President Donald Trump’s allies are engaged in “childish” and “breathtaking” defiance in the wake of a court order to remove his name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

That’s what Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, who successfully sued to get Trump’s name off the center, said in a new filing to the judge who demanded answers about why a tarp and scaffolding were still covering the building’s façade after Trump’s name was removed.

“It has become clear that Defendants are maintaining scaffolding and a tarp to cover the Kennedy Center’s façade to frustrate the intent of the Court’s order that the Center be returned to a memorial exclusively honoring President Kennedy,” Beatty said in the joint status report, which gives her and the board’s respective positions to the federal judge overseeing the litigation, Obama appointee Christopher Cooper.

Beatty, who serves the board “ex officio” through her position in Congress, said the official explanation makes “no sense” and appeared to be “pretextual.”

The Trump-backed position is that the tarp and scaffolding are needed for water testing and structural repairs to the roof overhang of the center’s front portico.

“Final removal of the scaffolding and its barrier is contingent upon the scope of any repairs required at present to the marble facade, as well as any other necessary repairs,” the board said in its section of the status report.

Yet Beatty called the structure “an obvious effort to obstruct a return to the pre-litigation status quo.” She said Kennedy’s name should “once again be visible on the façade and Defendants’ childish refusal to accept this Court’s ruling to that effect should end now.”

She also called the board’s recent vote to add Trump’s name back to the façade and Kennedy Center grounds “deeply concerning.” She said the move shows the board seems “intent on defying” Cooper’s prior order to remove Trump’s name.

The board voted to add an inscription reading “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” below the name of the center. The board also voted to inscribe “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund” as a third line when the endowment of that fund reaches $100 million, and it voted to name the physical site the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

Beatty called the renaming resolution “a breathtaking act of defiance” that ignores Cooper’s prior ruling, which noted that the law establishing the center says that “no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” While there are exceptions to that rule, Beatty said none of them apply here and that the board is “once again” trying to memorialize Trump despite the law.

The congresswoman also complained about a board vote to shut the center down for two years based on what she called “a vague, two-page PowerPoint provided to the Board just two days before the meeting.” She said the process “mirrors Defendants’ previous rush to rubberstamp President Trump’s February 1 announcement that led this Court to enjoin the shutdown the first time.”

She urged Cooper to order the board to explain why the tarp shouldn’t be removed. She also asked for “much needed discovery into the shutdown decision” and for the judge to “immediately” order litigation regarding what she called the board’s “efforts to defy this Court’s decision and once again erect a memorial to President Trump.”

Beatty wants a ruling by Sept. 8 before the latest changes can take effect. She said the board would only commit to not effectuating the resolution until then.

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