Democratic lawmaker sues over renaming of Kennedy Center

Michael Macagnone, CQ-Roll Call on Dec 23, 2025

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WASHINGTON — A Democratic member of the House on Monday challenged in federal court the administration’s effort to rename the Kennedy Center after President Donald Trump.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the center’s board stepped outside the law when it attempted to rename the institution as the “Trump Kennedy Center” last week. The complaint asked a judge to set aside the name change and order the administration to undo signage and other changes.

Last week the board of the Kennedy Center, which Trump chairs, purported to rename the building after Trump despite a federal law setting its name as the “John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”

The change was announced by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who posted on social media that the center’s board “just voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center.” Workers subsequently added Trump’s name to the building.

Beatty’s lawsuit argued that the change violated federal law, which set the Kennedy Center’s name.

“Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress,” the lawsuit said.

The law provides the name of the center, as well as an explicit prohibition on placing any other “additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials” on the building’s grounds.

The lawsuit called the meeting renaming the center a “thinly veiled sham” and said that Beatty, an ex officio member of the center’s board, and other members, had not been allowed to speak out against the name change.

The change has garnered criticism from members of the Kennedy family, who argued that it undid a monument to the late president’s legacy.

Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the center, defended the name change as “a bipartisan space reflecting the new era” in a post on social media that also incorrectly referred to it as “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Grenell also stated that Trump had “saved” the center, but did not specify from what.

Through his second term Trump has sought to take over many Washington institutions, sometimes through dramatic means. That includes when federal officials fired private security contractors to gain access to the United States Institute of Peace.

Earlier this year Trump fired the Kennedy Center’s board, then named Grenell the center’s president and installed new board members who include White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pamela Bondi and second lady Usha Vance.