President Donald Trump this weekend reaffirmed his support for the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus, a tribute that has fueled the national debate over how to memorialize the country’s history.

In a social media post Sunday, Trump wished a “Happy Columbus Day to all” and condemned those “ripping down almost all of the beautiful statues of Christopher Columbus” across the country and vowed to end the “plunder,” saying the monuments “are back.”

Several cities have removed statues of Columbus in recent years, including a marble statue in Boston’s North End in 2020, which was beheaded. That same year, protesters in Baltimore took down a bronze Columbus statue and dumped it into the city’s Inner Harbor. Also that year, American Indian Movement protesters pulled a Columbus statue down outside the Minnesota State Capitol.

The White House on Saturday launched a new interactive web page about the story of Columbus’ journey to the Americas, without mention of any offenses committed against Native Americans, including mass killings, forced labor and the introduction of new diseases to the region.

Last week, Trump held an event to commemorate the Italian explorer ahead of the holiday, debuting a 13-foot Columbus statue on the White House grounds.

In 2021, Joe Biden became the first president to mark the holiday as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” a move celebrated by tribal activists but criticized by Republicans, including Trump, as “woke.” In his proclamation, Biden explicitly called out Columbus’ violence against Native Americans in the 15th and 16th centuries, but stopped short of formally renaming Columbus Day.

Trump has railed against any reframing of the holiday, and continues to hail Columbus as a hero and a symbol of the contributions of Italian American immigrants.

Last year, Trump called Columbus “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth,” vowing to bring the holiday named for the explorer “back from the ashes.”

“The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation and all of the Italians that love him so much,” Trump said at the time, referencing Biden’s previous remarks about the holiday.

Meanwhile, Democrats are increasingly recasting the holiday in honor of Native Americans and a reminder of the atrocities committed against them by colonizers. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped the city’s Columbus Day parade — the city’s first sitting mayor to intentionally do so — but paid tribute to Italian Americans over the weekend in a video posted to social media.

Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., observe Indigenous People’s Day on the second Monday in October, five of which do so alongside Columbus Day as a paid holiday. A paid holiday only in honor of Native Americans is observed in Maine, New Mexico, South Dakota and Vermont.

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