Kennedy Center changed board rules months before vote to add Trump’s name; The Washington Post, December 31, 2025

Janay Kingsberry

 and 

Kelsey Ables

, The Washington Post; Kennedy Center changed board rules months before vote to add Trump’s name

"The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center."

[Kip Currier: for emphasis again:

The Kennedy Center adopted bylaws earlier this year that limited voting to presidentially appointed trustees, a move that preceded a unanimous decision this month by board members installed by President Donald Trump to add his name to the center. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/12/31/kennedy-center-board-trustees-bylaws/

This underscores the comfort level with rigging elections at any cost. For Trump 2.0, process does not matter; only results. Whomever or whatever is damaged or dismantled in such Hobbesian stratagems is, sadly, immaterial.

John Fabian Witt's 12/24/25 New York Times piece The Idea That Once Held America Together Died in 2025 talks about the importance of process and "basic procedural fairness" to functioning, responsive democracies. As Witt writes:

At the apex of their midcentury authority, the processes of American government rested on a sense of shared purpose and mutual trust. Regaining some of that ephemeral collective sensibility will be America’s struggle in 2026 and the years to come. A persistent, if battered, attachment to the value of basic procedural fairness suggests that there may be some common ground yet.]

New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled; The New York Times, December 29, 2025

Adam Nagourney and Neil Vigdor, The New York Times ; New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled

[Kip Currier: The principles of integrity and character are unsurprisingly alien to Richard Grenell. Artists are likely canceling Kennedy Center engagements because they don't want to be associated with an administration that has attacked free expression and the diversity of human experience, financially diminished the arts, as well as science, and that has violated federal law by adding Donald Trump's name to an arts organization memorializing our slain 35th President, John F. Kennedy Jr.

Standing up for values one believes in -- values that are bigger than oneself -- is an example of moral courage, not "derangement".]

[Excerpt]

"A veteran jazz ensemble and a New York dance company have canceled events at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, intensifying the fallout at one of the nation’s pre-eminent arts centers after it was renamed to include President Trump...

The Cookers did not give a reason for the decision in a statement on Monday that said, “Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice."...

Doug Varone and Dancers, a New York dance company, also said on Monday that it was canceling two performances in April that had been intended to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Mr. Varone, the head of the company, said it would lose $40,000 by pulling out.

“It is financially devastating but morally exhilarating,” he said in an email.

Richard Grenell, the Kennedy Center’s chairman, said in a statement on Monday night that the artists canceling shows were “far-left political activists” and that they had been booked by previous leadership. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said."

JFK’s Infuriated Niece Vows to Take Kennedy Center Renaming Into Own Hands; The Daily Beast, December 20, 2025

Katie Francis , The Daily Beast; JFK’s Infuriated Niece Vows to Take Kennedy Center Renaming Into Own Hands

"Kerry Kennedy has announced a very DIY solution to the addition of Trump’s name to her uncle’s memorial center...

Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!"

Kennedy Family Rails Against Trump’s ‘Obsessive’ Center Renaming; The Daily Beast, December 18, 2025

William Vaillancourt , The Daily Beast ; Kennedy Family Rails Against Trump’s ‘Obsessive’ Center Renaming

"Several members of the Kennedy family have objected to Donald Trump slapping his name on the historic arts center that memorializes the 35th president.

Despite Congress being the authority on the name of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Trump on Thursday declared that the venue would be known as the “Trump-Kennedy Center” following a vote from his hand-picked board members. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt bizarrely even offered “congratulations” to Kennedy when announcing the news.

But JFK’s nieces, grandson, and grandnephew naturally don’t approve of Trump, 79, inserting himself into the late president’s legacy.

Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece through Eunice Kennedy Shriver, called Trump’s habit of naming things after himself an “obsession.”

“It is beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy. It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not,” Shriver, 70, wrote on X, adding that he could very well try to do the same with the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C...

“This is not dignified. This is not funny. This is way beneath the stature of the job. It’s downright weird. It’s obsessive in a weird way,” continued Shriver, who earlier said she was “enraged” by the news. “Just when you think someone can’t stoop any lower, down they go…”

Meanwhile, Kerry Kennedy, JFK’s niece through Robert F. Kennedy, criticized Trump for “repressing free expression, targeting artists, journalists, and comedians, and erasing the history of Americans whose contributions made our nation better and more just.”"