President Donald Trump signed legislation Thursday, September 10, 2026, clearing the way for a brand new National Medal of Honor Monument to rise on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The signing ceremony took place not in the capital itself but at the National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, where Trump toured the facility and met with more than a dozen living Medal of Honor recipients before putting pen to paper. The bill, known officially as S. 858 and formally titled the Hershel "Woody" Williams National Medal of Honor Monument Location Act, authorizes the future monument to be built within the Reserve, the tightly protected area of the National Mall that already houses some of the country's most iconic memorials. Notably, the legislation itself does not construct the monument, it simply authorizes its location, with the actual building phase and design competition still to come.

The law's namesake carries deep symbolic weight. Hershel "Woody" Williams was a Marine Corps flamethrower operator who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the brutal Battle of Iwo Jima in February 1945, repeatedly returning to friendly lines for more equipment as he knocked out one fortified Japanese position after another under relentless fire. Trump recounted the harrowing danger of that role during the ceremony, noting that roughly 300 flamethrower operators served at Iwo Jima and suffered a casualty rate exceeding 90 percent. Williams went on to become the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from World War II before his death in 2022 at the age of 98, and lawmakers chose to attach his name to the bill as a lasting tribute to his legacy.

The location chosen for the monument carries its own historical significance, as it will be placed near the Lincoln Memorial specifically to honor the enduring legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the president who awarded the very first Medals of Honor back in 1863 during the Civil War. The legislation passed both chambers of Congress with unanimous, bipartisan support, a rare showing of consensus led in part by Utah Representative Blake Moore and West Virginia Senator Jim Justice. Importantly, the bill specifies that no federal funds will be used to build the monument, with construction costs instead covered entirely by the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation through private fundraising. With the bill now signed, the National Park Service will work to identify the exact site near the Lincoln Memorial while the Foundation launches a design competition that accounts for sightlines to the Mall's other historic monuments.

The scale of the honor being commemorated is itself striking, fewer than 4,000 Medals of Honor have been awarded across the entire history of the United States military since 1861, even though more than 40 million Americans have served in uniform during that span. Despite that extraordinary rarity, no dedicated national monument on the Mall has ever specifically honored the recipients of the nation's highest military decoration for valor, until now. Trump emphasized during the ceremony that the new monument, paired with the existing museum, will ensure the sacrifices of Medal of Honor recipients are never forgotten by future generations of Americans. As planning moves forward toward an eventual groundbreaking, the project stands as one of the more unifying pieces of legislation to move through Washington in recent memory.