A national lawsuit<\/p>\n
The National Parks Conservation Association and several other organizations filed another lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts seeking to block the Trump administration from removing or altering historical sites across the country.<\/p>\n
The suit argues that federal law requires the government to operate national parks and historic sites \u201cfor the benefit and enjoyment of the people,\u201d but argues officials have \u201cbetrayed that trust by mounting a sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs point to the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to \u201cwhitewash\u201d sites that memorialize the country\u2019s history of slavery \u2014 including the President\u2019s House Site \u2014 the Civil Rights Movement and sacred Indigenous grounds, but also attacks exhibits that discuss climate change, Japanese internments and women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n
Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, quoted Rufe\u2019s decision that the government\u2019s actions were \u201carbitrary and capricious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis appears to be an assault on critical thinking that anything, whether we\u2019re talking about national parks, other federal agencies, books and trinkets in gift shops, anything that might make someone think critically about the history of this country,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd critical thinking, I think, is the highest form of patriotism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The association and its co-plaintiffs \u2014 which include American Association for State and Local History, Association of National Park Rangers, Coalition to Protect America\u2019s National Parks, Society for Experiential Graphic Design and Union of Concerned Scientists \u2014 are asking the court to order restoration of the sites in question.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we want is for this lawsuit to, at first, halt and then hopefully reverse this punitive, unnecessary and unAmerican exercise that this administration is leading to censor history in our national parks,\u201d Spears said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A national lawsuit The National Parks Conservation Association and several other organizations filed another lawsuit in the U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[98,69,71,70,34251],"class_list":["post-116662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-independence-national-historical-park","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116662","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=116662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}