Legal experts told NBC News earlier this year that Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administration-era laws governing the establishment of the Kennedy Center enshrined the original name in legislation. They added that a new law passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president is needed to change the name.
Trump administration officials did not appear to respond to those legal concerns, which lawmakers in both parties shared on Thursday, before installing his name on the building on Friday.
Former Representative Joseph Kennedy III, Grandson of the late presidentThe center “is a living memorial to a fallen president and is named after President Kennedy under federal law. It cannot be renamed just because anyone can rename the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says,” he said Thursday afternoon in a statement.
In a separate statement on Thursday, six Democratic lawmakers who serve as ex-officio members of the Kennedy Center’s board of directors said they would hold the administration accountable for violating the law.
“Along with using the Kennedy Center to reward his political friends and allies, President Trump is now attempting to attach his name to another public institution without legal authority. Federal law establishes the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without action of Congress,” the lawmakers wrote in a statement. They later added, “As ex-officio members of the Kennedy Center Board of Directors, we will be steadfast in our commitment to holding this administration accountable.”
House and Senate Minority Leaders – Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. He was among the signatories of the statement.
Another ex-officio member of the board who did not vote for the change, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday: “The Kennedy Center, in my opinion, is the Kennedy Center.”
Capito and several other Republican senators said they believe the name should be changed through legislation in Congress.
“I assume so, because it was mentioned more than a few times as the Kennedy Center in the legislation, so I imagine that’s the case,” the West Virginia senator told reporters.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday that “we will look” at whether changing the name requires new legislation.
“I’m not familiar with the process of how to do this,” Thune said. “There’s a question of whether or not it’s legal. Is it legal? Do we have to change the law to do this kind of thing? And I’m sure we’ll get all the answers to that in due time.”
Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, another ex-officio board member, disputed the president’s assertion that the board’s vote was “unanimous,” saying the name change was not on the agenda distributed before the meeting, and that she was repeatedly muted on a video call when she sought to raise her concerns about it.
“I said, ‘I have something to say,’ and I was muted, and as I continued to try to unmute myself to ask questions and expressed my opposition to that, I received a note saying I would not be muted,” Beatty told reporters Thursday.
Roma Dharavi, the center’s vice president of public relations, told NBC News in a statement that Betty is not a voting member of the board and that she was given the “privilege” of listening to Thursday’s board meeting.
“The entire board was invited to attend in person and the privilege of listening to the meeting was given to all members, even those without voting rights, such as ex-officio member Joyce Beattie,” Dharavi said.