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One of personages repeatedly targeted for erasure in the American left's violent iconoclasm in 2020 has at last found asylum on the White House grounds, thanks to President Donald Trump and some other unrelenting American patriots.
Toppling giants
Liberals appear to have no issue raising and keeping statues in public spaces so long as they are culturally, morally, and/or historically subversive.
Take, for example, the golden statue of a horned monster that was erected atop the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in January 2023.
The dehumanized figure — which Pakistani-born propagandist Shahzia Sikander purportedly designed to capture the "spirit" of the movement seeking to legalize abortion across the United States — was celebrated by radicals in and outside the courthouse. Claire Bishop, professor of art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, excitedly told the New York Times, "Maybe she can help channel us back to reinstating Roe v. Wade."
Another statue that liberal activists not only tolerated but celebrated was the ram-headed Baphomet statue the Satanic Temple installed at the Iowa Capitol along with a satanic altar ahead of Christmas that same year.
While evidently unperturbed by demonic imagery, liberal activists have evidenced an aversion in recent years to sculptures reminiscent of America's proud past, noble beginnings, and Christian character.
'These monuments matter.'
Amid the Black Lives Matter-bannered deracination campaign of 2020, radicals vandalized and/or toppled — in many cases through official actions — numerous statutes across the country, including those depicting Spanish missionary Junípero Serra and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
Christopher Columbus — the Italian "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" who sailed under the Spanish flag and whose four transatlantic voyages set the stage for American civilization — was one of the 2020 iconoclasts' most popular targets.
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In Baltimore, masked thugs marched through the city's Little Italy neighborhood on July 4, 2020, then toppled a Columbus statue dedicated in 1984 by former Mayor William Donald Schaefer and President Ronald Reagan — a destructive act brushed off by city officials.
After tearing down the statue and jumping on the broken Italian Carrara marble likeness of the explorer, the cheering mob threw the remains into the harbor.
The incident took place just days after President Donald Trump, then in his first term, issued an executive order aimed at protecting such statues from destruction — an order where he stated that extremists' "selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past."
Stoop and build 'em up
Some Americans proved unwilling to let the tide wash away American history.
Tilghman Hemsley, a local painter, sculptor, and fisherman, hired a dive team to recover the broken pieces, which were taken to his family's art studio. Hemsley's son, Will, used scans of the recovered pieces to create a replica of the 13-foot statue.
The New York Times reported that the recreation project received $30,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which awarded funds in October 2020 "to help repair and restore statues of iconic historical figures that have been damaged or vandalized, and to construct new ones, in an effort to revitalize public interest in American history in advance of the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026."
Bill Martin, an Italian-American businessman, told the Washington Post that he and his allies also chipped in, raising and spending over $100,000 on the recovery and restoration efforts.
John Pica Jr., the president of Italian American Organizations United — the group that not only commissioned and owned the original statue but reportedly backed the reconstruction efforts — told the Associated Press that he was contacted in 2025 by a middleman who indicated the White House was seeking a statue of Columbus.
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Basil Russo, president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, had reportedly reached out to the Trump administration after Baltimore officials refused to install the replica in public.
'In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero.'
"Columbus statues have long stood as symbols of pride and cultural identity for more than 18 million Americans of Italian descent," Russo said in a statement.
"For over a century, Columbus' legacy helped Italian immigrants navigate prejudice and hardship, serving as a source of unity and belonging as they built new lives in this country," Russo continued. "Columbus Day itself emerged in the aftermath of the 1891 New Orleans lynching, when 11 Italian immigrants were killed by a mob of thousands, an event that prompted a national effort to promote the acceptance and assimilation of Italian Americans. This history remains central to why these monuments matter."
Working in coordination with the Italian American Organizations United, the COPOMIAO gifted the statue to the White House.
On Sunday, the statue — which was reportedly transported to the White House by Tilghman and Will Hemsley along with Randsallstown resident Jeff Bayer — was installed on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House.
Trump thanked the COPOMIAO in a letter on Sunday for its "incredible generosity in gifting the Federal Government a beautiful statue of Christopher Columbus," noting that he is "truly honored that this magnificent statue will now sit on the grounds of the White House."
The president said further that the statue will "stand as an eternal memorial to courage, adventure, and the noblest aspirations of the human spirit as well as the extraordinary pride of our wonderful Italian American community."
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Times in a statement Sunday, "In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero, and President Trump will ensure he's honored as such for generations to come."
Tilghman Hemsley told the Baltimore Sun that the statue's installation "was very climactic and it was very fulfilling."
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An alumni group is questioning the academic value of a course on offer at the taxpayer-subsidized University of Virginia — a course taught by a non-straight poet who apparently encourages students to consult animals about their supposed oppression.
The Jefferson Council, an alumni group "committed to leading the University of Virginia back to Thomas Jefferson’s legacy of freedom and excellence," noted Wednesday on X, "A course titled 'Ecofeminist Poetry & Poetics' being taught this spring at the University of Virginia has students 'listen' to plants and animals to better understand how 'settler colonialism' and slavery 'thrive off of the intrinsic interconnectedness between species.'"
'Birds, goats, willow oaks, and lichen will accompany us through the semester.'
"This is a real taxpayer-funded class," the group continued. "Is this what higher education has become?"
The description for the graduate course on the UVA English department's website — which contains quotes from identitarian feminist and LGBT activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs — states:
This interdisciplinary course will interweave brief readings from ecofeminist theory, ecopoetics, and black and indigenous environmental theories with books of contemporary ecofeminist poetry. This curriculum will encourage each of us to see what happens when we “rethink and re-feel,” writes Gumbs, our own “relations, possibilities, and practices” in conversation with the more-than-human world.
The course syllabus notes that "birds, goats, willow oaks, and lichen will accompany us through the semester as we too attempt to listen across species," reported the College Fix.
University records show that associate professor Brian Teare, a "queer"-identifying climate alarmist who specializes in environmental humanities and "queer theory," has taught versions of the ecofeminist course for several years.
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John Gardner, president of the Jefferson Council, told the College Fix, "It is surprising to the extent that such an inane and clearly agenda-based politicized course could find its way into the curricula of any respectable institute of higher learning."
"It is not surprising to the extent that over the past decade or more the increasingly left-wing politicized faculties of most universities have turned their curricula into woke fantasylands," added Gardner.
'It is more suitable to be a course taught in Orwell’s "1984."'
Teare and the university did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
Gardner referred to three other radical courses at the university that warrant concern: "Women and Gender in the Deaf World"; "Gender, Body Image, and Social Activism"; and "Queer Judaism," which poses the question, "What if we approached Judaism as a queer religion?"
"There are many others with the common theme that they are mostly narrowly focused on allegedly marginalized ‘identity groups’ based on race, gender, or ethnicity and are often intended to promote a predetermined agenda," said Gardner.
The alumni group's president noted that Thomas Jefferson founded the university because "he felt it was important to have an educated and informed citizenry to sustain a successful republic."
Gardner suggested that courses like Teare's "are not meant to follow truth, but to advance a political/social agenda. It is more suitable to be a course taught in Orwell’s '1984' than at Mr. Jefferson’s university."
In 2025, UVA received over $338 million dollars in funding from the state.
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Prejudice is an inescapable concept. We all have prejudices. The question is, are they the right ones?Today's top stories
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