{"id":222998,"date":"2026-06-19T07:54:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/222998\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T07:54:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:54:18","slug":"trump-administration-may-alter-slavery-exhibit-at-philadelphia-site-court-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/222998\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration may alter slavery exhibit at Philadelphia site, court says"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOSTON \u2014 A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned a judge’s ruling<\/a> that prevented President Donald Trump’s administration from \u200breplacing a slavery exhibit in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

The ruling by the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a judge’s injunction won by the city in \u200cFebruary after the National Park Service removed an exhibit describing the ownership of enslaved people by George Washington, the first U.S. president.<\/p>\n

The \u2060exhibit was removed from the President’s House, as \u200bthe site at the park is known, after \u2060Trump last year signed an executive order targeting what he called a “revisionist movement” that portrayed the United \u200cStates as “inherently racist, sexist, \u200coppressive or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”<\/p>\n

The Republican president’s order directed the Interior Department to make changes \u2060to parks nationwide, leading the National Park Service in January \u2060to remove from the historic site an exhibit about nine enslaved people who had lived at Washington’s house.<\/p>\n

The Democratic-led city of Philadelphia sued, arguing that the exhibit’s removal breached agreements with the city that gave it a right to be consulted on alterations and matters of importance to the park.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe agreed, granting the injunction. But U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas \u200cHardiman, writing for a three-judge 3rd Circuit panel, concluded that the exhibit’s \u200bremoval did not legally constitute an “agency action” subject to court review under the federal Administrative Procedure Act, which governs agency rules.<\/p>\n

Hardiman, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, said the National Park Service has presented plans to install replacement panels that are “full of historical context,” discussing the nine enslaved people while stating Washington often expressed a desire to see slavery abolished.<\/p>\n

“They acknowledge the evil of slavery, including its injustices and hypocrisies, and, by telling the story of the \u200bnine slaves that Washington kept in the President’s House, remind us of their essential humanity,” Hardiman said.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the \u200cInterior Department, which \u200coversees the National \u2060Park Service, issued a brief statement after Thursday’s decision: “Trust in Trump.” The city’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

While the 3rd Circuit overturned Rufe’s decision, the original exhibit may still need to be reinstalled under a separate ruling issued on Friday by a different judge in Boston who \u200cordered the restoration of all \u200bexhibits removed from national park sites nationwide under Trump’s directive.<\/p>\n

That \u200cjudge, U.S. District Judge Angel \u2060Kelley, shortly after the \u200b3rd Circuit ruled, declined to pause her injunction while the administration appeals.<\/p>\n

\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BOSTON \u2014 A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned a judge’s ruling that prevented President Donald Trump’s administration…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2593,2592,94,2595,2594,742,296,139,69,71,70,50,2597,2598,726,2596,1704,2599,1133],"class_list":["post-222998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-cars","tag-classifieds","tag-history","tag-homes","tag-jobs","tag-law","tag-local","tag-news","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-politics","tag-radio","tag-salt-lake","tag-sports","tag-television","tag-traffic","tag-utah","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222998","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=222998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}