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'We're Back, Italians': Trump Signs Columbus Day Proclamation

President Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Thursday proclaiming the second Monday of October as ‘Columbus Day.’
Kelly McBride Ni
By
Kelly McBride Ni
Published: 10/9/2025, 10:49:47 PM EDT
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a proclamation restoring Columbus Day as a full celebration of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, drawing applause from Cabinet members, White House staff, and even members of the press.

The signing took place ahead of a Cabinet meeting.

“Today we have your Columbus Day proclamation for Monday, which we’re signing a bit early,” White House staff secretary Will Scharf told the president before the signing.

Acknowledging that “some say it’s controversial,” Trump reaffirmed his commitment to celebrating Columbus’s legacy.

With the signing, the president formally designated Oct. 13 as Columbus Day, calling on Americans to observe it with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

Scharf described Columbus as “a great Italian explorer” whose 1492 voyage across the Atlantic is a “particularly important holiday for Italian Americans who celebrate the legacy of Christopher Columbus and the innovation and explorer zeal that he represented.”

After signing the document, Trump said, “In other words, we’re calling it Columbus Day,” to cheers from the room. “I’ve never seen that happen. The press actually broke out in applause. Good. Columbus Day. We’re back. Columbus Day. We’re back, Italians. We love the Italians.”

The proclamation honored Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization,” and pledged to reclaim his legacy of faith, courage, and perseverance from those who, it said, sought to “destroy his name and dishonor his memory.”

It condemned recent efforts to erase Columbus from public life, noting that his statues had been defaced and his reputation attacked.

“Under my leadership, those days are finally over,” the document stated. “Our Nation will now abide by a simple truth: Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination.”

The proclamation also celebrated “the countless Italian-Americans who, like him, have endlessly contributed to our culture and our way of life,” and emphasized the enduring bond between the United States and Italy, “rooted in the timeless values of faith, family, and freedom.”

Promise Made by Trump

The move fulfills Trump’s promise earlier this year to “bring Columbus Day back from the ashes,” after stating that Democrats were tarnishing the explorer’s legacy. “They tore down his statues and put up nothing but ‘woke,’ or even worse, nothing at all,” Trump said in an April post on Truth Social.
Statues of Christopher Columbus have been removed or vandalized in multiple U.S. cities in recent years, including Boston, Chicago, and Richmond, especially during the summer of 2020, when George Floyd protests took place.
Efforts to shift the focus from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day have been traced back to 1977 at a U.N.-sponsored conference in Geneva, Switzerland, known as the International NGO Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations. The proposal at the U.N. conference was to observe Indigenous Peoples Day in place of, or in opposition to, Columbus Day.

Berkeley, California, became the first city to officially recognize Indigenous Peoples Day in 1992. Since then, other cities and states have adopted the observance. In 2021, President Joe Biden was the first president to issue a federal proclamation officially recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day on Oct. 11, issuing one each year during his presidency.