Trump says Columbus Day will now just be Columbus Day
[April 28, 2025]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
President Donald Trump made clear Sunday that he would not follow his
predecessor's practice of recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day alongside
Columbus Day in October, accusing Democrats of denigrating the
explorer's legacy as he pressed his campaign to restore what he argues
are traditional American icons.
Democrat Joe Biden was the first president to mark Indigenous Peoples
Day, issuing a proclamation in 2021 that celebrated “the invaluable
contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples” and recognize “their
inherent sovereignty.”
The proclamation noted that America “was conceived on a promise of
equality and opportunity for all people” but that promise “we have never
fully lived up to. That is especially true when it comes to upholding
the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long
before colonization of the Americas began.”
Trump on Sunday used a social media post to declare, “I'm bringing
Columbus Day back from the ashes." He said on his Truth Social site that
“the Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus,
his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”
The federal holiday, the second Monday in October, was still known as
Columbus Day during Biden's term, but also as Indigenous Peoples Day.
That's been a longtime goal of activists who wanted to shift the focus
from commemorating Columbus' navigation to the Americas to his and his
successors' exploitation of the indigenous people he encountered there.
Though Trump has long objected to telling the country's history through
a lens of diversity and oppression, the holiday he seeks to restore to
its primacy was added to the calendar as a nod to the country's growing
diversity.
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President Joe Biden hands a pen to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland as
he signs a proclamation on the North Lawn at the White House in
Washington, Oct. 8, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
Columbus’ expeditions never landed on the North American mainland,
let alone any of the places that would become the 50 states. But the
native of Genoa became increasingly commemorated in the United
States as Italian immigrants flocked to the country and politicians
sought to win their support.
Indeed, it was the lynching of 11 Italian-American immigrants in New
Orleans in 1891 that led to the first Columbus Day celebration in
the United States, led the following year by President Benjamin
Harrison. President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated Columbus Day as
a national holiday in 1934.
Trump has long complained about Democrats tearing down statues of
Columbus, a complaint he made again in Sunday's post. In 2017, he
spoke out against a review of the 76-foot-tall statue of the
explorer in New York's Columbus Circle that then-Mayor Bill de
Blasio had ordered. It remains in place today, but other statues
have been defaced or torn down.
In 2020, Trump's administration paid to restore a Columbus statue in
Baltimore that was dumped in the harbor during protests against the
police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
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