The Trump DOJ Is Running Out of Ways to Humiliate Itself In Public

Another week, another argument from your federal government that would be kind of embarrassing if a high school sophomore tried to make it.

Jay Willis Aug 27

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For some time now, I have been tracking the Justice Department’s alarmingly rapid transformation from one of the legal profession’s most prestigious employers into a clubhouse for semiliterate dunces whose primary qualification for the job is a willingness to sign their names to legal filings that resemble lightly edited Truth Social posts. This week’s addition to the canon comes in the course of President Donald Trump’s relentless pursuit of what is somehow among the highest-priority items on his second-term policy agenda: slapping his name on the Kennedy Center before his time in office runs out.

The legal fight began back in December 2025, when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees first tried to shoehorn the words “THE DONALD J. TRUMP AND” above existing Kennedy Center signage. A federal court ordered the removal of Trump’s name in June, but the board remains committed to fulfilling the president’s wishes. Its latest proposal would append a “RENOVATED AND RESTORED BY PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP” inscription to the side of the building, beneath the Kennedy Center signage this time around. The board also wants to name the grounds on which the Kennedy Center sits the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” like an enterprising NFL team selling a secondary set of stadium naming rights to whichever corporate behemoth is desperate enough to pay for it.

In a new court filing, the Trump Justice Department is warning about what might happen if its client does not get his way: According to Brantley T. Mayers, a lawyer in the Civil Division, prospective donors will not open their wallets unless the renovation plans include “prominent recognition” of Trump’s involvement. And without those renovations, Brantley says, the “dilapidated” and “crumbling” Kennedy Center will “deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure,” and may even have to be “taken down” in order to avoid “collapse or calamity.” In other words, the Justice Department’s official position is that without the addition of an (apparently load-bearing) “RENOVATED AND RESTORED” inscription, the Kennedy Center will be at risk of falling down and killing everyone inside.

“The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal,” Brantley writes. “The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.” (All weird comma placements in original.)

It is true that like most government buildings that opened in the early 1970s, the Kennedy Center could probably use some work. But I want to stress here that Brantley’s filing is far more concerned with the president’s preferred naming conventions and the downstream consequences of failing to implement them. Asides that tout Trump’s “unrivaled expertise and experience in real estate and construction” and assert that “nobody had any idea” what the name of a recent Kennedy Center addition “even meant” sound like the work product of a lawyer who understands that his job is to focus on whatever his client yells loudest about.

Perhaps the brief’s silliest section comes when Brantley threatens the Kennedy Center in the time-honored manner of clumsy, low-level henchmen in Mafia movies. “There are many conflicts of interest having to do with the Kennedy Center,” he writes. “It would be a shame if those conflicts of interest would destroy the very thing that we are all trying to save.”

Setting aside the noxiousness of holding the Kennedy Center hostage over a petty dispute about branding, I am in awe of Brantley’s use of the “conflicts of interest” term of art—a relevant concept in many Trump-adjacent contexts, to be sure—to refer to the fact that the parties in this case have different real-world goals. If you are the law professor who taught Brantley’s professional responsibility course, this is a tough way to learn that you are not getting through.

All of this would be really funny if it were not so grim: the agency responsible for the enforcement of federal law spending its time and resources arguing that unless an addled octogenarian sees his name in as many places as he would like, a controlled demolition of the Kennedy Center might be necessary to prevent it from disintegrating into the Potomac River. If you are a law student or lawyer who aspires to work at the Justice Department someday, my advice is to find something else to do for a few years. The federal government will still be there. Don’t humiliate yourself by associating with this version of it.

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