WASHINGTON, June 13 -- It came down in the dark. A little after three on Saturday morning, crews climbed scaffolding outside the Kennedy Center and began prising the letters of Donald Trump's name off the front of the building, hours after a federal deadline to remove them and a day after the courts told the president he could not simply rename a national landmark after himself.

The removal followed a ruling by US District Judge Christopher Cooper, who found in late May that Trump's name had been illegally added to the center. The institution's board, now controlled by the president's appointees, appealed and asked the courts to pause the order, but on Friday a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals refuse...