(NEXSTAR) – During his second week in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to revive plans to build a “National Garden of American Heroes,” a project he first ordered during the final year of his first presidential term.

The initial plan, as outlined in a June 2020 executive order, was to open the statue garden by the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. During a speech at Mount Rushmore the following month, Trump suggested that his decision to sign the order came in response to what he described as “cancel culture” by “angry mobs” looking to “wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”

These remarks came only months after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. At the time, several monuments or statues across the country had become the target of attacks, especially those that honored figures who themselves had supported slavery.

Funding for the project, however, was never approved by Congress. President Joe Biden eventually squashed plans for the project after taking office in 2021.

On Jan. 29, 2025, however, Trump signed Executive Order 14189, which, among other things, reinstated plans for the garden, to be executed “as expeditiously as possible.”

Trump also mentioned the project during the National Prayer Breakfast at the White House on Thursday.

“I have signed an executive order to resume the process of creating a new national park full of statues of the greatest Americans who ever lived. We’re going to be honoring our heroes, honoring the greatest people from our country. We’re not going to be tearing down, we’re going to be building up,” Trump said.

“I hope that Congress will fund this wonderfully unifying project,” he later added.

The latest executive order does not list the Americans whom the garden intends to honor with statues. But a

© The Hill