President Trump announced Sunday that he is "bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes" and that he will not recognize Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day in October, the AP reports. "The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much," Trump said in a social media post promising all that is over now. He said, per Yahoo News, that "Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!"
Columbus Day never actually went anywhere. The second Monday in October has remained "Columbus Day" on the federal calendar, but during President Biden's term, it was also known as Indigenous Peoples Day. Activists have long sought to shift the focus away from Columbus' navigation to the Americas and, instead, to bring attention to the exploitation of Indigenous peoples that followed. Biden was the first president to officially mark Indigenous Peoples Day, and in 2021, he issued a proclamation celebrating "the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples" and recognizing "their inherent sovereignty."
Biden's proclamation said: America "was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people" but admitted, "that promise we have never fully lived up to. That is especially true when it comes to upholding the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long before colonization of the Americas began." Trump, however, has objected to discussing American history through what the AP calls a lens of diversity and oppression. Columbus never actually made it to North America, but the Genoa native became a symbol as Italian immigrants arrived in America, and the first Columbus Day celebration in 1891 followed the lynching of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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