• John Kennedy argues living politicians should not get buildings named after them
• Trump’s push to attach his name to federal landmarks keeps stirring fights
• The Kennedy Center battle has already run into court resistance
• Other federal properties have also become part of the naming push
• Kennedy frames the issue as a misuse of public money and public space
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is taking a hard line on a question that has suddenly become impossible to ignore: whether living politicians should see their names slapped onto public buildings. His answer is a blunt no, and he says the rule should apply across the board, no matter who is in office or how powerful they are.
The conversation is being driven by President Donald Trump’s effort to put his name on the Kennedy Center and other federal properties. That push has turned a routine naming fight into a much bigger clash over ego, government spending, and who gets to claim ownership of the nation’s landmarks.
Kennedy said officials should not use public resources to boost themselves. In his view, the whole idea crosses a line because taxpayers should not be footing the bill for what he sees as personal branding.
“The White House sees it differently, but … you can’t spend public money to … promote yourself,” Kennedy said during an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
He went a step further and suggested a formal rule that would block any politician from having a building named after him while still alive. That would shut the door on the kind of naming campaign that has followed Trump since he returned to the White House.
The Kennedy Center has been the flash point. Workers recently began taking Trump’s name off the building after a federal appeals court rejected a last-minute effort to keep it in place, dealing another blow to the administration’s push.
The dispute did not appear out of nowhere. Trump’s name had been added after a board vote, and the fight quickly escalated into a legal mess over whether the center could make that change on its own or whether Congress held the final say.
Kennedy’s remarks landed while a new Trump-related ad was airing on several networks, and that added more fuel to an already hot dispute. The senator said the issue is not about personalities so much as basic limits on how public institutions should be used.
When he joked that he might end up with “a sombrero on my head,” Kennedy was nodding to Trump’s tendency to troll his critics with AI-generated images. He used the line to underline his point that politicians should not be turning government buildings into personal monuments while they are still alive.
The naming fight has also spread beyond the Kennedy Center. The State Department previously put Trump’s name on the U.S. Institute of Peace, and former institute officials later moved to stop construction crews from putting the name on the outside of the building.
Trump has also floated other branding ideas, including New York’s Penn Station and Dulles Airport in the Washington area. Even a proposed promenade near the Lincoln Memorial was discussed in Trump’s orbit as a possible “Trump Promenade,” showing how far the naming impulse has stretched.
“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,” he said at the time.
For Kennedy, the larger issue is not the size of the project or the prestige of the building. It is the principle that government property should not become a billboard for people still running the government, and that line, in his telling, ought to be bright and unmistakable.
