White House says Kennedy Centre will be renamed after Trump. But there's a catch

White House on Thursday announced that the board of the US Kennedy Centre has unanimously decided to rename the performing arts centre as the “Trump-Kennedy Centre”. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to confirm the news. She noted that the changes were being made due to “the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building.

Leavitt went on to congratulate US President Donald Trump and insisted that “this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur. However, the name change met with backlash and controversies, particularly in Washington, D.C., where the centre had been an iconic landmark since the day it was constructed.

While speaking on the matter at the Oval Office, Trump said that he was “surprised” and “honoured” by the change in the name. Interestingly, earlier this month, Trump appeared to hint at the possibility by joking about a name change at the annual presentation of the Kennedy Centre Honours.

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How it could have happened

Shortly after assuming the office, Trump fired all the board members of the centre and replaced them with his allies. The new board then voted to make Trump the chairman of the centre. Meanwhile, the American leader’s close adviser Richard Grenell became board president.

It is pertinent to note that US Attorney General Pam Bondi, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Second Lady Usha Vance, as well as a number of other administration officials and political allies, are also currently on the board. Not only this, but the Trump administration also managed to secure a $257 million in congressional funding to pay for major renovations and other costs at the venue, which recently held the FIFA World Cup draw.

“We saved it,” Trump said of the centre on Thursday. “It was really in bad shape, physically.” However, while Leavitt and Trump both claimed that the decision on the matter was taken “unanimously”, at least one board member has disputed that.

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“This was not unanimous,” said Ohio Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, one of the board’s members. “I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move.” Meanwhile, Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, a Trump critic currently running for Congress, said on X that the “microphones were muted” and the board’s “vote NOT unanimous”.

Other members of the illustrious Kennedy family have also slammed the name change. Joe Kennedy III, a former House member and grandnephew of the late president, posted on X that “the Kennedy Centre is a living memorial to a fallen president and named for President Kennedy by federal law”. “It can no sooner be renamed than can someone rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” he added.

In the midst of this, US lawmakers and legal experts noted that since the centre was named in a 1964 law, Congress must vote to make the name change official. A measure to officially call the centre’s opera venue the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House, for example, was introduced as part of a spending bill this summer. The bill has not yet come up for a vote.

However, Congressional voting does not prevent the centre from changing its name on its website or tickets, and potentially on the exterior of the building itself.