Sen. John Kennedy says no living politician should get a public building named after him, as workers strip President Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center following a federal appeals court defeat.
Workers have started taking Donald Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., after a federal appeals court denied a last-minute bid to keep it on the facade. The court fight turned on a basic rule: only Congress can rename the performing arts center.
Fox News reported that the center’s board had voted unanimously in December to add the president’s name. Federal judges blocked repeated board efforts, ordered the name removed, and held that Congress alone holds the power to change it. Scaffolding went up near the sign as the removal work began.
On Sunday, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., drew a brighter line. Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” the Louisiana Republican said living public officials should not have buildings named after them at all. He framed it as a taxpayer rule, not a personality fight.
Kennedy told host Margaret Brennan the White House disagrees with his view on self-promotion with public dollars. He still stuck to the principle.
"The White House sees it differently, but... you can’t spend public money to... promote yourself,"
He went further and floated a standing ban.
"I may end up with a sombrero on my head, but I also think we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him when he’s alive,"
That sombrero line nodded to AI videos Trump shared last year mocking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Kennedy used the joke and then locked onto the spending point. Public money, he said, is not a private billboard.
The legal path was blunt. A federal judge ordered Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center and said only Congress can rename it. The appeals court then rejected the board’s emergency appeal. Judges had already blocked multiple attempts by the board, described as handpicked by Trump, to put the president’s name on the building.
Photo captions in the coverage place signage work on Dec. 19, 2025, when workers affixed the added name, and scaffolding near the dual Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts sign on June 12, 2026. The core holding never shifted: the board does not get to rewrite the name on its own.
Kennedy’s Sunday comments landed in the middle of that cleanup. He did not litigate the court order. He proposed a broader rule that would bind every living officeholder, of either party, from turning public property into a personal brand while still in power. For a senator who has navigated tough Republican confirmation fights without rubber-stamping every White House preference, the stance fit a pattern of drawing bright lines on process.
Taxpayers fund these buildings. Naming rights that skip Congress short-circuit the branch that actually holds the purse and the statute power. That is the accountability point Kennedy put on the table.
The Kennedy Center fight is not the only naming fight in the record. The State Department added Trump’s name last year to the U.S. Institute of Peace. Former institute officials, removed by the Trump administration, filed a court motion earlier this month to stop construction crews from putting the president’s name on the outside of that building. The motion’s final outcome is not settled in the available reporting.
Earlier this year, Trump suggested New York’s Penn Station and Dulles Airport carry his name as part of a funding deal discussion. He also floated a promenade concept running from the Lincoln Memorial toward the Potomac River. Allies wanted to call it the Trump Promenade. Trump left the door open without locking it.
"They want to call it the Trump Promenade, but I don't know if I want to do that, but it's going to be beautiful,"
A federally funded ad promoting Trump also ran on multiple networks. Kennedy’s answer to the whole category was the same: do not spend public money to promote a living politician, and do not stamp that politician’s name on a public building while he is still in office.
Process still matters even when the goal is recognition for results. Congress writes the renaming authority for the Kennedy Center. Boards and agencies do not. That separation is not a technicality; it is how constitutional order is supposed to work when public property and public dollars are on the line. Kennedy has also taken hard public stands on major foreign policy fights, and here he applied the same direct style to domestic naming rules.
Kennedy’s proposed standard is simple on purpose. No politician gets a building named after him while alive. The rule would cover presidents, senators, House leaders, and everyone else drawing a government paycheck or holding a title. It would close the self-promotion loop he flagged on “Face the Nation.”
Democrats who spent years lecturing the country about norms now watch court orders enforce a congressional prerogative they rarely championed when it was inconvenient. The same Capitol that stalls basic border and spending fights can still assert exclusive control over a performing-arts center’s legal name. Voters notice when institutions discover limits only after a Republican president tests them. Parallel drama has shown up when Schumer folded on a shutdown fight and handed Republicans a clear political win after months of standoff.
Kennedy did not call for erasing history or banning honors after a career ends. He drew the line at the living officeholder using public assets as a running advertisement. That is a taxpayer argument and a fairness argument. It does not require personal insults or party loyalty tests. It requires a statute-level rule and the discipline to follow it.
Interior Democratic fights over policy pivots, such as when AOC scolded Biden over border entry curbs she cast as borrowed from Trump, show how quickly naming and framing wars become substitutes for governing. Kennedy’s building rule tries to take one of those substitutes off the table.
Federal judges have now blocked the Kennedy Center board more than once. The appeals court denied the last-minute stay. Workers are removing the name. The statute power sits where the courts said it sits: with Congress. Kennedy’s add-on is a bright-line ban on living-politician naming so the next fight does not turn into another scaffolding story paid for by the public.
If public buildings belong to the public, their names should not double as campaign signs for anyone still on the ballot or still in the job.
