Donald Trump’s fight over the Kennedy Center has drawn criticism from two members of John F. Kennedy’s family. Kerry Kennedy and Maria Shriver have challenged the president’s handling of the arts institution. They are questioning why its future now hinges on his push to reshape the landmark.

Kerry Kennedy and Maria Shriver criticize Donald Trump after the center’s closure
The dispute intensified after the Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to close the performing arts center for two years. The decision came shortly after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper blocked Trump’s attempt to put his name on the building. The board includes second lady Usha Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and MAGA musician Lee Greenwood, among other Trump allies (via The Daily Beast).

Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and sister of Donald Trump’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., called the closure “hostage taking by the president of the United States” during an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett. She also rejected the board’s argument that the center faced bankruptcy and needed major renovations.

Kerry pointed to the $250 million that GOP-led Congress approved for Trump’s renovation project last year. During her CNN appearance, she argued that the funding already exists and questioned why the center suddenly faced a financial crisis after the court rejected Trump’s naming effort. She also pushed back on Trump’s claim that only he could raise the money needed to save the institution.

Her criticism went beyond the Kennedy Center itself. Kerry cited the war in Iran, which she said had cost $40 billion so far, along with rising gas prices and the broader cost of living. She urged Trump to concentrate on those issues and “leave the Kennedy Center alone.”

Maria Shriver, JFK’s niece and daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, delivered her own rebuke on X. She called Trump’s insistence on attaching his name to the public building “small-minded” and “narcissistic.”

A running list of everything Trump has named or renamed after himself

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Throughout his time as a real estate mogul, President Donald Trump became famous for stamping his name on hotels and casinos throughout the United States. Trump has ramped up this practice in his second term in the White House, but this time it’s government-related venues that have been renamed for the president. And these renamings are not without their fair share of controversy.

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
In December 2025, the White House announced its decision to change the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The change was voted on unanimously by the Kennedy Center board of trustees, which was handpicked by Trump. A spokesperson for the Washington, D.C., building said the name change “honors Trump’s work at the center since taking over early in his second term,” said CNN.

Just a day later, workers “added ‘The Donald J. Trump and’ to the facade of the building just above the current signage,” said ABC News. The change generated anger among Democrats (and some Republicans), given that the building was designed as an official memorial to former President John F. Kennedy.

A flurry of lawsuits were launched challenging Trump’s legal authority to rename the building, and they largely succeeded. In May 2026, a federal judge said that the name change was not allowed, and the following month workers removed Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center. But the workers left “without removing the scaffolding they’d erected or the massive tarps they’d draped over it,” said The Washington Post. As of mid-September, the tarps remain in place and none of the signage on the building is visible.

US Institute of Peace
As with the Kennedy Center, Trump placed his name on the headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), a congressionally funded think tank, in December 2025. Lettering soon went up on the building to reflect the change. And in another similarity to the Kennedy Center, this change came after Trump “fired the institute’s board in the spring,” as well as every employee, and the Washington, D.C., headquarters was “turned over to the General Services Administration,” said The Associated Press.

The USIP website does not reflect the name change on the site’s top header, though it does on the homepage. And the change also comes “despite an ongoing fight over the institute’s control” in court, said the AP. The building has become a “flashpoint of what former board members have described as a hostile takeover of the federally funded independent nonprofit in Trump’s second term,” said Fast Company. As with the Kennedy Center, Democrats have noted that the name change is likely illegal.

‘Trump-class’ battleships
December 2025 was a busy period for Trump’s name to make its mark, as the president also announced a new fleet of U.S. Navy vessels to be called Trump-class battleships. The first ship in the future line, the USS Defiant, will be part of a “class of American-designed battleships that will be the most lethal surface combatant ever constructed,” said the Navy in a press release. If built, the USS Defiant would be the “biggest warship the U.S. has constructed since WWII,” Forbes said.

But critics noted several flaws with this plan. For one, these new ships will be “vulnerable to blistering missile attacks, the way once-mighty traditional battleships were to aircraft attacks,” said Forbes. And while much of the reporting has focused on the alleged “impropriety of a president’s naming a military program after himself,” a larger issue is that these “big and overarmed behemoths have been obsolete in warfare for many decades,” said the Los Angeles Times. And because of expected rising costs, future presidential administrations will likely “cancel the program before the first ship hits the water,” said Mark F. Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies to the Times.

Washington, DC banners
At different points in 2025, people began noticing that there were “large banners with President Donald Trump’s face that can be seen on three federal buildings” throughout Washington, D.C., said CNN. Opponents say the banners “carry authoritarian undertones.” On at least one of these buildings, the U.S. Department of Labor headquarters, a banner of Trump was hung alongside a banner of former President Abraham Lincoln.

Soon after the banners came out, a report spearheaded by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was released, titled “Propaganda: How the Trump Administration is Breaking the Law and Wasting Taxpayer Dollars with Giant Banners of Donald Trump.” The banners are “being made at the public’s expense, with the first three signs costing at least $50,000 in taxpayer funds,” the report alleged, despite a “longstanding legal prohibition against the use of federal funds for propaganda and self-aggrandizement purposes.” The White House has denied that the banners break the law, and in February 2026 an additional banner of Trump was hung on the Justice Department headquarters.

Trump Accounts
During his second term, Trump announced the launch of new savings and investment accounts targeted toward children — and he unsurprisingly named them after himself. These Trump Accounts are “tax-advantaged savings accounts available for every American child up to the age of 18, and parents can put in up to $5,000 annually,” said PBS News. Kids born between 2025 and 2028 can automatically get $1,000 in an account.

The program got a boost from tech mogul Michael Dell, who announced he would be investing about $6 billion into Trump Accounts, or about $250 for 25 million children. While questions remain about how exactly these accounts will work, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said they will have essentially no restrictions. They will be a “piece of the American economy for every child, and they will be able to take it out when they’re 18,” Bessent said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” When asked by the show’s Margaret Brennan if there would be conditions on using the money for college tuition or a first house, Bessent replied, “no.”

National park passes
The design for America’s national park pass, which provides access to over 2,000 nature areas across the country, typically featured images of the natural landscape. But upon Trump taking office, the White House unveiled new designs for the passes; one features both Trump’s face and George Washington’s face, while another shows Trump saluting. The passes were “reintroduced as part of a broader rebranding effort by the administration” in 2025, said Newsweek.

Conservation groups have “filed a lawsuit in federal court, calling the move ‘the most ego-driven action yet’ and arguing it politicizes public lands and violates federal neutrality rules,” said Newsweek. There have been reports of some people also using stickers to cover up Trump’s face on the pass, but it seems the White House is trying to stop this; the U.S. Department of the Interior “updated its ‘Void if Altered’ rules for 2026, explicitly flagging stickers and other coverings as alterations that could invalidate the pass,” SFGate said. SFGate later reported that it had been “blacklisted” by the Interior Department for covering the pass changes.

TrumpRx
While the president has repeatedly stated he has a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, one of his largest efforts surrounding health care in his second term has simply been the creation of TrumpRx. This website, operated by the federal government, is an “online platform that consumers can use to search” for discounted prices on brand-name prescription drugs “when paying without using insurance,” said health policy organization KFF.

But although Trump claims that the website “offers Americans the world’s lowest prices on prescription drugs,” this is “not true,” said The New York Times, as they still “can cost American patients up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.” The most recognizable drugs available on the website are the weight-loss medications Wegovy and Zepbound; compared to some other Western countries, Americans “pay about twice as much as patients overseas.” In Japan, for example, Wegovy costs $163, according to the Times, so the $349 TrumpRx customers pay is more than double.

Palm Beach International Airport
In February 2026, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation renaming Palm Beach International Airport to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Trump uses the airport when he flies into his Mar-a-Lago resort. The name change faced legal challenges; one Florida pilot filed a lawsuit to stop the rebranding, arguing that it “poses real safety risks,” said The Palm Beach Post. But this did not stop the switch, as the official change was implemented in July 2026, with the airport’s name code being changed to ‘DJT’ the following month.

Airport name codes are standardized across a range of federal databases, and the lawsuit argued renaming the airport could “create potential confusion between pilots and air traffic controllers” if the change was “not synchronized with those federal systems,” said The Palm Beach Post. Up until the switch, officials had maintained the legislation “does not change the airport’s code, PBI,” the airport said in a press release. The controversy over the rebrand comes amid reports that Trump has also asked for Washington Dulles International Airport to be renamed for him.

Trump Gold Cards
Soon after becoming president, Trump announced the creation of the Trump “Gold Card” program, which, like a Green Card, gives foreigners a “visa based upon an individual’s ability to provide a substantial benefit to the United States,” said the program’s website. But there is a major financial component, as applicants must “pay a nonrefundable, $15,000 DHS processing fee,” and the more money, the better; paying at least $1 million serves as “evidence that the individual will substantially benefit the United States.”

But it seems the cards, which were largely designed to help cut into the national deficit, are not as popular as Trump hoped. By May 2026, fewer than 400 people had “so far submitted requests for a Gold Card,” said CNBC, and of those “only 165 people have paid the $15,000 visa processing fee.” The low totals are a significant drawback for the administration, which previously predicted that the government “would issue 80,000 Gold Cards and raise more than $100 billion in revenue” via the program.

TrumpIRA
As with his savings accounts for children, Trump is also looking to brand a new vehicle for retirement savings with his name. The website TrumpIRA.gov, set to launch in 2027, is a “platform that connects working Americans” with individual retirements accounts, according to the website, and will also allow up to $1,000 annually in federal matching contributions.

The website is “intended to help more people gain access to retirement plans before next year, when the federal government will start matching retirement contributions made by lower-income workers,” said the AP. But notably, the government itself is not “offering a new government retirement plan but helping match workers with existing plans from private companies,” and the details still remain somewhat murky.

Trump-branded passports
MAGA faithful who want to show their appreciation for the president overseas now have an opportunity to do so, as the U.S. State Department has designed new passports displaying the “president’s image superimposed over the Declaration of Independence and an American flag” and “features Trump’s signature in gold lettering,” said NBC News. The limited-edition passports were created for the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations; it is the first time a sitting president has ever appeared in a passport design.