Columbus Day was previously commemorated alongside Indigenous People’s Day under former President Joe Biden’s administration.
President Donald Trump said on April 27 that he would bring Columbus Day back “from the ashes,” as he accused the Democrats of tarnishing the reputation of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus.
Columbus Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the second Monday of October to honor Italian-Americans and Christopher Columbus, whose 1492 expedition from Spain reached the Caribbean and marked the beginning of sustained European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
Trump said that he plans to commemorate Columbus Day “under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before,” suggesting that he won’t follow Biden’s practice.
“They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all!”
The federal holiday was still known as Columbus Day during Biden’s term, but also as Indigenous Peoples Day. That was 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.
Biden said it should serve as a reflection of “the courage and contributions of Italian Americans throughout the generations,” as well as “the dignity and resilience of Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”
“These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions,” he stated. “Rather than learn from our history, this radical ideology and its adherents seek to revise it, deprive it of any splendor, and mark it as inherently sinister.”
The Associated Press and Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
