The board of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts has voted to rename the institution after President Donald J. Trump, according to an X post by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future!” wrote Leavitt.
It’s not clear whether changing the center’s name is legal without congressional support. As The Washington Post previously reported, the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees do not have the power to switch the name of any part of the center, nor to create any new memorials, in accordance with a federal statute (Public Law 88-260), which reads “the Board shall assure that after December 2, 1983, 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.”
In February, Trump appointed himself the new chairman of the venerated Washington, D.C. venue, often referred to as the Kennedy Center, and replaced its historically bipartisan board with all Republicans, including second lady Usha Vance, Fox News host Laura Ingraham, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, U.S. attorney general Pamela Bondi, and “God Bless the U.S.A.” songwriter Lee Greenwood, among others. Trump also fired then-president Deborah F. Rutler and installed former ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell as interim executive director in her place.
Shortly afterwards, musician Yasmin Williams emailed Grenell to ask what changes, if any, would take place at the Kennedy Center under his role. Their “shocking” email exchange later went viral due to Grenell’s hostile language, disrespectful tone, and unfounded accusations. “It’s sad what’s happening now because I never thought of the Kennedy Center as a political place,” Williams said in an interview with Pitchfork. “It’s just a place to see art. I just thought of it as a place that’s accepting of everyone, where politics don’t matter once you step through the door, but that’s clearly not the case anymore.”
This summer, legislation was introduced in Congress to rebrand the Kennedy Center as the Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts. Maria Shriver, a niece of the late President Kennedy, called the legislation “insane,” adding: “It makes my blood boil. It’s so ridiculous, so petty, so small minded. Truly, what is this about? It’s always about something. ‘Let’s get rid of the Rose Garden. Let’s rename the Kennedy Center.’ What’s next?”
During his first term, Trump did not attend the 2017, 2018, or 2019 Kennedy Center Honors, thus becoming the first sitting president in history to skip the ceremony in back-to-back years. At the start of 2025, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he never watched any Kennedy Center performances at all: “There was nothing I wanted to see.”
