National Garden of American Heroes

Trump's order said that the proposed garden would be managed by the Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes, which will allocate funding from the Interior Department to establish the site. Members of the task force will include chairs of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, the Administrator of General Services, the chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and any additional "officers or employees of any executive department or agency" designated by the president.[12] Trump described the garden as a response to the practice of removing monuments and memorials to Confederate figures and others; many such monuments were removed in 2020 as part of a response to the George Floyd protests.[4][12] In his Mount Rushmore speech announcing the proposal, Trump claimed that "Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities" and pledged to build "a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live."[11]

Under Executive Order 13934 signed by Trump on July 3, 2020, the task force was granted 60 days to develop preliminary plans for the site, including a potential location,[13] and was to open before July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.[12] However, the garden is highly unlikely to be built. Congress has not appropriated any money for such a project and the Biden administration is unlikely to pursue it.[6]

Historians questioned the scattershot nature of Trump's proposal; James R. Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that "The choices vary from odd to probably inappropriate to provocative" and suggested that the proposal was an attempt by Trump to "to seize on a cultural conflict to distract from other issues" during an election season, as suggested by the short (60-day) timetable that Trump set forth in his order.[11] Historian Karen Cox described the executive order about the proposed monument as "random" and said that "Nothing about this suggests it's thoughtful."[11] Historian Adam Domby noted Trump's initial list included no Native Americans, and included Patton but omitted Eisenhower.[11]

The premise of Trump's proposal was criticized by historian Michael Beschloss, who wrote that "No president of the United States or federal government has any business dictating us citizens who our historical heroes should be. This is not Stalin's Russia. Any American who loves democracy should make sure there is never some official, totalitarian-sounding 'National Garden of American Heroes,' with names forced upon us by the federal government."[10]

• 1776 Commission
• Hall of Fame for Great Americans
• National Statuary Hall
  • National Statuary Hall Collection