By
Margaret Hartmann,
senior editor for Intelligencer who has worked at New York since 2012
Donald Trump looks toward a statue of Benjamin Franklin in the Rose Garden in May.
Since his first term, Donald Trump has been trying to build a “National Garden of American Heroes,” featuring statues of random historic figures he thinks are cool. He announced the idea in 2020, describing it as retaliation against the “angry mobs” tearing down controversial monuments, but Trump’s dream keeps being thwarted. In 2021, Joe Biden reversed his predecessor’s executive order to begin developing the garden. In May 2026, Trump announced the project was back on and he’d found a spot to erect the 250 statues, D.C.’s West Potomac Park. But a lawsuit filed by a group of preservation and cultural-heritage organizations has stalled that plan.
