More On:

executive orders

Ghost guns, Nazi items, nearly $1M in meth seized at Pennsylvania home

Biden raises minimum wage for federal contracts to $15 an hour

Biden declares, ‘No amendment to Constitution is absolute’ as he rolls out gun measures

What Biden’s executive actions on guns are expected to target

President Joe Biden has revoked a trio of executive orders issued by former President Donald Trump that sought to punish vandalism of statues and to build a new National Garden of American Heroes.

A July 2020 order envisioned a National Garden of American Heroes that “should be located on a site of natural beauty that enables visitors to enjoy nature, walk among the statues, and be inspired to learn about great figures of America’s history.”

A follow-up Trump order in January specified that the statue garden would honor, among other notables, Kobe Bryant, Julia Child, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Alex Trebek.

Biden’s decision was announced in a Friday afternoon email nearly a year after nationwide anti-police brutality protests resulted in widespread damage to monuments, especially those honoring slaveholders.

Trump often claimed his now-revoked June 2020 order ended a wave of vandalism by ordering the Justice Department “to prosecute to the fullest extent” any person “that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue.”

The order was a common campaign-trail talking point. Trump said it breathed new life into laws that carried penalties of 10 years in prison.

“When I signed the executive order outlining 10-year prison sentences, as an example, for destroying monuments and statues, it immediately stopped,” Trump boasted at an August press conference.

“That was three months ago or so. I signed an order, and it said, ‘Ten years in prison.’ Ten years if you knock down a statue. It immediately stopped. I mean, to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t seen it happening for about that time. They were going to have a big march on Washington. They canceled that march. They said 10 years is too long.”

Trump signed the order less than a week after activists attempted to topple an 1853 statue of President Andrew Jackson, who was a slaver, near the White House. Activists also planned to pull down an 1876 Abraham Lincoln statue in DC that was paid for by freed slaves. The Lincoln statue was criticized for its depiction of an ex-slave.

Share this article:

Source: Read Full Article