{"id":115567,"date":"2026-02-16T22:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/115567\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T22:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T22:24:07","slug":"trump-ordered-to-restore-slavery-exhibits-at-site-in-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/115567\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Ordered to Restore Slavery Exhibits at Site in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA federal judge in Pennsylvania has ordered the Trump administration to reinstall several exhibits about slavery<\/a> that were removed from the President\u2019s House Site in Philadelphia last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a preliminary injunction issued Monday, Feb. 16, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe ordered the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service<\/a> to restore the site \u2014 which features part of the foundation of the former mansion where George Washington and John Adams lived during their presidential terms \u2014 to the way it was before the the exhibits were removed on Jan. 22. Rufe did not, however, give a firm deadline for the restoration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibits were targeted under a directive<\/a> that Trump\u2019s Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, issued last year ordering the review and potential removal of any displays at national parks that \u201cinappropriately disparage\u201d the United States. Last July, The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a> reported that 13 items across six exhibits at the President\u2019s House were flagged for review. But in January, everything displayed at the site was removed.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince its commemoration in 2010, the President\u2019s House Site has expressly examined the \u201cparadox between slavery and freedom in the new nation,\u201d as a description on the National Park Service website<\/a> still reads. It also serves as a memorial to the nine people Washington enslaved there during the founding of the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe City of Philadelphia sued Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron after the exhibits were removed. In granting the city\u2019s request for an injunction, Rufe said that the Department of the Interior and NPS must \u201ctake all necessary steps to ensure the safety, security, and preservation of any such items\u201d removed from President\u2019s House. She also prohibited the defendants from \u201cmaking any and all further changes to the President\u2019s House Site, including the installation of replacement materials, without mutual agreement of the City of Philadelphia\u201d as the case continues.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tRufe, a George W. Bush appointee, also pointedly opened her decision with a quote from George Orwell\u2019s 1984: \u201cAll history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge went on to write: \u201cAs if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell\u2019s 1984 now existed, with its motto \u2018Ignorance is Strength,\u2019 this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims \u2014 to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service did not immediately return requests for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the preliminary injunction does not fully settle the case, Rufe has signaled her intention to move quickly, in part to have the matter decided before this summer\u2019s 250th anniversary celebrations on Independence Mall (where the President\u2019s House is located). Even before today\u2019s decision, Rufe had appeared unlikely to side with the Trump admin. At a hearing last month, for instance, she called the government\u2019s argument that the president had full power to change national parks exhibits \u201chorrifying\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d (per the Inquirer<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ordered the Trump administration to reinstall several exhibits about slavery that were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[34,97,69,71,70,34251],"class_list":["post-115567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-donald-trump","tag-national-park-service","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}