President Donald Trump looks down from the Presidential Box in the Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 17, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
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Think Congress wants to rename the historic John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.? Well, a proposed bill, aptly titled the “Make Entertainment Great Again Act,” aims to do just that. It would officially rebrand the iconic building as the Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.
This isn’t exactly out of the blue. The idea has been brewing since February, when President Trump took the reins of the organization’s board of trustees. Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri, a Republican, officially introduced the bill on July 23. The Kennedy Center, a national arts landmark, has been a hub for thousands of performances across its seven stages since opening its doors in 1971.
Onder’s office stated, “Since he was elected as chairman of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, President Trump has been working to preserve the integrity [of] the fine arts by ending woke programming and rebalancing the Kennedy Center’s $234 million budget, which had normalized operating in the red.”
The congressman added, “You would be hard pressed to find a more significant cultural icon in the past 40 years than President Trump. President Trump’s love and mastery of entertainment has stood the test of time and allowed him to capture Americans’ attention for decades.”
The Kennedy Center has not yet responded to a request for comment.
However, claims about the center’s budget have been challenged. Former president Deborah Rutter released a statement in May, saying, “I am deeply troubled by the false allegations regarding the management of the Kennedy Center being made by people without the context or expertise to understand the complexities involved in nonprofit and arts management.”
Adding another layer to the political theater, Republicans recently pushed for $257 million in improvements for the Kennedy Center. However, a significant chunk of that funding is contingent on renaming the building’s opera house after former first lady Melania Trump.
This move sparked a strong reaction online. John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, posted a fiery response on social media: “The Trump Administration stands for freedom of oppression, not expression. He uses his awesome powers to suppress free expression and instill fear. But this isn’t about the arts. Trump is obsessed with being bigger than JFK , with minimizing the many heroes of our past, as if that elevates him. It doesn’t. But there’s hope — art lasts forever, and no one can change what JFK and our shared history stands for.”
The push to rename the Kennedy Center, or its opera house, could potentially clash with the laws that established the institution. Its own guidelines stipulate that after December 1983, “no additional memorials or plaques shall be designated or installed.” Furthermore, the “Make Entertainment Great Again Act” faces an uphill battle, with expectations that it won’t gather enough congressional support to pass.
