By Suzanne Downing 
President Donald Trump on Friday issued a proclamation designating Monday, Oct. 13, as Columbus Day, calling for Americans to honor the explorer’s life and legacy and to restore his place in national memory.
“I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes…” Trump wrote on social media.
In the proclamation, Trump described Christopher Columbus as “the original American hero” and “a giant of Western civilization,” crediting his 1492 voyage with paving the way for the creation of the United States centuries later. The president said the day is meant to celebrate Columbus’s courage, faith, and perseverance, and to reject what he called efforts to “erase our history” and “slander our heroes.”
Trump’s message contrasted sharply with recent years, when many Democratic-led cities and states replaced Columbus Day with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” arguing that honoring Columbus ignores the suffering of Native peoples that followed European colonization.
During his first term, Trump defended Columbus monuments and criticized efforts to remove them, and his latest proclamation signals a return to that position under his new administration.
Columbus, born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451, secured funding from Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella to attempt a westward route to Asia. He set sail in August 1492 with three ships – the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria – and landed in the Bahamas two months later, believing he had reached the East Indies. His voyage connected Europe and the Americas, opening a new era of exploration and colonization.
Trump’s proclamation also recognized the contributions of Italian Americans and reaffirmed the historic bond between the United States and Italy, describing their relationship as rooted in “faith, family, and freedom.”
Columbus Day has been a federal holiday since 1934, established by Congress and later set to the second Monday of October under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968. The proclamation calls on Americans to display the US flag and to mark the day “with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”
With the declaration, Trump reasserted his administration’s intent to “reclaim Columbus’s extraordinary legacy” and restore the explorer’s image as a symbol of exploration, courage, and Western civilization’s influence on the modern world.