Republicans have proposed naming the opera house at the Kennedy Center after First Lady Melania Trump.
The proposal was part of an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) as the House Appropriations Committee considered a bill for the coming fiscal year. Simpson cited Melania Trump’s support for the arts.
Simpson called it an “excellent way to recognize her support and commitment to promoting the arts.”
The amendment passed 33-25.
Donald Trump took control of the Kennedy Center just weeks into his second term. He fired Joe Biden’s appointees to the board, even though the center by tradition has retained a bipartisan balance among its trustees. The move ensured that Trump himself would become chairman, ousting David Rubenstein.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature legislative initiative that passed earlier this month, included almost $257 million for Kennedy Center renovations.
Melania Trump is the honorary chairwoman of the Kennedy Center, a title that previous first ladies also have held. The opera house is the second-largest venue at the center.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) said, “The Republicans have now given the president six times the normal amount of money to run the Kennedy Center, carte blanche over who will be on the board and how different parts of the Kennedy Center and perhaps the whole Kennedy Center itself will be named, and this amendment confirms that.”
She said that it is “hard to justify when you are going back in your district that you are giving them $256.7 million with very little oversight, no authorization, no authorization for changing the name, and a lot of authority over how that money will be spent.”
She noted that while the “Big Beautiful bill” included the increase in funding for the Kennedy Center, the appropriations bill before the House slashes funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, each of which distribute arts grants to organizations across the country.
“As long as it is funding that they would like to spend, in this case on the Kennedy Center, it could be any amount, it could be greater than has ever been spent before, but if it is going back to our local communities, as it is at the NEA and NEH, it will be cut,” Pingree said.
Under the current GOP appropriations proposal, the NEA and NEH each would receive $135 million for the next fiscal year, down from $207 million this year. The Trump administration had sought to zero out funding to each of the agencies. Republicans also voted down a Democratic amendment to restore funding to current levels in the coming year.
The naming proposal has a long way to passage, as Congress works its way through the budget process in advance of a September 30 deadline. Democrats may have more leverage in the Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to overcome a filibuster and bring a bill to the floor.
The two other venues at the Kennedy Center are the concert hall and the theater, the latter of which is named for Dwight D. Eisenhower.
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