Americans mark Columbus Day on Monday, Oct. 12 — this year falling on the 534th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 landfall in the Bahamas — as President Donald Trump presses ahead with his push to restore the holiday’s place in national life.
Trump hosted Italian American leaders in the East Room of the White House on Friday, Oct. 9. His proclamation declaring Oct. 12 as Columbus Day says the explorer’s voyage “set in motion the forces that would culminate in the miracle of July 4, 1776.”
“Today, the statue stands”
In his remarks, Trump recounted the fate of the marble Columbus statue that stood in Baltimore’s Little Italy. “On July 4th, 2020, a hate-filled mob of radical left lunatics and Marxists, communists, lashed chains around Columbus’s neck, toppled the statue to the ground and dumped the broken remains into Baltimore Harbor,” he said, adding that Italian Americans brought in divers and a crane the next morning to recover the fragments.
Trump said more than $100,000 was raised to build a new statue using the pieces. “Today, the statue stands on White House grounds,” he said. The replica, owned by Italian American Organizations United and loaned to the federal government, was installed in March near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The original had been dedicated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Trump also called Columbus “perhaps the first ever Italian American,” noted that the District of Columbia was named in his honor and accused “the radical left” of wanting to abolish Columbus Day.
A holiday still in dispute
Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1937 and has been observed on the second Monday of October since 1971. Critics point to the colonization and violence that followed Columbus’s arrival for Indigenous peoples, and a growing number of states and cities now mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead. Joe Biden became the first president to formally recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a proclamation in 2021; Trump has vowed to bring Columbus Day “back from the ashes.”
The U.S. Embassy in Türkiye also marked the day, saying Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic “played an important role in shaping American history” and honoring “the spirit of exploration and the historic legacy that has inspired generations.”
In New York, the annual Columbus Day Parade is held on Monday, while in Washington the historic Columbus Fountain outside Union Station was restored this year.
