‘A Disgrace’: Dems Erupt As Kennedy Center Board Votes To Rename It ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’

Democrats and Kennedy family members raged on Thursday after President Trump’s handpicked board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center voted to rename it the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” The move is certain to draw legal challenges centering on the fact that the center’s current name is set by statute. For now, however, we can sit back and watch the fireworks exploding all along the country’s left. Here’s a sampling: 

• “It’s a disgrace,” seethed House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
• “If he defaces the place with his name, we will spackle it over,” fumed Washington Rep. Rick Larsen.”Congress named the Kennedy Center to honor the slain President… Nothing Trump does will change it.”
• “It is beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy,” railed JFK’s niece Maria Shriver. “This is not dignified. This is not funny.” 

“I was honored by it,” Trump told reporters after the news broke. “The board is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country, and I was surprised by it. I was honored by it.” Despite his expression of surprise, Trump himself has previously engaged in his own half-joking rebranding of the venue: 

In February, Trump maneuvered himself into the chairmanship of the Kennedy Center board, ousting Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein. Trump fired board members and filled vacancies with allies like Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles, the wife of the Commerce secretary, and the wife of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. They voted Trump in, while giving the boot to Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter and tapping Ric Grennell as her replacement. Grenell’s most noteworthy experience in managing theater was his service as acting Director of National Intelligence.

The statute that created the center states that it will be “designated as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.” It includes no explicit provision delegating to the board of trustees the authority to rename it. “The Kennedy Center Board has no authority to actually rename the Kennedy Center in the absence of legislative action, and we’re going to make that clear,” said Jeffries on Thursday. He noted the issue wouldn’t be his top priority, stressing that the restoration of Affordable Care Act tax credits ranks higher.   

More than just a named venue, the building was designated to serve as the sole national memorial — a living memorial — to Kennedy, in lieu of something like the temple that is the Lincoln Memorial. “We never considered or were permitted to name any part of the building for another human being because it was the official memorial for President Kennedy,” former Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser told the New York Times. Similarly, Joe Kennedy III, grandson of JFK’s brother Robert, said, “It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says.”

LBJ breaks ground for JFK’s national memorial– John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts–December 1964, a year after the assassination (RFK in rear): pic.twitter.com/TGM1fD8FP6

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) December 18, 2025

The Kennedy Center board includes various ex officio members — people who serve by virtue of their offices — including Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, who said she was shocked as fellow board member and Trump crony Sergio Gor made the proposal. “It was such a surprise to me when they said we’re going to rename it,” she told the Times. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh,’ and pushed my button. But then I was muted.” Separately, Beatty said, “As I continued to try to unmute to ask questions and voiced my opposition to this, I received a note saying that I would not be unmuted.”

Kennedy Center PR VP Roma Daravi disputed Beatty’s account. “The entire board was invited to attend in person and the privilege of listening in on the meeting was granted to all members, even those without a vote, such as ex-officio member Joyce Beatty,” she said. 

The ascendancy of Trump and his allies at the Kennedy Center prompted a wave of cancellations by artists themselves, as well as resignations of people associated with the venue. In a bizarre March incident, a woke leftist and former program director at the Kennedy Center’s Opera Institute was fired after bizarrely stripping down in a 35-minute video posted on YouTube and X, during which he ranted against President Trump’s takeover. 

To its credit, the new Trump-led JFK Center has scrubbed drag shows and other degenerate programming from the schedule. In February, leftists gasped as a gay men’s chorus performance was yanked off. With the National Symphony Orchestra, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC was set to put on a show called “A Peacock Among Pigeons: Celebrating 50 Years of Pride.” Timed for late May, the show was meant to kick off Pride month. It was replaced by the Wizard of Oz.

Of course, all these political theatrics on the DC stage are just one act in the dark comedy of an American empire in accelerating decline — an empire hurtling toward insolvency, losing its morality and social cohesiveness, and subordinating its interests to those of foreign powers.