Trump revives plans for statue garden featuring 250 'American Heroes': Who would be included?

(NEXSTAR) – During his second week in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to revive plans to build a “National Garden of American Heroes,” a project he first ordered during the final year of his first presidential term.

The initial plan, as outlined in a June 2020 executive order, was to open the statue garden by the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. During a speech at Mount Rushmore the following month, Trump suggested that his decision to sign the order came in response to what he described as “cancel culture” by “angry mobs” looking to “wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”

These remarks came only months after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. At the time, several monuments or statues across the country had become the target of attacks, especially those that honored figures who themselves had supported slavery.

Funding for the project, however, was never approved by Congress. President Joe Biden eventually squashed plans for the project after taking office in 2021.

On Jan. 29, 2025, however, Trump signed Executive Order 14189, which, among other things, reinstated plans for the garden, to be executed “as expeditiously as possible.”  

Trump also mentioned the project during the National Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Thursday.

“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. We’re going to be honoring our heroes, honoring the greatest people from our country. We’re not going to be tearing down, we’re going to be building up,” Trump said.

“I hope that Congress will fund this wonderfully unifying project,” he later added.

The latest executive order does not list the Americans whom the garden intends to honor with statues. But a previous order, signed by Trump just before he left office in January 2021, listed 244 names.

The list included artists, politicians, astronauts, sports figures, religious leaders, authors, entertainers, inventors, businessmen, and more:

• Ansel Adams
• John Adams
• Samuel Adams
• Muhammad Ali
• Luis Walter Alvarez
• Susan B. Anthony
• Hannah Arendt
• Louis Armstrong
• Neil Armstrong
• Crispus Attucks
• John James Audubon
• Lauren Bacall
• Clara Barton
• Todd Beamer
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Roy Benavidez
• Ingrid Bergman
• Irving Berlin
• Humphrey Bogart
• Daniel Boone
• Norman Borlaug
• William Bradford
• Herb Brooks
• Kobe Bryant
• William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Sitting Bull
• Frank Capra
• Andrew Carnegie
• Charles Carroll
• John Carroll
• George Washington Carver
• Johnny Cash
• Joshua Chamberlain
• Whittaker Chambers
• Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman
• Ray Charles
• Julia Child
• Gordon Chung-Hoon
• William Clark
• Henry Clay
• Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
• Roberto Clemente
• Grover Cleveland
• Red Cloud
• William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody
• Nat King Cole
• Samuel Colt
• Christopher Columbus
• Calvin Coolidge
• James Fenimore Cooper
• Davy Crockett
• Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.
• Miles Davis
• Dorothy Day
• Joseph H. De Castro
• Emily Dickinson
• Walt Disney
• William “Wild Bill” Donovan
• Jimmy Doolittle
• Desmond Doss
• Frederick Douglass
• Herbert Henry Dow
• Katharine Drexel
• Peter Drucker
• Amelia Earhart
• Thomas Edison
• Jonathan Edwards
• Albert Einstein
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Duke Ellington
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Medgar Evers
• David Farragut
• The Marquis de La Fayette
• Mary Fields
• Henry Ford
• George Fox
• Aretha Franklin
• Benjamin Franklin
• Milton Friedman
• Robert Frost
• Gabby Gabreski
• Bernardo de Gálvez
• Lou Gehrig
• Theodor Seuss Geisel
• Cass Gilbert
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• John Glenn
• Barry Goldwater
• Samuel Gompers
• Alexander Goode
• Carl Gorman
• Billy Graham
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Nellie Gray
• Nathanael Greene
• Woody Guthrie
• Nathan Hale
• William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr.
• Alexander Hamilton
• Ira Hayes
• Hans Christian Heg
• Ernest Hemingway
• Patrick Henry
• Charlton Heston
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Billie Holiday
• Bob Hope
• Johns Hopkins
• Grace Hopper
• Sam Houston
• Whitney Houston
• Julia Ward Howe
• Edwin Hubble
• Daniel Inouye
• Andrew Jackson
• Robert H. Jackson
• Mary Jackson
• John Jay
• Thomas Jefferson
• Steve Jobs
• Katherine Johnson
• Barbara Jordan
• Chief Joseph
• Elia Kazan
• Helen Keller
• John F. Kennedy
• Francis Scott Key
• Coretta Scott King
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Russell Kirk
• Jeane Kirkpatrick
• Henry Knox
• Tadeusz Kościuszko
• Harper Lee
• Pierre Charles L'Enfant
• Meriwether Lewis
• Abraham Lincoln
• Vince Lombardi
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Clare Boothe Luce
• Douglas MacArthur
• Dolley Madison
• James Madison
• George Marshall
• Thurgood Marshall
• William Mayo
• Christa McAuliffe
• William McKinley
• Louise McManus
• Herman Melville
• Thomas Merton
• George P. Mitchell
• Maria Mitchell
• William “Billy” Mitchell
• Samuel Morse
• Lucretia Mott
• John Muir
• Audie Murphy
• Edward Murrow
• John Neumann
• Annie Oakley
• Jesse Owens
• Rosa Parks
• George S. Patton, Jr.
• Charles Willson Peale
• William Penn
• Oliver Hazard Perry
• John J. Pershing
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Clark Poling
• John Russell Pope
• Elvis Presley
• Jeannette Rankin
• Ronald Reagan
• Walter Reed
• William Rehnquist
• Paul Revere
• Henry Hobson Richardson
• Hyman Rickover
• Sally Ride
• Matthew Ridgway
• Jackie Robinson
• Norman Rockwell
• Caesar Rodney
• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Betsy Ross
• Babe Ruth
• Sacagawea
• Jonas Salk
• John Singer Sargent
• Antonin Scalia
• Norman Schwarzkopf
• Junípero Serra
• Elizabeth Ann Seton
• Robert Gould Shaw
• Fulton Sheen
• Alan Shepard
• Frank Sinatra
• Margaret Chase Smith
• Bessie Smith
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Jimmy Stewart
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Gilbert Stuart
• Anne Sullivan
• William Howard Taft
• Maria Tallchief
• Maxwell Taylor
• Tecumseh
• Kateri Tekakwitha
• Shirley Temple
• Nikola Tesla
• Jefferson Thomas
• Henry David Thoreau
• Jim Thorpe
• Augustus Tolton
• Alex Trebek
• Harry S. Truman
• Sojourner Truth
• Harriet Tubman
• Dorothy Vaughan
• C. T. Vivian
• John von Neumann
• Thomas Ustick Walter
• Sam Walton
• Booker T. Washington
• George Washington
• John Washington
• John Wayne
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett
• Phillis Wheatley
• Walt Whitman
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Roger Williams
• John Winthrop
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Orville Wright
• Wilbur Wright
• Alvin C. York
• Cy Young
• Lorenzo de Zavala

Speaking with the Washington Post after the list was revealed, James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, described some of the inclusions as “odd,” “probably inappropriate” and “provocative.” New York Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt also pointed out that Woody Guthrie, a suggested honoree, once wrote lyrics for a song called “Old Man Trump” which was about — and critical of — Trump’s father, Fred Trump, accusing him of stirring up “racial hate,” per lyrics published by the Woody Guthrie Center.

“What an incredible self-own,” Sommerfeldt wrote on Twitter (now X) in 2021.

It’s unclear whether the White House is considering making any changes to the aforementioned list of honorees. Trump’s newest executive order concerning the National Garden only stipulated that additional “American Heroes” — as suggested by the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy — be added to the list, for a total of 250.

The earlier executive orders stated that only “lifelike or realistic” statues should be included. The team in charge of the project was told to “consider the availability of authority to encourage and accept the donation or loan of statues by States, localities, civic organizations, businesses, religious organizations, and individuals,” though the statues may also be commissioned.

Potential sites for the garden have yet to be disclosed, but the 2020 executive order said it should be “a site of natural beauty” that’s close to a major population center. There, the order claimed, visitors could enjoy nature while becoming “inspired to learn about great figures of America's history.”

“None will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying,” the order stated.