to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Stopping just long enough to attach a few cables and turn on their projector, they beamed a light show from a car window. Security was caught totally flat-footed. The light show parodied Trump’s vanity project for shuttering the venerable monument and cloaking its name.
The light show borrowed from another show the group displayed on the back of the Kennedy Center in February. But this time they updated it to make fun of the fact that U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ruled against every effort to take over, rename, and degrade services at the venerable arts center.
The activists knew they shouldn’t be out late taking part in clandestine activity like that. Amidst the oppressive humidity of evaporating democracy, things could get out of hand. It could put them afoul of a law prohibiting defacement of buildings. Lampooning a presidential vanity project could get them into real deep State trouble. “Stranger things have happened.”
A former Olympian was charged with felony vandalism for his arms length reach into the reflecting pool to touch algae sodden paint. That was no joke. He was forced to retain counsel and show up in court on bogus charges which were later dismissed…because they were knowingly bogus. Such fate could easily befall them.
What a golden opportunity they thought. It felt good anyway to take a jab at a narcissist’s inflated vision of himself. Stick a bug in the eye of injustice, so to say. At this juncture what did the light runners have to lose? A little light here and there, speaking truth and power to darkness never hurt anyone. But apparently it had.
A rent-a-cop wearing a heavily starched uniform credentialed with BTI Special Police patches and a good performance ribbon, bounded out of the shadows to stop them. He jumped in front of the light beam. But by then it was already too late. Some of the light show got through. The video was caught. And by the same time the next night, it would be going places.
The video was a redux production of a previous light show on the back side of the Kennedy Center. The new show added a few updates including a show curtain opening to reveal Trump’s name falling off letter by letter from the Kennedy Center.
“You can’t project something onto the building’” he said. “Because it’s a federal building you can’t project anything onto the building. I looked it up.” He called for backup. He wasn’t going to let anyone editorialize the noble white image on the Kennedy Center.
The projectionists were cooperative and turned off the projector. Plausible deniability of the law won the day and they were free to go. They drove away.
Back in February the team of rent-a-cops that night couldn’t stop the show because the projection was out of the Kennedy Center zone, beyond their reach. It was beamed from U.S. Park jurisdiction along the Potomac River. So the special police did the only thing they could and took pictures of the activists. The projectionists didn’t care. The kept the lights going right up until National Park Police came and ran them off. They got plenty of honks in support from passing motorists.
Trump’s Kennedy Center Board, a group of insiders he appointed himself to do whatever he told them to do, had voted in December 2025 to authorize a name change of the Kennedy memorial. The White House announced the Board vote to change the name and the next day on December 19, 2025, workers altered its title by placing his own name over the top of John F. Kennedy’s name.
A suit was filed over the change. Eventually U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled and ordered the Trump appointed board to remove it within 14 days by June 12. They took it down on June 13 in the early morning hours, late by several hours. The removal didn’t take long but rather than take it down in daylight construction workers waited until after nightfall to put up a tarp so as to conceal its removal.
A narcissist hates public humiliation. But hundreds of DC residents thronged to the sleepy area outside of the Kennedy Center into the late night and early morning hours jeering and chanting as the name was take down. The tarp didn’t stop District residents from gloating and celebrating the Schadenfreude of the takedown.
The shame of having to remove it was too much for someone who has been taught all their life and had grown to adulthood to do something other children have been taught not to do. That is to never admit wrong doing. So he concealed the removal of his name with a giant tarp. The tarp is still in place as of August 13, 2026, three months after the court ruling to remove Trump’s name.
Judge Cooper also prohibited the Trump-appointed Board from closing down the Arts Center and cancelling events already scheduled.
But in a late breaking update the Trump appointed Kennedy Center Board has voted to add Trump’s name as a credit for renovation, and to close the arts center for 2 years to renovate it. Both of these votes go against Judge Cooper’s previous ruling. This story is not going away quietly.
But on this night the rabble-rousers succeeded in sneaking into the Arts Center complex in plain view. They drove right up to the front and acted boldly. They know they’re taking a calculated risk running their game of light shows. As of this, which is at least their 25th consecutive show, it is not doing any harm to or damaging any part of District architecture or memorials. It’s not that it is costing taxpayers anything. It’s that they are projecting light shows unexpectedly in prominent places and getting away with it. It’s that they’re doing something a ballooning authoritarian does not want them to do but hasn’t been able to stop them. And that’s what resistance is all about. It’s the kind of resistance that others see and laugh at the moment. They feel good at seeing something funny that others are doing. By resisting anyway, even though things are getting difficult they’re spreading the joy of good trouble. It’s the kind of resistance that makes others say to themselves: look at what they’re doing. I can do something like that too.
