The order also threatens to withhold funding from local governments that fail to protect their own statues from vandals.
President Trump issued an executive order on Friday that instructed federal law enforcement authorities to prosecute people who damage federal monuments or statues and that threatened to withhold funding from local governments that fail to protect their own statues from vandals.
The order, which Mr. Trump announced on Twitter, comes as he seeks to seize on a cultural divide in the United States during his re-election campaign, suggesting that Democrats are waging an assault on the nation’s history.
“Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust,” Mr. Trump writes in the order, which is titled, “Protecting American Monuments, Memorials and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.”
The order adds: “Key targets in the violent extremists’ campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials and statues.
