Take a trip to Ohio to learn about William McKinley, Trump's much-admired Gilded Age president

CANTON, Ohio (AP) — If you've been intrigued by President Donald Trump's praise of his long-ago White House predecessor William McKinley and yearn to know more, it's time you head to Ohio.

America's 25th president was born and is buried in the Buckeye State, where museums and monuments to him abound. Websites promoting the state's McKinley attractions have seen a surge in page views since Trump began highlighting McKinley's Gilded Age presidency, which ran from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Officials hope a bump in summer tourism will follow.

“I don’t think there has been as much interest in William McKinley in at least a century, in terms of kind of the public consciousness,” said Kevin Kern, an associate professor of history at the University of Akron. The last time was in 1928, when McKinley's face was printed on the $500 bill.

While Trump has attached himself to McKinley, Kern says the two Republicans' political positions are, in many respects, “really apples and oranges.”

In McKinley’s day, the United States was just becoming the world’s foremost manufacturing power. Tariffs were viewed as a way to protect that momentum. Today, the economy is global.

Kern also noted that Republicans took huge losses in the 1890 election after the imposition of the McKinley Tariff, and that McKinley appeared to change his tune on tariffs in a speech delivered the day before he was assassinated in 1901.

Within an easy drive of Cleveland, you can find a host of sites for learning more about McKinley's politics and personal life. Here's a closer look:

McKinley was born in 1843 in Niles, a Youngstown suburb about 70 miles (112.65 kilometers) east of Cleveland. Here, you'll find the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial, a classical Greek marble monument that sits on the site of McKinley's former one-room schoolhouse. A McKinley statue stands at the center of the well-manicured Court of Honor, which is flanked by a small museum and the community's library. The McKinley birthplace home and research center sits nearby.

Canton is perhaps best known for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, The city, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) from either Cleveland or Niles, is where the kindly and mild-mannered McKinley spent most of his adult life. A young McKinley settled here after serving in the Civil War, began his law career and married Ida Saxton McKinley.

The McKinley Presidential Library and Museum is a great place to dig into the shared policy goals — especially tariffs and territorial expansion — that attract Trump to McKinley.

An animatronic William and Ida McKinley greet visitors to the museum's McKinley Gallery, which features interactive opportunities as well as historical furnishings, clothing, jewelry and campaign memorabilia. The building also houses a presidential archive and a science center complete with dinosaurs and a planetarium. The site's dominant feature, however, is the imposing McKinley Monument, which looms on a hill atop 108 stone steps. It houses the mausoleum where the McKinleys and their two young daughters are buried.

More McKinley memorabilia is on display at the Canton Classic Car Museum.

The residents of Arcata, California, were not so enamored of McKinley's imperialist legacy.

In 2018, amid national soul-searching over historical monuments, the liberal college town decided to remove an 8-foot sculpture of McKinley, the annexation treaty for Hawaii in his hand, from their town square. Over a century old, the statue had been moved to Arcata from San Francisco, where it was toppled in the 1906 earthquake.

It now stands at the stately Stark County Courthouse in downtown Canton, where McKinley worked as a county prosecutor before being elected a congressman and Ohio governor. It was placed there in 2023 after being bought back from Arcata by a Canton foundation and restored.

A three-block walk from the courthouse is the Saxton-McKinley House, part of the National First Ladies Historic Site operated in partnership with the National Park Service. Originally Ida's home, the elegant Victorian mansion was the couple's residence at different times during their marriage. It's not the house from which McKinley conducted his fabled “front porch campaign” of 1896; that was demolished in the 1930s.

A replica of the porch and the actual chair McKinley sat in can be found at the McKinley museum, however, and a tabletop replica of his “campaign house” is on view at the Stark County District Library, which now sits on the site.

If you'd like to see the porch where another Ohio president carried out his front porch campaign, try the James A. Garfield Historic Site in Mentor, about 30 miles (48.28 kilometers) northwest of Cleveland.

The granddaughter of John Saxton, a city pioneer and founder of the Canton Repository newspaper, Ida Saxton attended Canton's First Presbyterian Church, a few blocks from their home. Now known as Christ Presbyterian Church, this is where the McKinleys were married in 1871, the “new” stone building's tower yet uncompleted. William's church was the nearby Crossroads United Methodist. Ida had a series of stained glass panels depicting the phases of her husband's life installed there after this death.

If you're willing to travel a bit farther afield, several other sites could add to your McKinley experience. '

First is the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, located about 85 miles (136.79 kilometers) west of Cleveland in Fremont. Known as Spiegel Grove, the site established in 1916 is home of the nation's first presidential library. Its museum explores Hayes’ service in the Civil War, when he was McKinley’s commander.

In Columbus, about 150 miles (241.40 kilometers) southwest of Cleveland, a McKinley statue in front of the Ohio Statehouse faces west. This was where McKinley, then governor, would stand to doff his hat to Ida as she looked out the window of their apartment at the Neil House. The legendary hotel was torn down in 1980 to make way for the Huntington Center now dominating that block.

Rounding out the timeline of McKinley's life, a 96-foot tall obelisk memorializing him sits on Niagara Square in Buffalo, New York. He was assassinated by an anarchist while appearing at the Pan-American Exposition there in 1901.

This story has been corrected to say Fremont, Ohio, is west of Cleveland

Animatronics of former President William McKinley and former First Lady Ida McKinley inside the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

FILE - This drawing shows Major William McKinley, the presidential nominee for the Republican Party, making an elaborate front-porch campaign speech at his home in Canton, Ohio in 1896. (AP Photo/File)

An animatronic of former President William McKinley inside the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

Animatronics of former President William McKinley and former First Lady Ida McKinley inside the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum on Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

The Saxton-McKinley House, part of the National First Ladies Historic Site on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

A plaque on the Saxton-McKinley House, part of the National First Ladies Historic Site on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

Visitors walk up and down the steps of the William McKinley Memorial on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Aftoora-Orsagos)

FILE - President William Mckinley, left, sits with his cabinet during a meeting in the White House in this photo dated 1898. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - Roman Feemster, 24, reads the inscription below the bronze statue of President McKinley on the second tier from the bottom of the steps McKinley National Memorial and Museum, Oct. 24, 2003 in Canton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File)

FILE - The McKinley National Memorial in Canton, Ohio is pictured, June 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Julie Smyth. File)

FILE - The William McKinley Monument is silhouetted in front of the west side of the Ohio Statehouse, April 15, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

FILE - Gov. William McKinley of Ohio makes a speech during the U.S. presidential campaign in 1896. McKinley became the 25th president in 1897. (AP Photo)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.

Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.

Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”

Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.

“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”

He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.

More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.

With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.

Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.

In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.

Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”

Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.

“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.

The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.

The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.

Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.

In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)

In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)