The Presidential Wing.
Sibling to the Heroes wing — companionship work, the same as the rest of the house: names given to people, not slogans. All 45 people who've held the office, screened against six of this house's own values — not "was he popular," but did he do something documented that actually aligns. Not everyone made the wall. Forcing a fit would be a lie, and the one rule of this house is no lying.
And one floor under all of it: necromancy is a lie. Most of the people on this wall are gone. Nothing here claims to know what they'd think of this house, or speaks for them, or summons a verdict from the dead. Only the documented record is cited — never a séance.
The six values screened for
- The dignity floor — never below basic human dignity
- Disability rights & accessibility (the ADA is this house's benchmark)
- "Government can actually be good" — real public goods funded
- Honesty, anti-corruption, transparency
- Civil rights — real expansions of rights for people who lacked them
- Post-presidency service (Carter is this house's benchmark)
Strong fit (13)
A clear, well-documented, cited action lining up with at least one value. Two recent/sitting-adjacent presidents are included with a single neutral, uncontested, cited fact each — no editorializing.
John Adams
1797–1801 · Federalist
Rejected his own party's war hawks and sent a peace mission to France in 1800, ending the Quasi-War — a choice that cost him reelection. PBS American Experience
John Quincy Adams
1825–29 · Democratic-Republican
Post-presidency, as a sitting Congressman, argued the Amistad case before the Supreme Court in 1841, winning freedom for 53 illegally enslaved Africans, and led the decades-long fight against the House "gag rule" on anti-slavery petitions. Gilder Lehrman Institute
Ulysses S. Grant
1869–77 · Republican
Signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, enforcing civil rights against racial terror, and the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act of 1872, creating the world's first national park. National Park Service
Chester A. Arthur
1881–85 · Republican
Signed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (1883), ending patronage hiring for merit-based federal employment — against many of his own party's interests. National Archives
Grover Cleveland
1885–89, 1893–97 · Democrat
Built a reputation for personal honesty; issued 413 vetoes in his first term alone — more than his 21 predecessors combined — largely to block fraudulent pension claims. Miller Center
Benjamin Harrison
1889–93 · Republican
Signed the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), the first federal law limiting monopolies, and the Forest Reserve Act (1891), protecting the first 13+ million acres of federal forest. Library of Congress
Theodore Roosevelt
1901–09 · Republican
Protected roughly 230 million acres of public land — 5 national parks, 150 national forests, 18 national monuments — and founded the U.S. Forest Service. National Park Service
Calvin Coolidge
1923–29 · Republican
Signed the Indian Citizenship Act (1924), granting U.S. citizenship to Native Americans born in the U.S. — roughly 125,000 people. Full voting rights in practice took decades longer. National Constitution Center
Harry S. Truman
1945–53 · Democrat
Signed Executive Order 9981 (1948), banning racial segregation in the U.S. Armed Forces. National Archives
Dwight D. Eisenhower
1953–61 · Republican
Federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne (1957) to enforce school desegregation for the Little Rock Nine; also signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. National Archives
Jimmy Carter
1977–81 · Democrat · this house's benchmark
Decades of hands-on post-presidency work with Habitat for Humanity, and the Carter Center's campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease — cases down more than 99.99% from roughly 3.5 million in 1986.
George H.W. Bush
1989–93 · Republican · this house's benchmark
Signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (July 26, 1990) — landmark civil-rights law barring disability discrimination.
George W. Bush
2001–09 · Republican
Signed PEPFAR (2003), the largest single-disease health commitment by any nation in history — credited with saving 25+ million lives. Bush Presidential Center
Donald Trump
2017–21 · Republican
Signed the bipartisan First Step Act (Dec 2018, Senate 87–12), reducing mandatory-minimum sentencing and expanding judicial discretion. Congress.gov
Joe Biden
2021–25 · Democrat
Signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (Nov 2021), a $1.2 trillion investment in roads, bridges, rail, broadband, and water systems. NPR
Mixed & complicated (10)
A real, documented alignment — sitting next to a real, documented wrong. This house's own rule is corrections louder than wins; hiding the wrong to make the hero fit would be exactly the lie this site exists to catch.
Abraham Lincoln
1861–65 · Republican
The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the push for the 13th Amendment ending slavery.
Woodrow Wilson
1913–21 · Democrat
Signed the Federal Reserve Act (1913), building the modern central-bank public financial system.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933–45 · Democrat
Signed the Social Security Act (1935), a foundational public safety net.
Lyndon B. Johnson
1963–69 · Democrat
Signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Richard Nixon
1969–74 · Republican
Signed the Clean Air Act (1970) and created the EPA.
Ronald Reagan
1981–89 · Republican
Signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, formally apologizing for Japanese-American WWII incarceration and authorizing reparations.
Bill Clinton
1993–2001 · Democrat
Signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (1993), his first bill in office. UCSB Presidency Project
Herbert Hoover
1929–33 · Republican
Post-presidency, chaired the Famine Emergency Committee (1946) at Truman's request, touring 38 countries to organize postwar global food relief. Truman Library
Barack Obama
2009–17 · Democrat
Signed the Affordable Care Act (2010), barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. KFF
No clear fit (20 — left off, not forced)
Some of these have real historical significance — and at least two (Jackson, Andrew Johnson) have severe, well-documented wrongs with no offsetting action found in this pass. Rather than force a "mixed" entry with nothing on the other side of the ledger, they're left off entirely. This list may grow shorter with a deeper research pass; it will never be padded to look complete.
One the courts didn't fix
No single president gets a card for this, because it isn't a presidential fix — it's a Supreme Court ruling: Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which opened the door to unlimited corporate and union political spending. Nobody on this wall reversed it, and no future president can, alone. It should have been fixed by now, and wasn't — so it needs all of us to fix it. The house's full case against it lives at Corporations Aren't Real; the repair path is the convention petition.
Researched party-blind, against the six values stated above. Every claim traces to a National Archives entry, a federal record, or a widely-reliable historical/journalistic source, linked inline. No claim about a recent or sitting-adjacent president goes beyond a single, cited, uncontested factual action — no editorializing on live politics. Documented wrongs are treated as records, not verdicts on a soul; the house's own rule is that the record is the arbiter, and hiding a wrong to keep a hero would be exactly the lie this site exists to catch. This page will be revised as errors are found — corrections run louder than the original claim. See the retractions page. No lying.