Lawmakers intensify efforts to remove Trump's name from Kennedy Center
The move by the board to add President Trump's name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., has triggered a series of legal and legislative challenges. At least one federal lawsuit and two congressional measures seek to strip Trump's name from the exterior signs and website of the historic theater complex.
In a federal civil lawsuit, Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as one of the Kennedy Center's trustees, is asking a court to rule that her fellow Kennedy Center board members violated the law in December 2025, in voting to add Mr. Trump's name to the center.
The suit also seeks a judge's order to "declare that the name of Kennedy Center is 'The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' and declare that the vote to change the Kennedy Center's name is null and void, and without legal effect."
Multiple sources told CBS News the Trump administration is expected to formally respond to Beatty's lawsuit by the end of February.
In her suit, Beatty noted that soon after President Kennedy was assassinated, Congress designated the yet-to-be-built Kennedy Center "as the sole national memorial to the late President within the nation's capital."
"Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center's name requires an act of Congress," Beatty's lawsuit said. "But on Dec. 18 and 19, 2025 — in scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic — the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center after President Trump. This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law, and it flies in the face of our constitutional order."
The decision by the new board to rename the Kennedy Center, part of an overhaul of the facility by Mr. Trump, was denounced by his critics. The president ousted a group of Kennedy Center board members in February and installed close allies as replacements.
Comprising largely Trump loyalists, the board elected Mr. Trump as chairman in February. Longtime Trump ally Richard Grenell was named interim president and executive director of the Kennedy Center.
The cost of the changes to the signage, website and other Kennedy Center monikers is unknown. In response to questions from CBS News about the pricetag, a Kennedy Center spokeswoman issued a statement saying, "President Trump deserves credit for saving America's cultural center after years of neglect — as the very legislators attacking him now sat idly by while the center fell into disrepair."
Norm Eisen, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who is among those challenging the name change in the lawsuit, told CBS News, "The damages have been substantial, and that will be addressed in the case. They include far more, of course, than the high cost of signage and of the other naming changes. The losses to the performing corps, to the audience base, to the bottom line of the Center, to its memorial and other activities and indeed to the arts and arts education themselves have been vast."
Aside from Rep. Beatty, other Congressional Democrats are also attempting to remove Mr. Trump's name from the Kennedy Center.
In the House, Democratic members have introduced two bills to intervene.
Rep. April McClain Delaney, a first-term Democrat from the Washington, D.C., suburbs in Maryland, has introduced a bill to "require the removal of any signage or other identification from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that differs from the designation 'John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts."
McClain Delaney told CBS News, "A president can't enshrine himself. This is what authoritarian leaders do," adding that "it's arrogant and it's narcissistic."
In a separate House resolution, Rep. Stephen Lynch, a longtime Massachusetts congressman who serves on the House Oversight Committee, is seeking a formal statement from the House that the renaming of Kennedy Center violates federal law.
In a December floor speech, Rep. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, blasted the effort by Trump allies, calling it "a sacrilege to a martyred, heroic, historic American president whose name was attached to the Kennedy Center for his support for cultural excellence in America and because he was an assassinated president who we all mourned."
"The idea that Donald Trump would want his name to go before Kennedy's — or even with Kennedy's — is a sacrilege," Cohen said. "It should not be changed ever, and it should go through this Congress, who named it the Kennedy Center, on a bill in this House and signed by President Lyndon Johnson."