Donald Trump has resurrected plans to create a “National Garden of American Heroes,” with statues paying tribute to 250 “historically significant” Americans ahead of the country’s quarter millennial anniversary.
“I have signed an executive order to resume the process of creating a new National Park full of statues of the greatest Americans who ever lived,” the president said during his Thursday morning speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, referencing a directive signed last week.
Who Will Be in Trump’s Heroes Garden?
Trump previously ordered the creation on the National Garden of American Heroes in the final days of his first term, having announced the idea and solicited suggestions for who should feature months earlier.
The final list contained 244 names—one for each year since the country’s founding—of those who embodied “the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love.”
It featured icons across various fields, including athletes like Muhammad Ali, Kobe Bryant and Babe Ruth; musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Johnny Cash; literary and cultural luminaries like Hannah Arendt and Walt Whitman; as well as other pioneering Americans such as Amelia Earhart and Neil Armstrong.
Andrew Jackson and Christopher Columbus—historically recognized for their mistreatment of Native Americans—are listed alongside influential Native American figures such as Sitting Bull and Sacagawea.
Multiple abolitionists and civil rights champions were also included, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
As well as the Founding Fathers themselves—whose statues Trump said had been “desecrated”—the list includes numerous lawmakers and presidents such as Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.
The president’s recent executive order reviving his planned park stated that an additional six names would be suggested to him by Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Vince Haley to “bring the total number of heroes to 250.”
What to Know
Congress didn’t get funding for the park, and plans for the National Garden of American Heroes were swiftly axed once Joe Biden took office.
Trump’s recent executive order stated that the park should be constructed “as expeditiously as possible,” amending the phrasing of the 2021 directive, which said this should be done “prior to the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.”
What People Are Saying
“Belief in the greatness and goodness of America has come under attack in recent months and years by a dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity,” Trump wrote in the January 2021 executive order, which followed a summer marked by the toppling of several statues linked to America’s history of slavery.
“The National Garden is America’s answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life,” the order continued.
“We are going to be honoring our heroes, honoring the greatest people from our country,” Trump said on Thursday. “We’re not going to be tearing down we’re going to be building up.”
James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told the Washington Post in 2020 that Trump’s provisional list of honorees ranged “from odd to probably inappropriate to provocative,” and suggested that historians should have been consulted when drafting the selection.
What Happens Next
As well as the establishment of the park, the January 29 order outlines the creation of a White House Task Force, or Task Force 250, which will be chaired by the president and convene regularly to plan celebrations for America’s 250th birthday.
Trump also reinstated Executive Order 13933, which aimed at increasing the response from the federal government to acts of vandalism against monuments, memorials and statues.
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