“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” That question posed by Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet seems to now occupy much of Washington. Last night at a Christmas party with many media from Washington, the question was put to me more succinctly and repeatedly as “can they do that?” The “that” was the renaming of the Kennedy Center as the Trump-Kennedy Center. Soon courts may have to face this quintessentially Shakespearean question “for never was a story of more woe.”
As a threshold matter, I will address the legal rather than policy basis for the change. Many of us chafed at the renaming of the Center, which was a memorial to an assassinated president. However, what people want to know is whether the change can be challenged. The answer is yes, but it will not necessarily be easy or certain in its outcome.
The Center was originally built as the National Cultural Center in a 1958 law. It was renamed the John F. Kennedy Center by an act of Congress in 1964 as a living memorial.
The key issue is how that designation was made. It was contained in a statute passed by Congress. Titled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 20 U.S.C. 3, states that “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.”
There are exceptions in sections 2 and 3 of the provision:
(2) Paragraph (1) of this subsection shall not apply to—
(A) any plaque acknowledging a gift from a foreign country;
(B) any plaque on a theater chair or a theater box acknowledging the gift of such chair or box; and
(C) any inscription on the marble walls in the north or south galleries, the Hall of States, or the Hall of Nations acknowledging a major contribution;
…
(3) For purposes of this subsection, testimonials and benefit performances shall not be construed to be memorials.
The language supports a congressional intent to insulate the memorial from any changes or dilutions. The specificity of the exceptions to plaques for donors suggests that other major changes, such as a name change, are barred under federal law. Moreover, the Center is named by an act of Congress. It is hard to find any authority of the board that would undo or delegate that power.
There is a legitimate question whether a name change is an “additional memorial or plaque,” but it would seem to be so. If a simple plaque to donors had to be expressly exempted, giant letters dedicating the Center to an additional person would seem to fall within the congressional intent.
Still, the Trump Administration could quote the servant Sampson from Romeo and Juliet and tell a court to “take it in what sense thou wilt” but the statute does not expressly say that name changes are a memorial.
Challengers could argue that, under the board’s interpretation, any memorial established by Congress, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Kennedy Presidential Library, could be renamed or hyphenated.
If a court agrees that the statute reflects a clear congressional intent to bar any change to the memorial, the question is how it can be challenged.
Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and sister of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced that.
Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!
I would not recommend that approach. Most attorneys strive to keep their clients from falling from great heights.
The question is who has standing to challenge the change. Are Kennedy family members injured in a concrete way to satisfy standing? Associational standing from historical preservation groups can be tricky. However, some may soon test those waters.
The most obvious way to address the issue is for Congress to be heard. It can either ratify the board decision or it could expressly declare the change to be invalid and clarify that “additional memorial” encompasses any name change. Either resolution may prove difficult with the heavily divided Congress. Soon a judge may join Romeo in his lament: “O teach me how I should forget to think!”
In any legal challenge, the advantage would likely rest with the challengers if they can meet the standing requirements. Otherwise, the name could remain by default … or until another Administration decides to make another change to the Center previously known as the Kennedy Center.
Of course, today Juliet might resolve the naming problem in a similar fashion with a hyphenated marital name of Juliet Capulet-Montague, though it clearly would have gone over as poorly as the Trump-Kennedy name. It clearly does not smell as sweet to many.
I expect both court and congressional action to follow. Absent a quick resolution by Congress (which seems unlikely), this could result in years of litigation.
However, both sides might be wise to heed Shakespeare’s warning in another play that “where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.”
N.B.: This column also ran on Fox.com
*. Part of this refurbishing renovation are medals awarded. The medal has a redesign and now a blue ribbon.
I wondered about the rainbow ribbons before the change. I thought the awardees chose their ribbon and were all gay or lesbianism. I was surprised by it. Now I see there wasn’t a choice.
That’s a good change.
Anonymous says, December 21, 2025 at 10:32 AM: The Abraham Accords included refitting the Kennedy Center? …In other words, it did nothing.
Well, if you want to lead everybody off-topic, I’ll offer them something off topic that’s actually factual:
Ex-FBI agent says DOJ has ‘slam dunk’ conspiracy case against Obama’s feds for election meddling
https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/slam-dunk-ex-fbi-agent-says-bondi-has-clear-weaponization
Gilliam’s comments came the same week that Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced she believes there’s enough evidence to pursue a conspiracy case alleging the federal agents and state prosecutors conspired to infringe the civil liberties of Trump and his MAGA followers
“It’s the same cast of characters every time.” Gilliam said. “We had a tremendous amount of evidence that they were trying to create evidence and falsify evidence to go after Trump. Now we see that they’re trying to stop investigations and get rid of real evidence for the purpose of protecting the Clintons.
“I think this really does lead to bigger charges such as conspiracy to overthrow an election, I would say, potentially treason, if you could put that in there, but definitely sedition,” he added.
“This is a group of people that continue to come up in one case of building cases against Trump, falsifying information. But now it shows that the same people were conspiring to do a second overall crime, or second conspiracy to protect the political candidate that they agree with,” he said.
“I mean, honestly, if this was a mafia case, and we had this clear-cut of an example of a group of people committing two or more crimes for the furtherance of their political group or their enterprise. This would be a slam dunk case for any US Attorney. So I think this is something that they should look at,” Gilliam continued.
“This is years of individuals working their way up and getting together or being pulled up and put together so that they could conspire to stop one individual from becoming president and push the other person forward,” he added.
*. Harmeet should cast a wider net to include members of the judiciary and congress. Minnesota as kleptocracy is being worked up currently. That’s good.
Just hate. I didn’t see any of the “outraged” people do anything about the Kennedy center dump status. If they are so concerned about this building why hadn’t they sought donations for the repairs it needed? Hypocrites all of them, selective outrage.
People don’t go to the Kennedy center to enjoy the carpet.
Now they won’t go because no self-respecting performing artist will book a performance there. Kid Rock now has a shot at a 3 year residency there, playing to crowds in the dozens.
Back in May of this year, one day in the news: Donald Trump is backing a massive $257 million federal funding package for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, more than six times its typical annual support. The proposed budget includes $242 million for capital repairs and restoration, along with $7.7 million for maintenance and security and $7.2 million for administrative expenses.
While the Trump administration insists the investment reflects the president’s deep appreciation for the arts, the proposal has raised eyebrows across the aisle. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME), a longtime advocate for the arts and ranking member of the House subcommittee overseeing the NEA, called the Kennedy Center funding “exorbitant.” She sent a letter to Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell demanding a breakdown of how the funds would be used. Notice the dismissive “Donald Trump”, not President Trump, of course.
For almost all Americans outside of the nexus of Washington DC, that announcement of the massive repair and renovation would have been lucky to be a blip in their consciousness for perhaps 10 seconds at best, and then it was gone. That’s the level of national significance the Kennedy Center has in America today.
The Washington DC crowd described here as “the regular crowd of ticket purchasers” couldn’t even bring themselves to mutter a single word of thanks they would get new seats to plop their fat cat asses in. One Democrat Congresswoman did demand looking into the gift horse’s mouth.
Kerry Kennedy (the harpy now shrilling her rage that Trump’s name would be on the building beside hers) made a point of not being available for interviews as to whether she was thankful Trump was cleaning up what was becoming a dump with her surname attached to it. At the same time, Kerry Kennedy was eager to rush to the microphones to blast her outrage that her brother would allow the Kennedy name to appear within the Trump administration as HHS Secretary. There’s consistency for you alongside Democrat family values!
The overwhelming majority of Americans will never even see the outside of the Kennedy Center, even as a tourist. Never mind actually purchase a ticket to attend a single event, much less be one of what was just described as “the regular crowd of ticket purchasers”.
They simply don’t care – unless the Democrats and the Democrat-Mainstream Media Propaganda Complex pops up to tell them they should care, and The Evil Orange Man Bad changed the name! Without a word of mention of the quarter billion dollars Trump provided earlier this year to renovate, repair and clean up what was becoming the Kennedy Dump.
Go outside of Washington DC and its local environs to small cities and towns across America and do a survey of simply asking “where is the Kennedy Center and what do they do there”?
Or if you want what should be a favorable audience, go do that survey with the young black adults of Chicago. Or another favorable audience – the Obama/Biden criminal Illegal Aliens they imported into America to enrich our culture.
The manufactured halo of JFK and the Camelot the media wove for him (while at the same time concealing his immorality in the White House that gave a later President Clinton great ideas of his own) is disappearing.
Not just because we’re now allowed to know the side of JFK’s presidency that was hidden before. But more likely because the myth that was JFK and Camelot has now become as irrelevant in today’s American minds as Eisenhower before him. If we didn’t have JFK conspiracy theories, it would have been gone long before now.
So now the Democrats and Media are leading a national discussion of outrage.
I would prefer if Trump nixed the idea of changing the name. I would be delighted if he instead said “my bad” – and promptly withdrew all the funding not yet spent on the renovations to go along with that because the Democrats didn’t want their edifice altered in any way from what it was when Trump took office. Then let the Democrats, Media, and Kerry Kennedy sort that out.
The Democrat-Mainstream Media Propaganda Complex manufactured hypocritical reaction is just as ugly as what had become the Kennedy Dump.
Rattle-can gold paint is not “renovation” or “repair.” Calling for a budget before planning has occurred is a sign of someone looking to divert that money to other projects. At this point I would not be surprised if he sold the property to his own holding company for $1, bulldozed it, and built a new Trump Casino and Hotel with the money he has allocated to the project and then walk away from it half-finished like everything he touches.