President Donald Trump is again wading into the debate around Columbus Day.
In an April 27 post on Truth Social, Trump said he’s “bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.”
A federal holiday since 1892, Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October. But some states and cities have celebrated the date as Indigenous Peoples Day, or celebrate both, amid concerns that honoring Italian explorer Christopher Columbus glorifies the exploitation and genocide of native peoples.
Trump’s focus on Columbus Day comes as his administration has targeted alleged “woke” policies and institutions, including eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the federal government and withholding federal funding from universities over policies he disagrees with.
Trump on Columbus: ‘Christopher is going to make a major comeback’
Former President Joe Biden recognized Indigenous Peoples Day in a 2021 proclamation, becoming the first president to do so. In his Columbus Day proclamation that year, Biden acknowledged “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”
“It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them,” the proclamation continued.
Biden also said the day should be one of reflection on the “courage and contributions of Italian Americans throughout the generations.”
Trump has complained for years that Columbus, who landed in the Americas in 1492, is being mistreated as his legacy is re-evaluated.
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“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy,” Trump said in a 2020 Columbus Day proclamation. “These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions.”
Trump has railed against what he described as an effort by Democrats to “destroy” the explorer’s reputation, saying his political rivals “tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all!”
“You’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!”
Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Trump says he is bringing back Columbus Day ‘from the ashes’
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