Megabill includes $40M for Trump's 'Garden of Heroes': Who would be in it?

(NEXSTAR) — Within the several hundreds of pages of the megabill the House is expected to pass on Thursday are a $6,000 tax deduction for seniors, no taxes on tips or overtime pay, big changes to student loans, massive Medicaid cuts, and numerous other provisions.

That includes appropriating $40 million for a "Garden of Heroes" to help celebrate America's upcoming 250th birthday.

What is the 'Garden of Heroes?'

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to revive plans he outlined during his first term to have a "National Garden of American Heroes" built.

Under his 2020 executive order, Trump called for the statue garden to be opened by the U.S.'s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. During a speech at Mount Rushmore in July 2020, Trump suggested that his decision to sign the order came in response to what he described as “cancel culture” by “angry mobs” looking to “wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children.”

These remarks came only months after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. At the time, several monuments or statues across the country had become the target of attacks, especially those that honored figures who themselves had supported slavery.

The project never received funding from Congress, however, and the plans were ultimately squashed by then-President Joe Biden in 2021.

Shortly after returning to office in January, Trump reinstated the plans and called for it to be executed “as expeditiously as possible.”

What would the 'Garden of Heroes' look like, and where would it be?

Trump's first executive order about the garden called for "lifelike or realistic statues," with the possibility of those being donated or loaned "by States, localities, civic organizations, businesses, religious organizations, and individuals,” though the statues may also be commissioned.

According to a commission application by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the life-size statues are to be "made of marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass." The listing, which has since closed, award recipients could receive $200,000 per statue, up to $600,000.

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A location for the Garden of Heroes hasn't been released but Trump's initial order said it should be "of natural beauty" near a major population center. South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden proposed "a location in the Black Hills in [sight] of Mount Rushmore" for the National Garden of American Heroes.

Who would be honored in the 'Garden of Heroes?'

Neither Trump's executive order nor the current version of the megabill outlines exactly who would receive statues in the proposed Garden of Heroes.

The order Trump signed in 2020 does, however, list 244 possible names:

Ansel Adams	Herbert Henry Dow	Barbara Jordan	Norman Rockwell
John Adams	Katharine Drexel	Chief Joseph	Caesar Rodney
Samuel Adams	Peter Drucker	Elia Kazan	Eleanor Roosevelt
Muhammad Ali	Amelia Earhart	Helen Keller	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Luis Walter Alvarez	Thomas Edison	John F. Kennedy	Theodore Roosevelt
Susan B. Anthony	Jonathan Edwards	Francis Scott Key	Betsy Ross
Hannah Arendt	Albert Einstein	Coretta Scott King	Babe Ruth
Louis Armstrong	Dwight D. Eisenhower	Martin Luther King, Jr.	Sacagawea
Neil Armstrong	Duke Ellington	Russell Kirk	Jonas Salk
Crispus Attucks	Ralph Waldo Emerson	Jeane Kirkpatrick	John Singer Sargent
John James Audubon	Medgar Evers	Henry Knox	Antonin Scalia
Lauren Bacall	David Farragut	Tadeusz Kościuszko	Norman Schwarzkopf
Clara Barton	The Marquis de La Fayette	Harper Lee	Junípero Serra
Todd Beamer	Mary Fields	Pierre Charles L’Enfant	Elizabeth Ann Seton
Alexander Graham Bell	Henry Ford	Meriwether Lewis	Robert Gould Shaw
Roy Benavidez	George Fox	Abraham Lincoln	Fulton Sheen
Ingrid Bergman	Aretha Franklin	Vince Lombardi	Alan Shepard
Irving Berlin	Benjamin Franklin	Henry Wadsworth Longfellow	Frank Sinatra
Humphrey Bogart	Milton Friedman	Clare Boothe Luce	Margaret Chase Smith
Daniel Boone	Robert Frost	Douglas MacArthur	Bessie Smith
Norman Borlaug	Gabby Gabreski	Dolley Madison	Elizabeth Cady Stanton
William Bradford	Bernardo de Gálvez	James Madison	Jimmy Stewart
Herb Brooks	Lou Gehrig	George Marshall	Harriet Beecher Stowe
Kobe Bryant	Theodor Seuss Geisel	Thurgood Marshall	Gilbert Stuart
William F. Buckley, Jr.	Cass Gilbert	William Mayo	Anne Sullivan
Sitting Bull	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	Christa McAuliffe	William Howard Taft
Frank Capra	John Glenn	William McKinley	Maria Tallchief
Andrew Carnegie	Barry Goldwater	Louise McManus	Maxwell Taylor
Charles Carroll	Samuel Gompers	Herman Melville	Tecumseh
John Carroll	Alexander Goode	Thomas Merton	Kateri Tekakwitha
George Washington Carver	Carl Gorman	George P. Mitchell	Shirley Temple
Johnny Cash	Billy Graham	Maria Mitchell	Nikola Tesla
Joshua Chamberlain	Ulysses S. Grant	William “Billy” Mitchell	Jefferson Thomas
Whittaker Chambers	Nellie Gray	Samuel Morse	Henry David Thoreau
Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman	Nathanael Greene	Lucretia Mott	Jim Thorpe
Ray Charles	Woody Guthrie	John Muir	Augustus Tolton
Julia Child	Nathan Hale	Audie Murphy	Alex Trebek
Gordon Chung-Hoon	William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr.	Edward Murrow	Harry S. Truman
William Clark	Alexander Hamilton	John Neumann	Sojourner Truth
Henry Clay	Ira Hayes	Annie Oakley	Harriet Tubman
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)	Hans Christian Heg	Jesse Owens	Dorothy Vaughan
Roberto Clemente	Ernest Hemingway	Rosa Parks	C. T. Vivian
Grover Cleveland	Patrick Henry	George S. Patton, Jr.	John von Neumann
Red Cloud	Charlton Heston	Charles Willson Peale	Thomas Ustick Walter
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody	Alfred Hitchcock	William Penn	Sam Walton
Nat King Cole	Billie Holiday	Oliver Hazard Perry	Booker T. Washington
Samuel Colt	Bob Hope	John J. Pershing	George Washington
Christopher Columbus	Johns Hopkins	Edgar Allan Poe	John Washington
Calvin Coolidge	Grace Hopper	Clark Poling	John Wayne
James Fenimore Cooper	Sam Houston	John Russell Pope	Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Davy Crockett	Whitney Houston	Elvis Presley	Phillis Wheatley
Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.	Julia Ward Howe	Jeannette Rankin	Walt Whitman
Miles Davis	Edwin Hubble	Ronald Reagan	Laura Ingalls Wilder
Dorothy Day	Daniel Inouye	Walter Reed	Roger Williams
Joseph H. De Castro	Andrew Jackson	William Rehnquist	John Winthrop
Emily Dickinson	Robert H. Jackson	Paul Revere	Frank Lloyd Wright
Walt Disney	Mary Jackson	Henry Hobson Richardson	Orville Wright
William “Wild Bill” Donovan	John Jay	Hyman Rickover	Wilbur Wright
Jimmy Doolittle	Thomas Jefferson	Sally Ride	Alvin C. York
Desmond Doss	Steve Jobs	Matthew Ridgway	Cy Young
Frederick Douglass	Katherine Johnson	Jackie Robinson	Lorenzo de Zavala

Speaking with the Washington Post after the list was revealed, James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, described some of the inclusions as “odd,” “probably inappropriate” and “provocative.”

New York Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt also pointed out that Woody Guthrie, a suggested honoree, once wrote lyrics for a song called “Old Man Trump” which was about — and critical of — Trump’s father, Fred Trump, accusing him of stirring up “racial hate,” per lyrics published by the Woody Guthrie Center.

How much will the 'Garden of Heroes' cost?

While the megabill that passed through the Senate and awaits final passage in the House appropriates $40 million, the NEH and the National Endowment for the Arts have committed a combined $34 million to create the statue garden.

Will Trump's megabill pass?

Despite House Minority Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) turning his "magic minute" into remarks lasting more than seven hours on Thursday, Trump's "big, beautiful bill" is expected to pass through the House and reach the president's desk.

It has a narrow margin — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can lose only three votes, assuming all members are present for the final vote — but the bill is still expected to pass.

The outcome would be a milestone for the president and his party, a longshot effort to compile a long list of GOP priorities into what they call his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page package. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, with the sweep of Republican control of Congress.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.