Trump made a series of leadership changes at the center shortly after he took office in 2025 that ended with the Republican president's handpicked board of trustees voting in December to rebrand the venue as the Trump Kennedy Center by adding his name to Kennedy's on the exterior of the building and the website.
The Kennedy Center said the vote recognized Trump’s work to revitalize an institution he had criticized as being too liberal-leaning. But since he took over the center, numerous artists have canceled appearances, ticket sales and attendance have fallen, and viewership for December's broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors program — which he predicted would soar because he was the host — was down by about 35% compared to the 2024 show.
After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Congress passed a law the following year naming the center as a living memorial to the Democrat. The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior. The board's vote is the subject of a lawsuit in federal court.