House Funding Bill Leaves 'Trump' Off Kennedy Center

President Trump may have put his name on the building, but it's still the Kennedy Center to Congress. A bipartisan spending package released Monday by House Speaker Mike Johnson includes $32 million for operating expenses at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts through Sept. 30, 2027, the AP reports. 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 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.

Since Trump 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. A year after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Congress passed a law naming the center as a living memorial to the Democratic president. 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.