Trump orders statue garden honoring national heroes

By Heather Richards | 01/29/2025 06:45 PM EST

The plan resurrects a proposal the president floated at the end of his first term.

President Donald Trump speaks Wednesday in the East Room of the White House in Washington.

President Donald Trump speaks Wednesday in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Evan Vucci/AP

President Donald Trump is resurrecting a plan from his first term to create a statue garden of American heroes as part of a larger celebration of the country’s 250th birthday next year.

The monument garden — with statues honoring 250 people — would include the likeness of figures like Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and Davy Crockett, according to an executive order Trump signed Wednesday. The order also establishes a task force, chaired by the president, to prepare a “grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.”

Dubbed “Task Force 250,” the group will include Vice President JD Vance, senior members of the president’s cabinet, the chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, among others.

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Trump initially called for a “National Garden of American Heroes” during his campaign for reelection in 2020, amid nationwide debates over whether to take down statues celebrating confederates who had fought to uphold slavery during the Civil War. Trump signed executive orders in 2020 and 2021 calling for the garden and establishing a national monument task force.

But a site for the garden was never confirmed, and the plan disintegrated. Democrats in Congress had also refused to provide funding.

Trump’s orders from his first term were later canceled by President Joe Biden.

Trump’s executive order Wednesday also resurrects his 2021 order for the Justice Department to prioritize prosecution of vandalism of monuments and public buildings. That order was a response to nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.

The order Wednesday references vandalism during protests over U.S. support for the Israeli siege on Gaza, such as damage last year to the exterior of the Treasury Department and statues in Lafayette Square.