Trump's Mount Rushmore ambitions and the clash over American cultural identity

The Trump administration has cut public funding to cultural institutions like museums and libraries, threatening to withhold federal support unless they promote a 'dominant' culture celebrating 'American exceptionalism.' This echoes Trump's long-standing fixation on Mount Rushmore, where he once sought to have his face carved alongside Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. The monument, carved by Gutzon Borglum between 1927 and 1941 on the sacred Black Hills of the Sioux Lakota, draws 2.5 million visitors annually. A Republican congresswoman recently proposed a bill to add Trump, but the fragile rock face and lack of space make it unlikely. Instead, Trump signed an executive order for a National Garden of American Heroes nearby, with 250 life-sized statues and a $40 million budget pending Senate approval. This reopens the wound of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which recognized Sioux ownership of the Black Hills before the U.S. seized the land for gold. The 1980 Supreme Court ruling offered over $1 billion in compensation, which tribes refused, still claiming land rights. Meanwhile, the Crazy Horse Memorial, begun in 1948 by Korczak Ziolkowski (who worked on Rushmore) for Chief Henry Standing Bear, remains unfinished but hosts the Indian Museum of North America and a Native American cultural center, resisting monoculture.