Fact-Checking Trump's Claims About Columbus Day

New York Times

28-04-2025

President Trump declared on Sunday that he would bring 'Columbus Day back from the ashes' and reinstate its celebration as a holiday.
'I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!' the president said in a post on Truth Social, referring to the federal holiday named for Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer who sailed to the Americas on behalf of Spain more than 500 years ago.
The holiday has long been criticized by those who condemn the explorer for paving the way for European colonialism, which brought catastrophic diseases and led to the decimation of Indigenous populations in America.
But Columbus Day was never canceled as a federal holiday, and the second Monday in October is still widely referred to as such in the United States, and for many, it remains an important part of Italian American heritage.
With his declaration, Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to a proclamation issued by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2021. That decree also recognized the day as Indigenous Peoples' Day, which recognizes the Indigenous communities that have lived in the Americas for thousands of years, and called for it to be celebrated alongside Columbus Day.
'The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,' Mr. Trump claimed in his social media post on Sunday.
In 2021, Mr. Biden became the first American president to formally recognize Indigenous Peoples' Day, vowing to 'honor America's first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today.'
But Mr. Biden did not rename the longstanding holiday, which is still officially known as Columbus Day. While several states and dozens of cities recognize the holiday as Indigenous Peoples' Day, it is not considered a federal holiday, though there have been occasional efforts in Congress to make it one.
Mr. Biden's 2021 declaration came amid heightened public debate about the erasure of Indigenous people in celebrations of Christopher Columbus, whose landing in North America led to centuries of exploitation and slaughter of Native American populations. At the time, dozens of Christopher Columbus statues were taken down, many in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the death of George Floyd in May 2020.