Kennedy Center board votes to rename ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’
The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has voted to rename the storied arts institution the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X on Thursday afternoon.
The Kennedy Center confirmed the vote in an email to the Washington Post. It was unclear whether such a change is legal.
“The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted unanimously today to name the institution The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” wrote Roma Daravi, the center’s vice president of public relations.
The apparent change comes after months of President Donald Trump repeatedly joking about it, including at the Kennedy Center Honors earlier this month. It follows a year of upheaval at the center, after Trump overhauled the institution in February, sparking a wave of firings and resignations. Trump is chairman of the Kennedy Center board. Ticket sales have fallen sharply in the center’s three largest venues, according to an October Post analysis.
In her social media post, Leavitt congratulated the president, calling the move the result of “the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation.”
“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur,” she added.Officials did not immediately cite an authority for the board’s ability to change the institution’s name.
Earlier this year, after House Republicans 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,” David Super, a Georgetown law professor, told The Post that such a name change would require Congress’s permission. “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.”