Can part of the Kennedy Center be renamed for the Trumps? How about all of it?
The short answer: It depends on who is doing the renaming.
House Republicans raised a question last week when they advanced an amendment to a spending bill that would change the name of the Kennedy Center’s Opera House to the “First Lady Melania Trump Opera House.”
Who has the power to rename part of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – or all of it?
Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of the center’s namesake, doesn’t think anyone can.
He posted on Instagram a screenshot from Grok, the AI chatbot integrated with X, which read: “No, Trump cannot unilaterally rename the Kennedy Center’s Opera House after Melania Trump. A Republican-led House panel advanced such a proposal in a spending bill, but JFK’s grandson Jack Schlossberg argues it violates federal law (Public Law 88-260), which bans additional memorials in the Center. If passed, it could face legal challenges.”
The federal statute to which he refers says that “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.”
House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee, though, are not the board of trustees. “This is an excellent way to recognize [Melania Trump’s] support and commitment to promoting the arts,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), whose amendment to a spending bill passed by a vote of 33-25 last Tuesday and should eventually make its way to the House floor.
Then, in a further twist on Wednesday, another Republican House member introduced a separate bill that would rename the entire Kennedy Center after President Donald Trump.
So, can they?
The key fact, according to David Super, a Georgetown law professor, is who is doing the renaming. The Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, which makes most of the major decisions regarding the organization and of which Trump is chair, does not have the power to change the name of any part of the center, nor to create any new memorials, in accordance with the aforementioned statute. (The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request for comment.)
“Under current law, there I think is very little question that the Kennedy Center board cannot rename the Opera House after Melania Trump or pretty much anybody else and would need Congress’s permission for anything like that,” Super said. “… That statute is pretty unequivocal, and I can’t really find any loopholes in it that would allow this to happen. So I assume that’s why they’re pushing legislation rather than sending letters to the board or whatever.”
But the board isn’t the one trying to change anything. House Republicans are.
“If they can pass that legislation, then they can do it,” Super said.
Of course, Super said, that “would need 60 votes in the U.S. Senate, and I would be shocked if they could find seven Democratic senators that would vote to name an opera house after the wife of someone who has been cutting arts funding.” Which might be one reason the proposed change is part of an amendment on a spending bill.
Then there’s the second proposal.
A semiserious joke has circulated among the Kennedy Center’s staff since Trump took it over in February: How long will it take for it to become the Trump Center?
At least one House Republican isn’t content to start small with a mere opera house.
Rep. Bob Onder (R-Missouri) last week introduced a bill that he calls the Make Entertainment Great Again Act, or Mega Act, which would designate the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts the “Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.”
“I cannot think of a more ubiquitous symbol of American exceptionalism in the arts, entertainment, and popular culture at large than President Trump!” Onder wrote on X. Though Trump did not attend a performance at the center during his first presidential term, he recently hosted a fundraiser for the Kennedy Center during a performance of “Les Misérables” there. He has appointed a confidant, Richard Grenell, as president and tasked him with overhauling its operations.
“This is insane,” Maria Shriver, a niece of Kennedy, wrote on X about the proposal. “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?”
“It’s not just a theater in Washington,” Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee and voted against the Opera House amendment, told The Washington Post. “It was built as a monument to JFK, who was a strong believer in the arts.” Renaming it, she suggested, would be akin to renaming the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial.
Legal or not, Super finds the idea of renaming part of the Kennedy Center after a living person to be odd.
“The notion of naming anything about any public institution after a living person is very unusual in America,” he said. “It’s familiar in Russia, in North Korea, in some other countries, but it’s not the way we do things here.”
And, legal or not, Pingree wonders whether Trump will just do it anyway.
“I don’t put it past the president, who doesn’t seem to follow law or convention, to just put a sign up on the Opera House and rename it,” she said.
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