Democratic Congresswoman on Kennedy Center Board Sues to Challenge Trump’s ‘Illegal Renaming’
Sarah Rumpf
Tue, December 23, 2025 at 12:00 PM UTC
5 min read
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Generate Key Takeaways
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) sued President Donald Trump and her fellow Kennedy Center board members on Monday, challenging the “illegal renaming” that added Trump’s name last week.
Shortly after his second inauguration, Trump appointed himself to the board for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and added several of his allies to the board as well, who then named him chair. It was a divisive move, with the president’s MAGA supporters cheering his takeover, his critics left disgusted, and ticket sales in a free fall.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
The announcement last week that Trump’s name would be added to the Kennedy sparked swift outrage from members of the Kennedy family and other critics of the president, outrage that spiked after Trump’s name was added to the building’s wall a mere day later. The center’s website, social media, and other digital branding were also updated to say “The Trump Kennedy Center.”
After White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the board had “voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building,” Beatty rebuked her in a tweet, saying she had been “muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move,” and noted the name change had not been on the agenda. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) were not present at the meeting and voiced their opposition later in media interviews.
Monday evening, Norm Eisen announced that the organization he co-founded, Democracy Defenders Action, and the Washington Litigation Group were representing Beatty in a lawsuit against Trump and the other defendants, the “staunch loyalists who will do his bidding, including his own White House Chief of Staff, multiple Fox News personalities, and the spouses of his Vice President and Secretary of Commerce” he appointed to the Kennedy Center board, for the “illegal renaming” of the Center.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, focuses on the fact that the Kennedy Center was established and named via a 1964 law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson memorializing President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated two months prior.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
“Only Congress has the authority to rename the Kennedy Center,” said Beatty in a press release. “President Trump and his cronies must not be allowed to trample federal law and bypass Congress to feed his ego. This entire process has been a complete disgrace to this cherished institution and the people it serves. These unlawful actions must be blocked before any further damage is done.”
“The President and his sycophants have no lawful authority to rename the Kennedy Center,” said Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, Senior Counsel at Washington Litigation Group. “Congress named the Kennedy Center as a national memorial to President Kennedy, and only Congress can change that. We are proud to represent Congresswoman Beatty as she defends the integrity of this institution and the separation of powers.”
“Because Congress named the center by statute,” the complaint said, “changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress. But on December 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.”
The complaint cited specific sections of the statute that prohibited names of any other persons being recognized on the buildings exterior and only narrowly-defined exceptions for small plaques recognizing donors in the interior:
Congress has declared that the “John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” “shall be the sole national memorial to the late John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the city of Washington and its environs.” 20 U.S.C. § 76q. And Congress was crystal clear that the center should honor President Kennedy alone. By law, “the Board shall assure that after December 2, 1983, 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.” § 76j(b)(1). The only permissible exceptions are for “any plaque acknowledging a gift from a foreign country; any plaque on a theater chair or a theater box acknowledging the gift of such chair or box; and any inscription . . . acknowledging a major contribution.” Id. § 76j(b)(2). And notably, when Congress authorized changes to the building in 2012, Congress further specified that the Board could not acknowledge private donors anywhere “on the exterior of the project.” 20 U.S.C. § 76i(c)(3). Indeed, even members of Congress who support the President recognize that changing the name requires congressional approval, which is why one of them introduced legislation in July 2025 to do just that. To be clear: That legislation has gone nowhere, and the Center remains named—by law—for President Kennedy.
The complaint also blasts Trump for the “ongoing politicization of the Kennedy Center” as a “vanity project” for himself, a move that has caused “grave consequences” including major entertainers and donors cutting ties and nearly half of the tickets going unsold.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Beatty is asking the court for a judgment declaring that Trump and the other defendants violated federal law, declaring the center’s name is just the “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” declaring the vote to change the name to add Trump “is null and void,” ordering the defendants to “remove any and all physical and digital signage purporting to rename the Kennedy Center after Defendant Trump, including the signage on the building’s front portico and the website,” enjoining defendants “from further renaming the Kennedy Center, from further installing physical or digital signage purporting to rename the Kennedy Center, and from further publishing or producing any other official material in any medium that purports to refer to the Kennedy Center as named for Defendant Trump.”
The post Democratic Congresswoman on Kennedy Center Board Sues to Challenge Trump’s ‘Illegal Renaming’ first appeared on Mediaite.