PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — In a decision citing George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, a federal judge Monday prohibited the Trump administration from removing exhibits related to slavery on Independence Mall.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Trump administration to restore the President’s House Site – an outdoor exhibit commemorating the house where George Washington and his slaves lived and worked – to its original state before the National Park Service removed exhibits related to slavery.
“The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as Defendants state, it has the power,” Judge Rufe wrote in an opinion issued on this President’s Day. “An agency, whether the Department of the Interior, NPS, or any other agency, cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims or the whims of the new leadership, regardless of the evidence before it.”
Rufe, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, concluded that the changes to the exhibit were arbitrary and that the National Park Service should have consulted with the City of Philadelphia before amending the exhibit.
“The removal of the slavery displays, therefore undermines the City’s statutory and long-running interests in the completion of Independence National Historical Park and the President’s House.”
At multiple points in her opinion, Judge Rufe rebuked the Trump administration’s argument that “it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts” by comparing their actions to those of Big Brother in Orwell’s 1984.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims-to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not,” she wrote.
Judge Rufe toured the site herself earlier this month.
Throughout the court battle, there have been rallies on Independence Mall urging federal officials to restore the exhibits that were removed last month.
The exhibit, which opened back in 2010, honored the lives of the nine people held there who were enslaved by President George Washington.
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