President Donald Trump’s hand-picked John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board voted unanimously yesterday to rebrand the cultural institution as the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” Unfortunately for the president, this change won’t come as easily as slapping his name on a smartphone or a Bible. The statute that established the center as a memorial to President Kennedy in 1964 “explicitly names it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” says Georgetown law professor David Super, meaning the moniker is legally baked into the facility’s very existence. Because the center’s name is codified in US law, a board of trustees vote won’t cut it; an act of Congress is needed to tack on the “Trump.” House Republicans have been toying with this project since the summertime. One proposal introduced in July, the Make Entertainment Great Again Act, would rechristen the institution the “Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.” Such a measure would be a “completely adequate” means of legally changing the center’s name, Super says, should it advance through Congress. Until then, however, any changes to the center’s name are unofficial. “The other way of accomplishing a renaming is to hire somebody with a hammer and a chisel,” Super adds. “But it wouldn’t be legal.” We’ve seen this film before, in fact: Consider, for example, the Department of War or the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace—which have never been established through an official legal channel and essentially function as colloquialisms, used mostly by the administration itself. Related A Kennedy Center Musician on What It’s Like There Now While the board’s “change” is basically just another flashy marquee that Trump has hung up in service of his inner real-estate developer, it’s likely to accelerate the tangible decline of the Kennedy Center’s reputation. Ticket sales have nosedived since the president took over in February, which has taken a palpable toll on the performers who work there—including the National Symphony Orchestra’s principal violist, who recently spoke to Washingtonian about his experience serenading half-empty audiences. So the name change is pretty much imaginary, from a legal perspective. But it is real in the sense that it presents the potential for further damage to the center’s integrity and the resulting condition of its employees. As usual, though, don’t hold your breath expecting the Trump administration to face any legal consequences for this. “There’s no question that this is not legal, but it is not at all clear that anyone has standing to sue him over it,” Super says. Not even members of the dynastic Kennedy family, who have already expressed their unequivocal disgust with the move? No, not even those guys. “The fact that somebody might be offended by this change—even the fact that someone is a descendant of President Kennedy and feels that he’s being slighted—is not necessarily going to be enough to get someone into court.”The post Can Trump Actually Name the Kennedy Center After Himself? first appeared on Washingtonian. ...read more read less