"I will sign an executive order to bring back our National Garden of American Heroes, which we want to build very badly, and commission artists for the first 100 statues to populate this new statuary park honoring the greatest Americans of all time."
President Donald Trump's vast tax and spending law awards $40 million to the National Garden of American Heroes, a project Trump has promised since his first term.
In 2021, days before leaving office, Trump signed an order directing the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes for the U.S.'s 250th birthday in 2026. Congress never passed funding, and President Joe Biden rescinded the order in 2021.
On Jan. 29, Trump reinstated his previous executive order and told the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts to partner on the garden's construction.
The garden's funding comes from canceled federal grants that originally supported arts and cultural groups. The Trump administration notified hundreds of arts groups in May that these grants would cease.
"The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President," the administration told the arts groups by email, as reported by news outlets. "Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities."
The NEH and NEA said the garden's construction would cost $34 million, with some statues costing up to $200,000 each and others donated from states, businesses and other entities. The statues will be made of marble, granite, bronze, copper or brass, and depict "historical figures tied to the accomplishments of the United States," the groups said in April.
Trump's first-term order included 244 names for potential inclusion in the garden, including presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, inventors Alexander Graham Bell and Wilbur and Orville Wright, and athletes such as Kobe Bryant. PolitiFact reported the list was 78% men.
The White House has not announced changes to the original list. Trump's January order directed domestic policy advisers to recommend six additional names to round the list to 250 in honor of the 2026 semiquincentennial.
U.S. citizens had until July 1 to apply for grant funding to build statues.
It's still unclear where the garden will be located. In March, Gov. Larry Rhoden, R-S.D., proposed the Black Hills near Mount Rushmore in a letter to Trump. Indigenous groups oppose this proposal.
The NEH and NEA have not publicly commented on the possibility of the garden's construction in the Black Hills, but said they plan to start the project Oct. 1. The organizations estimated the project will take eight months to complete.
We'll continue to monitor the status of Trump's long-awaited promise. We rate this promise In the Works.
RELATED: MAGA-Meter: Trump's Second Term
In a Jan. 29 executive order, President Donald Trump revived a plan from his first term to construct a national garden honoring American heroes ahead of the United States' 250th anniversary next year.
Trump's order created an Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes to plan for the construction of the garden "as expeditiously as possible."
The promise is one of 75 Trump made that PolitiFact will track on the MAGA-Meter. Over the next four years, we will periodically evaluate the new administration's progress on Trump's 2024 campaign promises, just as we did with Barack Obama, Trump during his first term, and Joe Biden.
On his second-to-last day in office in 2021, Trump issued Executive Order 13978, which called for creating a national garden that would "reflect the awesome splendor of our country's timeless exceptionalism." However, Congress did not pass funding for the memorial, and the idea fizzled before a site was chosen. President Joe Biden revoked the order in May 2021.
During Trump's 2024 campaign, he pledged to revive the National Garden of Heroes idea. He first proposed the idea of a national garden honoring American figures during a 2020 Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore. The announcement came amid a wave of Black Lives Matter protests, during which statues of Confederate leaders were taken down or vandalized nationwide.
According to the 2021 executive order, the National Garden is "America's answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life."
Trump formalized the idea of a national garden in a July 2020 executive order aimed at restoring and rebuilding some defaced monuments of controversial historical figures. This order listed 31 as possible honorees for the Trump-appointed national garden task force to consider.
The garden, as designed, would contain sculptures of 250 Americans; 244 of whom were named in the 2021 executive order. The list includes Presidents George Washington and John F. Kennedy; U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; athletes Kobe Bryant, Muhammad Ali, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth; activists Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman; scientist Albert Einstein, author Edgar Allen Poe; singer Whitney Houston; and "Jeopardy" host Alex Trebek.
In the current list, 78% of the honorees are men. The list does not include Confederate generals; CBS reported that Trump collaborated with local politicians and community leaders to make the list of heroes.
Since issuing the Jan. 29 order, Trump has organized a task force to oversee the project and formally choose the 250 honorees. The project still needs a site and funding. For now, we're rating this promise as In the Works.