01-04-2025
Trump order could return toppled Confederate monuments, but not likely in Richmond
The Trump administration last week ordered a federal review of the statues toppled in the wake of George Floyd's murder — an order that could lead to monuments to Confederate leaders being restored.
The big picture: As the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond was the nation's poster child for Confederate monument removal.
Virginia once boasted more " Lost Cause" iconography — falsely recasting the Civil War as a noble regional fight for "states' rights" as opposed to the preservation of slavery — than any other state.
By the numbers: Before the 2020 protests, Virginia had 290 Confederate symbols, including 110 statues, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report.
The state also removed or renamed 141, more than any other.
Richmond had 20, per the count, including 10 statues, half of which were on Monument Avenue. All 10 monuments are gone. The last one, a statue of Confederate Gen. A.P. Hill that stood atop his burial site, was removed in 2022.
Driving the news: Trump signed an executive order Thursday taking aim at the Smithsonian Institution and other federal sites dedicated to America's history.
Besides purging "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian, Trump directed the Department of the Interior to determine whether public monuments or other markers had been removed or changed "to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history."
He directed the agency to reinstate them.
Reality check: The direct impact of Trump's order will be limited, given that few toppled Confederate monuments were ever on federal land, Jesse Holland, author of " The Invisibles" and " Black Men Built the Capitol," tells Axios.
Still, the explicit policy endorsement by the Trump administration could be a powerful catalyst for some states to resurrect them.
Zoom in: The city now owns all the land where Richmond's Confederate statues once stood.
And most of the monuments continue to be stored where they've been for the last nearly five years: in the city's wastewater treatment plant, city spokesperson Julian Walker tells Axios.
The lone exception is the statue of Jefferson Davis that loomed over Monument Avenue for more than 100 years.
