{"id":16982,"date":"2025-12-20T20:20:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/kennedy-center-starts-adding-trumps-name\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T20:20:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T20:20:25","slug":"kennedy-center-starts-adding-trumps-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/kennedy-center-starts-adding-trumps-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Kennedy Center starts adding Trump&#8217;s name"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1766187093000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                                                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; The Kennedy Center on Friday quickly <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-kennedy-center-performing-arts-8b7159067174f3a0070b877c149ff0a7\">added Donald Trump&rsquo;s name<\/a><\/span>  to the performing arts center Congress designated as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy, a day after the center&rsquo;s board of trustees voted to make the change. <\/p>\n<p>Blue tarps were hung in front of the building to obscure workers on scaffolding as they executed the transformation. Hours later it had a new name: The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n<p><span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-kennedy-center-board-meeting-remaking-arts-cab60e0d09dfa84c1eef44449624f541\">The board<\/a><\/span>  of trustees, handpicked by Trump, voted unanimously Thursday to <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/photo-gallery\/trump-kennedy-center-name-photos-45ae34d6732ab8c4cdf41bde1c85daf9\">add his name<\/a><\/span>  to what was enshrined as a living memorial to the Democratic president. Trump, a Republican, also is the board&rsquo;s chairman. The Kennedy Center said the vote recognized Trump&rsquo;s work to revitalize the institution. <\/p>\n<p>Critics of the vote, including Democratic members of Congress who are ex-officio board members, as well as some historians, insist that only Congress can change the name. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The Kennedy Center was named by law. To change the name would require a revision of that 1964 law,&rdquo; Ray Smock, a former House historian, said in an email. &ldquo;The Kennedy Center board is not a lawmaking entity. Congress makes laws.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Congress named the performing arts center as a living memorial to Kennedy in 1964, the year after he was assassinated. <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/20\/76j\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The law explicitly prohibits<\/a><\/span>  the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person&rsquo;s name on the building&rsquo;s exterior.<\/p>\n<p>Some Kennedy family members oppose the renaming. Kerry Kennedy, a niece of John F. Kennedy, said in a social post on X that she will remove Trump&rsquo;s name herself when his term ends. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Three years and one month from today, I&rsquo;m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I&rsquo;m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in?&rdquo; she wrote on a photo of the center&rsquo;s new name. &ldquo;Applying for my carpenter&rsquo;s card today, so it&rsquo;ll be a union job!!!&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Kennedy Center is the latest building in Washington to have Trump&rsquo;s name added to it. The <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-institute-of-peace-6545c0101a02b677359f2732b019bf6a\">U.S. Institute of Peace<\/a><\/span>  was recently renamed after him. <\/p>\n<p>The Kennedy Center did not respond to an emailed request for comment Friday. <\/p>\n<p>&mdash;&mdash;<\/p>\n<p>AP National Writer Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-kennedy-center-performing-arts-board-rename-ffb6829221bddc012c24ce696ebf0633\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; The Kennedy Center on Friday quickly added Donald Trump&rsquo;s name to the performing arts center Congress designated as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy, a day after the center&rsquo;s board of trustees voted to make the change. Blue tarps were hung in front of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}