Sucking up to President Donald Trump apparently knows no bounds. During an appropriations committee markup on Tuesday for the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2026 funding bill, Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho proposed an amendment to rename the Kennedy Center’s Opera House the “First Lady Melania Trump Opera House.”

“We renamed the opera house at the Kennedy Center for the first lady, who is the honorary chairman of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center,” Simpson said. “This designation is an excellent way to recognize her support and commitment to promoting the arts.”

The committee voted 33-25 to adopt the amendment.

Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine called the move “divisive,” noting that while the bill includes a reduction in funding to the Kennedy Center, the so-called “One Big, Beautiful Bill” has already earmarked $250 million for the center.

“The Republicans have now given the president six times the normal amount of money to run the Kennedy Center, carte blanche over who will be on the board, and how different parts of the Kennedy Center—perhaps the whole Kennedy Center itself—will be named, and this amendment confirms that,” Pingree said.

Earlier this year, Trump fired the existing board of trustees for the Center, claimed he had been secretly (and “unanimously”) elected chairman of the board, and installed MAGA bootlickers and their spouses in its place. Melania Trump remains the honorary chair of the board, possibly the only institutional tradition the Trumps have followed since coming into office. 

It is hard to parse what Simpson considers to be the first lady’s “commitment to promoting the arts” beyond her turning Fox News into the home shopping network for crass jewelry and Christmas ornaments. 

Simpson’s pathetic amendment joins the pile of Republican overtures of servility to Trump’s cult of personality. Those efforts include trying to replace Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill with Trump’s face and adding his faux pompadour to Mount Rushmore.