President Donald Trump has pledged to cut government waste, but hasn’t delivered much on that front so far. Even when his administration has cut from seemingly obvious sources—for example, federal funding for arts and humanities—Trump has simply redirected federal spending toward sources closer to his heart.
During his first term, Trump signed executive orders calling for the creation of the National Garden of American Heroes, which was to contain 250 statues of “historically significant Americans…who have contributed positively to America throughout our history.” In April, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) began taking applications from sculptors. The plan is for the garden to open on July 4, 2026—the 250th anniversary of American independence.
That’s a rather ambitious turnaround time. “America doesn’t have enough quality sculptors or museum-caliber foundries to make this happen on Trump’s speedy timeline,” Politico‘s Michael Schaffer wrote this week. “Many U.S. fine-art foundries are booked anywhere from six to 18 months in advance. There also aren’t many of them.” As a result, “faster production often involves partnering with Chinese or other foreign facilities.”
There is also, as yet, no site chosen for the garden (though South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden recommended a plot of land near Mount Rushmore, which its owner offered to donate).
Trump has very exacting standards, dictating that “all statues must be life-size and made of marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass,” and “lifelike or realistic representations of the persons they depict, not abstract or modernist representations.”
“The biggest collection of artisans and fabricators working in Trump’s preferred old-school realist style turns out to be in China, not the U.S.,” Schaffer wrote.
The list of figures to be honored ranges from historical heroes to entertainers and seemingly everyone in between. More to the point, the garden would involve a large expenditure of taxpayer funds.
“The National Endowment for the Humanities has canceled most of its grant programs and started putting staff on administrative leave,” Jennifer Schuessler of the The New York Times reported in April. “[Acting NEH Chairman Michael] McDonald told senior leadership that upward of 85 percent of the agency’s hundreds of current grants were to be canceled.”
But even while making those cuts, the administration is shelling out for the statue garden: Schuessler later reported that the NEH and the National Endowment for the Arts would collectively contribute $34 million to the project.
The NEH application says artists will receive up to $200,000 per commissioned statue and they are expected to start working on October 1. But even apart from the issues with foundry capacity, artists are unlikely to be able to create quality life-size statues on that budget and in that time frame.
Last year, the U.S. Capitol added a seven-foot bronze statue of the evangelist Billy Graham to its halls. The North Carolina state government commissioned the figure in 2020, and it took four years to complete, at a cost of $650,000. Trump’s order is now calling for hundreds of artists to design, sculpt, and smelt hundreds of similar sculptures, at one-third the cost and on a much shorter timeline.
The statute of Graham—who is listed for inclusion in Trump’s garden—is also instructive: There is already a place within the U.S. Capitol for displaying statues of honored Americans, as each state submits two statues for display in the National Statuary Hall. And the statue of Graham cost taxpayers nothing, as the construction was funded entirely by donations to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, with no direct state funding whatsoever.
This should offer lessons for Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. If somebody wants to donate land, they’re free to do so; if others want statues of certain historical Americans included, they’re welcome to give money to the cause. But there’s no reason the federal government has to play a role.
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