{"id":539798,"date":"2026-03-23T04:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/539798\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T04:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:19:08","slug":"statue-of-christopher-columbus-installed-on-white-house-grounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/539798\/","title":{"rendered":"Statue of Christopher Columbus installed on White House grounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n A statue of Christopher Columbus<\/a> has been erected outside of an ornate federal office building on the White House grounds \u2014 the latest sign of the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to reshape cultural and historical representations across the nation\u2019s capital<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n The installation of the statue \u2014 which is a replica of one toppled in Baltimore during racial justice protests in 2020 \u2014 occurred over the weekend outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It comes as the Trump administration pushes forward with its efforts to bring back statues<\/a> that were removed in the wake of the protests.\n <\/p>\n

\n President Donald Trump, in a letter published<\/a> by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, praised the group for its \u201cincredible generosity\u201d in bringing the statue to Washington after the original was \u201ctorn down by anti-American rioters.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The New York Times<\/a> in a statement Sunday, \u201cIn this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he\u2019s honored as such for generations to come.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Many statues of Columbus, an Italian often falsely credited as the first overseas explorer to discover America, were taken down at the height of the demonstrations over George Floyd\u2019s murder in 2020. Columbus has long been a contentious figure in history<\/a> for his treatment of Indigenous communities and for his role ushering in European colonization in the Americas.\n <\/p>\n

\n The 13-foot statue recently installed on the White House campus is a copy of a work that was wrenched down from its pedestal and thrown into Baltimore\u2019s harbor in 2020. While it stands across from the Smithsonian\u2019s Renwick Gallery and near the White House building, it\u2019s not accessible for close public viewing and is blocked off by rows of fences.\n <\/p>\n

\n The new work contains pieces of the statue that were retrieved from the Baltimore Harbor, according to a release from the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, which worked with the White House to bring the statue to Washington in celebration of Italian American culture and the United States\u2019 250th anniversary.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cColumbus statues have long stood as symbols of pride and cultural identity for more than 18 million Americans of Italian descent,\u201d the group\u2019s president, Basil Russo, said in a news release. \u201cFor over a century, Columbus\u2019s legacy helped Italian immigrants navigate prejudice and hardship, serving as a source of unity and belonging as they built new lives in this country.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChristopher Columbus was the original American hero and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the Earth,\u201d Trump said in his letter, adding Columbus\u2019 voyage in 1492 \u201ccarried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The installation builds on Trump\u2019s push to bring back statues that were removed in the wake of the Floyd protests. Across the country<\/a>, controversial statues \u2014 especially Confederate monuments \u2014 were removed after the mass demonstrations in 2020.\n <\/p>\n

\n So far, the Trump administration has reinstalled a statue of Confederate officer Albert Pike in Washington, DC, and announced plans to return a Confederate memorial to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A statue of Christopher Columbus has been erected outside of an ornate federal office building on the White…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-539798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}