Republicans Propose Naming Kennedy Center Opera House After Melania Trump
The proposal was added Tuesday during an Appropriations Committee meeting.
House Republicans are proposing the John F. Kennedy Center’s famous Opera House theater be renamed after First Lady Melania Trump.
Members of the Appropriations Committee on Tuesday approved an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2026 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Act that focuses primarily on American energy, reverses Biden-era regulations and reduces spending while “rightsizing” federal agencies. It also takes up this renaming effort.
The adopted amendment, which passed in the committee with a voice vote of 33 to 25, made changes to the act including designating the “First Lady Melania Trump Opera House,” according to a press release. The Office of the First Lady had not returned our request for comment at the time of publication.
The proposal comes just months after President Trump shook up the Kennedy Center’s board, firing and replacing board members and naming himself as chair. Most recently, the Trumps attended a Kennedy Center opening night performance of “Les Misérables” and, during the first Trump administration, the president and first lady declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors, a break with tradition.
It was the opposite of today’s polarized political landscape, however, that brought the Washington, D.C. arts hub into existence. Early organizers initially envisioned a National Arts Center that garnered full bipartisan support.
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed bipartisan legislation creating a National Cultural Center in the nation’s capital. In November of 1962, President and Mrs. Kennedy launched a $30 million fundraising campaign for the Center’s construction, according to the Kennedy Center’s website. Former President Eisenhower and his wife Mamie participated in the event, which demonstrated the bipartisan support for a world-class center for the performing arts in D.C. In 1963, President Kennedy signed legislation to extend the fundraising deadline for the Center.
Planning for the arts center, according to presidential and first ladies scholar Barbara A. Perry, occurred during the Cold War. The Soviet Union and Russia had a long history of ballet, opera, symphonies and places to present its culture throughout the region.
“It was recognized as a terrible deficiency that we didn’t have a place to present our culture and our arts in the nation’s capital,” said Perry, the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She added that Congress appropriated some money that initially helped secure the land where the Kennedy Center is located.
The John F. Kennedy Center, Perry said, was first called the National Cultural Center. Two months after President Kennedy’s assassination, by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on January 23, 1964, and the fact that Mrs. Kennedy and her husband had been so instrumental in fundraising for the center, Congress decided to make the center a living memorial.
President Johnson said at the time, according to Perry, author of Jacqueline Kennedy: First Lady of the New Frontier, it would be the only living memorial to him in the District of Columbia.
“This makes the Kennedy family very happy,” Perry explained. “Mrs Kennedy is on the board. She continues in her widowhood to continue to raise money.”
So, the idea of naming one of the theaters inside the Kennedy Center after an incumbent first lady is, for Perry, “too soon.”
“I’m all in favor of waiting a little bit to see these people’s legacies spin out in history,” Perry told East Wing Magazine in a phone interview.
Washington D.C.’s most iconic monuments came long after the presidents they honor. For example, the Jefferson Memorial wasn’t dedicated until 1943 and the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922.
In light of the history behind the Kennedy Center, Perry questioned, “What has Mrs. Trump done to earn this?”
At the end of Trump’s second term, according to Perry, if Congress looks back and can see what all Mrs. Trump has done for the arts, that would seem more logical.
“But, just to do it, it doesn’t seem right to me,” she said.