President Trump has plans to splash his name across a sky-high presidential library in Florida. And he shared the first look at that vision on social media Monday.
A two-minute video of architectural renderings shows a skyscraper towering over the rest of the Miami skyline, emblazoned with Trump's last name and an American flag beneath a red, white and blue spire.
Inside — through a gold doorway bearing the presidential seal — military aircraft sit next to a golden escalator reminiscent of the one Trump rode down when he announced his first candidacy in 2015.
The vehicles parked inside include a plane that looks like Air Force One — presumably the Boeing 787-4 luxury jetliner that the Trump administration accepted from Qatar last year, a controversial gift that it said will live in his future library after he leaves office.
The video, set to swelling instrumentals, shows people in formalwear milling about several different spaces, some of which look familiar: a palm-tree-lined courtyard, replicas of the Oval Office and Rose Garden and a gilded ballroom. Some also sit in an auditorium that features a gold statue of Trump raising his fist in the air as he did after surviving an assassination attempt at a 2024 campaign rally.
The renderings are credited to Bermello Ajamil, a global architecture and engineering firm with offices in both New York and Florida. But details about the project — including whether the renderings represent the finalized design — are scarce.
Willy Bermello, a principal at the architecture firm, told NPR over email that the building will "certainly be the most iconic and tallest US Presidential Library in the history of our country," but did not share specifics.
Presidential libraries tend to be known more for their sprawl than their height, though former President Barack Obama's presidential center in Chicago, which is slated to open in June, will feature a buzzy 225-foot obelisk (or "Obamalisk").
"The Trump Presidential Library will be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world and a living testament to the indelible impact President Trump has made on America and its people," White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NPR over email.
It's not clear how long construction will take or how much the project will cost. The architecture firm declined to answer those questions, and the White House referred NPR to the Trump library foundation, which did not respond in time for publication.
Eric Trump, a son of the president who manages the Trump Organization's real estate portfolio, wrote on X that he, alongside his team, had "poured my heart and soul into this project" over the past six months.
"This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known," Eric Trump wrote.
The president, meanwhile, simply captioned his Truth Social post with a link to the Trump library website — which displays the same video, a donation form and the words "coming soon."
Presidential libraries are technically established to house the archival records of a presidency, but have become synonymous with larger museums and broader campuses.
They are typically funded by private donations to a former president's foundation, then transferred to the federal government to be operated and maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA. NARA currently administers 16 such libraries from presidents Herbert Hoover through Joe Biden, who is raising money for a library campus in Delaware.
Where will Trump's library be?
Trump is all but synonymous with New York, the city he called home for much of his life.
But in 2019, saying he had been "treated very badly by the political leaders of both the city and state," he became a resident of Florida — a red state with no income tax. Trump declared Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, his permanent home.
The site set aside for the library is about an hour's drive away, in Miami.
Bermello, the architect, told NPR that the site of the library is just south of the Freedom Tower — Miami's first skyscraper, now owned by Miami Dade College and "a landmark for all freedom loving Cuban Americans." It's also across from two museums, the Kaseya Center (where the Miami Heat play), Bayside Marketplace and PortMiami, he added.
"This strategic downtown location basically guarantees that more visitors will visit this destination than any other in history – and it's design will serve as beacon [sic] to all cruise ships entering the MIAMI Harbor - 'Cruise Capital of the World,'" he wrote.
Miami Dade College transferred the 2.6-acre plot of undeveloped land to the state last year explicitly for this purpose, though it had to overcome legal hurdles and local opposition first.
The college's board of trustees voted to give the property — which was being used as an employee parking lot — in late September 2025, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially transferred it to Trump's presidential library foundation shortly after.
"Having the Trump Presidential Library in Miami will be good for Florida, for the city, and for Miami Dade College," DeSantis said at the time.
But local activists disagreed, protesting the school's decision to hand the valuable lot — worth $67 million — over for political purposes, particularly without adequate public notice.
Activist and historian Marvin Dunn quickly filed and financed a lawsuit accusing Miami Dade College of violating Florida's Sunshine Laws by not properly notifying residents about the nature of that September vote. A Miami-Dade judge sided with Dunn in October, temporarily blocking the transfer of land and scheduling a trial for August 2026. A state appeals court declined to block the lawsuit.
So the college trustees held another, more publicized vote in December. Member station WLRN reported that more than 100 members of the public showed up to weigh in on the transfer, most in opposition. The trustees nevertheless voted unanimously to give the land away, and the judge dismissed Dunn's lawsuit shortly after, citing the facts of the case.
"This court is not deciding whether this is wise, whether the transaction is appropriate for one president or another, or for a library, or for a petting zoo. That is not what the court is here to decide," Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz wrote, according to The Associated Press.
The transfer was allowed to proceed. Local media reviewed court records in February that showed the state had officially transferred the property to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation Inc. for $10. The only restriction on the deed, the Miami Herald reported, is that "construction starts on a 'Presidential library, museum, and/or center within five years.'"
Who is paying for it?
More questions remain, including about the project's financing.
A nonprofit called the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc. was set up in December 2024, after ABC News agreed to donate $15 million toward a future presidential library as part of its defamation lawsuit settlement with then-candidate Trump. Over the next year, that fund got an influx of cash from various legal settlements with Meta, X and Paramount.
The fund was dissolved by the state in September 2025 — just days before the trustees' vote — after it failed to file a mandatory annual report. It is not clear how much money was in the fund, but a trio of federal Democratic lawmakers pursuing the issue says it could have held up to $63 million in settlement money.
Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, along with Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, wrote to ABC, Meta, X and Paramount earlier this month to ask for more detailed explanations on the original terms, conditions and amounts of their settlement deals.
"The Fund is now gone, and the public has no clarity about the current location or purpose of the funds provided by ABC or any other source," the lawmakers wrote.
NPR has reached out to the White House for comment about the status of the settlement money.
The Trump family opened a similarly-named library foundation in May 2025, which is the entity that now owns the Miami property.
Where else is Trump's name popping up?
Trump shared the library renderings on the same day that DeSantis signed a bill allowing Palm Beach International Airport — close to Mar-a-Lago — to be renamed after the president, a change that is expected to take place in July.
And in January, a 4-mile stretch of Southern Boulevard in Palm Beach County near the airport was renamed "Donald J. Trump Boulevard."
The Trump administration also added his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace building in Washington, D.C. in December, even as the two were locked in a court battle over its control. That same month, the Trump-appointed board of the Kennedy Center in D.C. voted to change its name to the "Trump-Kennedy Center," a decision that requires congressional approval and has sparked legal challenges of its own.
Trump's name has been added to many other government items and buildings, from national park passes to battleships to commemorative coins.
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