“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
You’re going to see a different Trump Administration taking shape after the Primary Election Day(s) of 2026
FEC Schedule:
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2026pdates.pdf
And a concrete Trump Administration form after the Mid-Term Election Day Tue, Nov 3, 2026.
https://organizations.ballotready.org/2026-election-calendar
The President’s full demeanor will be unleashed as the Lame Duck takes his last flight.
Petty issues such as the Trump-Kennedy Center will be but a tiny crumb of contention.
The Trump Presidency will leave the mark of his brand in the annals of American History.
The funniest thing is how triggered the leftwing fascists get by Trump. These are the same intolerant national socialists who pulled down statues and threw them in rivers or destroyed them on the ground, and tore down school, military base, and place names that didn’t comport with their current sense of right and wrong. Jefferson. Washington. Lincoln. Roosevelt. All got erased from fascist history because they weren’t woke enough for today’s extreme fascist standards. Removing Trump’s name from the Trump Kennedy Center would simply be one more effort to censor history, something Kerry Kennedy is quite familiar with. If Kerry Kennedy had actually defended keeping original names and statues, she would have a bit of moral authority. She was silent. So she has no authority to speak on the subject.
Good point
President Epstein has to smear his stupid name on everything the same way a chimp throws his feces. Swamp graffiti.
Oh, and Magats have TDS.
I’m laughing… What are you going to do , if he runs again…..
, David Koch who had donated 100 mill to the renovation of the New York State Theater of Lincoln Center got the name changed to the Koch Theater. All of us who have performed there still call it State theater and no one I know will ever refer to it as the Koch theater. Once when I attended a gala there David Koch walked up to our table and announced, “This is MY theater. I OWN this theater”. I turned to my host and asked who actually owned the theater. He said “the people of the city of New York”. I do not see why any Americans should bow down to the demands of wealthy narcissists. Trump is way out of line here. I hope Congress steps in pronto.
Anonymous is trying to climb the leg of David Koch, but got caught between the sole and what a dog left behind. He must feel at home.
And PS – all statues of Confederate generals and the Founding Fathers should be reinstalled immediately. Our heritage is sacred.
It’s not as if Democrats haven’t set a precedent for this. In the state of Virginia, the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Ave. was a gift to the state of Va., and the law said the statue belonged to the people of Virginia – which, to me, means that any removal would have to be voted on by those people. And certainly there are still Lee family members living in Virginia. But the Democratic governor of Virginia believed he could remove the state himself, and so he did, and no one had standing to sue, not the Lee family or the citizens of Virginia or even the citizens who lived on Monument Avenue and saw their property values plummet as a result of the removal of all of the statues (the street itself was on the National Historic Register, but that meant nothing, in the end).
Robert E. Lee was a treasonous traitor. There is no justification for a statue of him anywhere.
Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as follows:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Robert E. Lee levied war against the United States.
By any measure he is a traitor, who clearly committed treason.
JFK had sex with a Mafioso’s mistress — in the White House. JFK got us into the pointless quagmire of Vietnam. Why would we ever honor such a president? Might as well have the Nixon Performing Arts Center.
And if Lee was a rraitor, so was Washington. The rebel states declared their independence just as Washington and Jefferson had,done. The North occupied,no moral high ground, as all but one colony permitted slavery in 1776, as did the entire British Empire — even Canada.
“JFK got us into the pointless quagmire of Vietnam”
I have to give you a “meh” on that one. We already had “military advisors” operating in Southeast Asia (particularly Laos) during Eisenhower’s administration (self-exonerating farewell address vilifying the “Military Industrial Complex” notwithstanding). JFK evidently did see what a disaster our continued Viet Nam involvement was going to be and there is some evidence that he intended to get us out. Maybe that was part of the reason for his assassination (for the other reasons you would need to reincarnate and interrogate Meyer Lansky). Johnson, on the other hand, renewed our commitment and escalated. If anyone deserves the “credit” for the debacle that was Viet Nam, imo it would be LBJ.
Robert E. Lee was a treasonous traitor. There is no justification for a statue of him anywhere.
Damn, we got us an Antifa communist here! The only symbols of America and its history, whether good or bad, which will be allowed will be the ones approved of by the Politburo Central Committee who are charged with deciding which events, names, etc in history will be retained to shape that carefully pruned new version of history.
All will events, all human figures – all will be binary: either approved as good or censored as bad. The bad has to be excised so the population forgets it ever existed.
Same high moral values that led to Biden’s earlier Central Committee renaming multiple military bases like Fort Bragg, home of America’s airborne forces.
When you write idiotic malarkey, you might cite the Constitution.
Robert E. Lee and the CSA peacefully availed themselves of not-prohibited and fully constitutional secession and distinctly did not conduct rebellion or insurrection.
Multiple states made mention of their intent to return to sovereign pre-U.S. status if their “happiness” was not achieved in the “union” when they drafted their constitutional ratification documents.
It was the tyrannical dictator, “Crazy Abe” Lincoln, who egregiously violated the Constitution repeatedly with an iron fist used against once-free Americans because he refused to adhere to duly legislated statutory law in the U.S. and endeavor to change that law through the legal process.
Ironically, it was Lincoln who admitted as much when he stated, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
– Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838
What President Trump ought to do is respectfully decline the honor of having his name hyphenated onto the Kennedy Center, out of respect for the fact that the Center was built to be a “living memorial to John Fitzgerald Kennedy”. But Trump has no class, as even he would probably admit, so he won’t be taking the high road.
Reading the Act (20 USC 3) which governs the Center was certainly clarifying, thanks for linking to it. I don’t think Trump is going to win the inevitable lawsuit(s), adding his name certainly “memorializes” him, and goes against both the spirit and letter of the law.
JFK also cheated on his wife and NONE of you said zip.
JFK, Monster
By Timothy Noah“I knew that John F. Kennedy was a compulsive, even pathological adulterer, given to taking outlandish risks after he entered the White House. I knew he treated women like whores. And I knew he had more than a few issues with his father about toughness and manliness and all that. But before I read in the newspaper that Mimi Alford’s just-released memoir, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy And Its Aftermath, described giving Dave Powers a blow job at JFK’s request and in his presence, I didn’t know that Kennedy had an appetite for subjecting those close to him to extreme humiliation.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How President Kennedy Seduced a White House Intern — Inside the Bedroom He Shared with Jackie
Mimi Alford was all of 19 when she began working in the White House press office, where she caught the eye of President John F. Kennedy
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This part of Alford’s story doesn’t really add anything to what we already know about Kennedy. Nor does it really change my opinion of the 35th president. But this part does:
Dave Powers was sitting poolside while the President and I swam lazy circles around each other, splashing playfully. Dave had removed his jacket and loosened his tie in the warm air of the pool, but he was otherwise fully clothed. He was sitting on a towel, with his pants leg rolled up, and his bare feet dangling in the water.
The President swam over and whispered in my ear. “Mr. Powers looks a little tense,” he said. “Would you take care of it?”
It was a dare, but I knew exactly what he meant. This was a challenge to give Dave Powers oral sex. I don’t think the President thought I’d do it, but I’m ashamed to say that I did. It was a pathetic, sordid, scene, and is very hard for me to think about today. Dave was jolly and obedient as I stood in the shallow end of the pool and performed my duties. The President silently watched.
Afterwards, Alford says she was “deeply embarrassed,” and as she climbed out of the pool she “could hear Dave speak in as stern a tone as I ever heard him use with his boss. ‘You shouldn’t have made her do that,’ Dave said. ‘I know, I know,’ I heard the President say. Later, a chastened President Kennedy apologized to us both.” Alford believes that Kennedy showed “his darker side … when we were among men he knew. That’s when he felt a need to display his power over me.” Kennedy didn’t just have a thing for Social Register girls; he had a thing for humiliating Social Register girls. He also had a thing for humiliating his fellow Irishman, Dave Powers.
The word is that Zohran Mamdani the new mayor of New York City struck a deal with President Donald Trump to rename the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING to the TRUMP EMPIRE BUILDING. Could be true as he’s also looking to turn it into his Presidential Library.
I don’t think the French will let him rename the Eiffel Tower as Trump Tower, since it is already taken (by Trump). But there are a number of Bridges available.
The Golden Gate Bridge could easily be renames the Trump Gateway Bridge. I digress …
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” -Juliet ~ Romeo and Juliet- Shakespeare
(Roses a thorny bush that blooms whom stem prickles Democrats)
Rose bushes often explore the duality of beauty and pain, struggle and strength, using the rose’s sharp thorns to represent life’s hardships that make its delicate blooms (beauty, love, joy) meaningful and cherished. They highlight how the thorns protect the flower, symbolizing inner resilience and the idea that true appreciation of beauty requires understanding the difficulties that shaped it. All very much Donald J. Trump.
MADMAN Y
Were the Left this upset when the Cape was changed from Cape Kennedy back to Cape Canaveral? Which incidentally, AI tells me means sugarcane plantation; oh my! A truly racist word, and must be changed immediately..lest someone be offended..
The trouble for Republicans is that while Trump is doing much good, he is in danger of making a caricature of himself and when someone becomes a joke, they are doomed.
“The trouble for Republicans is that while Trump is doing much good, he is in danger of making a caricature of himself and when someone becomes a joke, they are doomed.”
That may be a valid general assumption, but it appears that Trump might be an exception. To me, even though I voted for him in 2024 as the least bad alternative, he was already substantially a self-made caricature coming in to office. Yet he has made a tremendous number of accomplishments (many or most of which I agree with) in less than one year in office. Could it be that he is intentionally exploiting the cartoonish aspect of his personality as a distraction while he and his staff adroitly engineer the changes he has made? Although if your point is that he is making trouble for *other* Republicans standing for office, you may have a point. On that score, we can only hope that the economy continues to outperform predictions of the pundit class and the expectations of the public through the midterms.
That may be a valid general assumption, but it appears that Trump might be an exception.
I would disagree with that. From a purely political standpoint: does Trump going along with this name change improve Republican election chances eleven months from now?
Trump’s base is already locked in; they will definitely show up and they will definitely vote Republican to support Trump. He doesn’t need to put any effort into appealing to them to have them show up.
To maintain even the sliver of control Republicans have in the House, no matter how feeble it is, requires Trump who is not on the ballot at the very least be as minimally offensive as possible to the independents and undecided voters who voted for him in 2024 – and many held their noses while doing so.
Trump has gotten a lot done early in his second term, but American voters are a fickle breed who easily forget accomplishments that removed threats they voted to have him remove. By the time we go to the polls it will be a “what have you done for me lately and what do I see you doing right now”. 2025 will be in the rear view mirror and the media will be working harder than ever to influence those undecided and independent voters with mediafare directed at tearing down Trump. All while supportive of every Democrat whose election would help Democrats regain impeachment power in the House, never mind control over all tax and spend matters that Trump might push for his last two years.
They don’t even need to convince those independent and undecided voters to change how they vote for – they just need to make them so indifferent to Trump’s term that they don’t bother showing up to vote.
For all of his accomplishments and business and in politics, and amazingly surviving Democrat felonious lawfare, Trump for some reason just can’t resist the urge to interrupt his victories to pause, pull his dick out of his pants, throw it on the ground, and then stomp on it while shooting himself in the foot. He is the master of the unforced self-inflicted political wound. A master at reading and influencing people, and yet he regularly does things like this to helpfully give the Democrat-Mainstream Media Propaganda Complex a rich source of material to ceaselessly demagogue him with.
As if he doesn’t realize they hate him with the heat of a thousand burning suns and will never in his lifetime give him a fair shake instead of doing their best to take what he says and does in any way that will help their messaging in attempts to destroy him.
So back to this name change. If Trump accepts this – does it add to the appeal of voting Republican in the mid-term elections or detract from it? Ditto the comments about Rob Reiner before his and his wife’s body’s were cold.
Influence people to both turn up and vote Republican, or instead influence them to not bother turning up or alternately turning up to vote Democrat to put a check on Trump? The political environment of America is not a carbon copy of Queens culture.
I voted for Trump three times, mostly because his opponents were either stupid (Joe and Kamala) or evil (Hillary) and also because his basic policies were in line with mine. But I truly wish he had more grown-up tendencies rather than the childish and narcissist behavior that manifests itself in things like this.
I am not pleased with the name change. That being said I am not pleased with the Kennedy family and their supporters either. Apparently they did nothing to correct the budget problems either by infusing cash, taking a lead in the programming or at least raising the issue of the demise of centralism. Trump saw the issues and took steps to correct them and it seems to be succeeding. Perhaps as a final stick in the eye, just before he leaves office he will change the name back to Kennedy and challenge the Kennedy family to keep it at the levels of fiscal stability, production for all, cleanliness and structural integrity.
This is an excellent troll by our president. It causes the opposition to circle their wagons.
I do not care what the names are on federal anything. I suspect everyone feels this way. If not, why do you care what statues and monuments some government chooses to honor? Honors from the grateful people are the only honors that matter and goverments don’t need to agree with me, but I vote against them if they do.
Monuments these days are always monumentally stupid. All humans have flaws, Trump included.
I don’t need government to tell me who the wonderful people are. I can decide for myself.
All this will do is cause the TDS addled to dig deeper and waste their strength on an idiotic battle while the war is already lost.
Violating federal law is not “trolling”. It is violating federal law. Could the next president troll MAGAs but executing them?
Violating federal law is not “trolling”. It is violating federal law.
This is your projection show for today, Biden Bolshevik Birthing Boy?
Your credibility either as to whether you have the intellect to understand federal law, or offer opinions on whether conduct is criminal, dies on the mountain serial felonies committed by Obama and his administration with their fictional and felonious “Trump-Russia Dossier. No violations of federal law with two Attorney Generals and three FBI Directors repeatedly going to Judge Boasberg’s FISA courts to perjure themselves and then strip the civil rights of thousands of Americans through color of law?
Is that what you’re hoping to successfully project onto Trump – rather than take ownership of?
No violations of federal law with a Secretary of State using illegal and unsecured electronic devices and private mail servers for all those years of communication with Obama. No violations of federal law by that old Democrat favorite of Clinton, Brennan and Clapper – perjuring themselves to Congress. And certainly no violations in destroying thousands of documents subpoenaed as evidence.
Want to project that as well – rather than take ownership of it?
When there is a law, there are ways to change it.
The law was passed by a Congress, laws can be repealed. For some reason Congressmen leave the meaning of old law in the hands of judges.
Write a new law to replace the old one? Or repeal an old one altogether?
A law about the name of a concert hall? Really? That’s what congressmen think important?
This dispute isn’t really about a name; it’s a symptom of civic dysphoria rooted in a deeper national one. Sixty years ago, after JFK’s assassination, a divided country still shared enough civic identity to act through Congress and create a national memorial.
Today, even symbolic proximity between a sitting president and that institution provokes outrage, while calls for a president’s death are disturbingly normalized. That tells us we no longer agree on what the presidency or our institutions represent.
Trump didn’t create this fracture; he exposes it—and when Congress refuses to clarify the law, symbols become battlegrounds and courts fill the void.
I very much agree. Thanks Olly.
I Believe Cionnath says it well. The name change trolls the Democrats, sets off a sh—storm and then the lawyers come out and start sharpening their pens asking for more restraining orders. And the cats are going wild chasing the red dot.
I prefer another Shakespeare “Much Ado About Nothing”.
Move on to the next troll message that has the Democrats hyperventilating and starts twisting panties on The View.
Actually it make for a good theater of the absurd.
I Believe Cionnath says it well. The name change trolls the Democrats, sets off a sh—storm and then the lawyers come out
Yep, that’s true enough GEB. Now what about that other voter group that neither of you mentioned: the independent and undecided voters? I would assume we can agree they’re very important?
They’re indifferent and don’t care about what Trump says or does either way? With regular headliners like his comments about Reiner and his wife within hours, the name change thing, etc… what’s your analysis?
This Democrat trolling makes them more likely to show up and vote Republican to support Trump in the midterms – or the reverse of that?
I’m not offended by what Trump says or does with things like the Reiner comments or this, I supported him to be the best choice running to serve as employee of the people to work work on America’s behalf. I don’t really care about his lack of social graces, particularly in our society who fawned over Obama/Biden and their history as though their behavior should for some reason be idolized.
No social grace speaking at a teleprompter or with managed tweets makes up for having Weinstein as a privileged house guest for eight years, abandoning Americans to die in Benghazi and then lying to the entire world about it, the lies about and long term damage done to America by Obamacare, etc.
Trump’s public image with the undecided and independent voters when we go back to vote next year is going to decide whether he gets two more years to get things done, or two years of being hamstrung, hobbled, and eagerly impeached along with his cabinet members.
My belief at this point is that actions like this may get his bedrock, unquestioning supporters gloating and cheering, but it is going to ultimately cost him independent/undecided votes.
What Trump does to the Left is equivalent to making a cat chase a red laser pointer, or perhaps a thousand of them, all at once. You would think after pouncing on so many, just to find their paws empty, they would have learned to shrug at meaningless foolery like this, knowing that in a relatively short amount of time, a new administration can simply change the name back. Instead we will get unlimited columns (and blog posts), speeches, screams of outrage from the dopes in Congress, endless hearings and chest-thumping, along with self-righteous bleating from the lesser remnants of the degenerate Kennedy clan, whose politics have drifted so far to the left of JFK he would likely disown them. But since lawfare is the Left’s game, Trump gives them plenty of meaningless crap to run to the courts about, where they’ll likely win, only to look under their paws once again to find they’ve got nothing, and Trump has lost nothing of any true value.
You poor people up north really have some problems.
“You poor people up north really have some problems.”
Weather’s better in Mexico and Guatamala? Tell us about it!!!
Of course the Democrats will sue. With respect to Trump, It’s what they do. The action, right or wrong, will stir up the base. It will give the View and other Hate Trump shows fodder for a whole day or more.
What most politicians do not realize is how very few Americans, are even aware of the issue. Ever further, of those who do know, only a few really care. Sadly, it is a horrific waste of time when other important issues need attention.
Well, Trump was almost assassinated – twice, that we know of. I’m not saying I’m for or against the name change, but I do appreciate that the current Administration is trying to clean up the Center’s budget and to make its theatrical offerings of more interest to the average American tourist.
Jerry Ford survived two assassination attempts as well, so name it the Ford-Trump-Kennedy Center.
In his final paragraph, Prof. Turley advises both sides “to heed Shakespeare’s warning in another play”, as if to warn of Pyrrhic victory.
But the next line (in The Taming of the Shrew) shows Petruchio has confidence in his suit: “Though little fire grows great with little wind, Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.” And he ultimately prevails as Katherine comes to his call.
It’s like in The Graduate when the dad thinks his plan is half-baked and Dustin Hoffman goes, “Oh, it’s fully baked, sir.”
Democrats are starting to realize that Trump is not only the President, but an angry President. That’s what they get after four years of unsuccessful lawfare and Trump is loving every minute of it.
Every time Trump seems to be gaining momentum, such as after his recent speech, he says or does something utterly stupid and useless. This proves him to be an American President. They all have done it and always will.
Um… not just presidents, but citizens to: “They all have done it and always will.”
Stupid? this is genius! it irritates TDS, exposes those stricken with the nasty disease.
The idea here is you are not a narcissist if you are actually incredibly awesome and you know it.
Anybody who doesn’t think that they are awesome shouldn’t be running for president.
We only want awesome presidents who know how to weild their awesomeness.
“We only want awesome presidents who know how to wield their awesomeness.”
Yeah, and who have the willingness (courage?) to undergo a public proctoscopic exam to get the job. All of which makes for a very interesting subset of job applicants.
-g