WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump The building may have his name on it, but it's still the Kennedy Center for Congress.
A bipartisan spending package released Monday by House Speaker Mike Johnson includes $32 million for operating expenses of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts through Sept. 30, 2027.
Trump did series of leadership changes at the center shortly after he took office in 2025, which ended with the Republican president-elect's board of trustees voting in December to rebrand the site as the Trump Kennedy Center. adding his name to Kennedy's on the exterior of the building and on the website.
The Kennedy Center said the vote recognized Trump's work to revive an institution he has criticized as too liberal. But since he took over the center, numerous artists canceled performancesticket sales and attendance fell, and viewership for the December broadcast Kennedy Center Honors The program, which he predicted would grow because he was the host, is down about 35% from the 2024 show.
After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Congress passed legislation the following year designating the center as a living monument to the Democrat. The law expressly prohibits The board of trustees is prohibited from turning the center into a memorial to anyone else and from putting another person's name on the facade of the building. The board's vote is the subject of a lawsuit in federal court.
