{"id":208703,"date":"2026-06-02T19:27:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208703\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:27:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:27:06","slug":"philly-slavery-exhibit-mccormick-joins-presidents-house-fight-amid-court-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/208703\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly slavery exhibit: McCormick joins President\u2019s House fight amid court battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

A federal appeals court will hear arguments today in the closely watched dispute over the future of the slavery exhibit at Philadelphia\u2019s President\u2019s House Site on Independence Mall. It is the latest development in a legal battle that has drawn national attention and raised broader questions about how American history is presented on public land.\n<\/p>\n

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit will consider the Trump administration\u2019s appeal of a federal judge\u2019s order requiring the National Park Service<\/a> to restore slavery-related interpretive panels that were removed from the historic site earlier this year.\n<\/p>\n

The fight for the exhibit has become a bipartisan effort with U.S. Sen. David McCormick, R-Pa., joining the call for the site\u2019s restoration. During a conference call with the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, or ATAC, regional director Nate Gerace said the senator was closely watching how the story unfolds.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cOur history is our history and what makes America exceptional is our willingness to confront our history honestly, and learn from both the triumphs and the failures and keep working toward a more perfect union,\u201d Gerace said. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a consistent position on similar issues, such as efforts to rename military bases like Fort Bragg<\/a> or remove statues like those of William Penn and Christopher Columbus<\/a>.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Famed local attorney George Bochetto, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 as a Republican<\/a>, was also on the call. Bochetto came to prominence after successfully defending the Columbus statue at Marconi Plaza<\/a> after the city tried to take it down in 2021.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of us Republicans have faced the struggle and have faced the difficulties and we understand what it is to struggle and to fight,\u201d Bochetto told the people on the call, adding he was \u201chappy to be aligned\u201d with Michael Coard, a co-founder of ATAC. \u201cI don\u2019t always agree with him, but I always agree that he does a magnificent job for the cause.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[30411,69,71,70,53031,724],"class_list":["post-208703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-david-mccormick","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-presidents-house","tag-trump-impact"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208703","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=208703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}