May 14, 2021 - Politics & Policy

Biden cancels Trump's "National Garden of American Heroes"

Shawna Chen

Photo of a masked Joe Biden sitting in a chair in the Oval Office — Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Biden on Friday abolished the Trump-formed task force to create a new monument, the planned "National Garden of American Heroes."

Flashback: Former President Trump cited "dangerous anti-American extremism" as a motivation behind the sculpture garden, which he said would be "America’s answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values and entire way of life."

Trump proposed statues of "historically significant Americans" including presidents, athletes and pop culture icons including Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson and Betsy Ross.
He also floated the names of Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, two Europeans who contributed to the colonization of North America and Native American genocide.

The big picture: Biden was not expected to move forward with Friday's executive order, which was largely a response to racial justice protests and the controversy over removal of monuments to Confederate leaders, per Politico.

Of note: No location had been selected for Trump's hopeful garden and it had not been funded by Congress.

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Biden cancels Trump's "National Garden of American Heroes"

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