{"id":472899,"date":"2026-02-17T01:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/472899\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T01:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T01:18:07","slug":"us-judge-orders-trump-administration-to-restore-philadelphia-slavery-exhibit-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/472899\/","title":{"rendered":"US judge orders Trump administration to restore Philadelphia slavery exhibit | Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal judge in Pennsylvania<\/a> on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery<\/a> exhibit at a Philadelphia<\/a> historic site, pending the outcome of ongoing litigation after the city sued the federal government over its removal.<\/p>\n

The National Park Service last month dismantled and removed<\/a> a long-established slavery-related exhibit at the Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington, in response to Donald Trump\u2019s claims, which have been rejected by civil rights groups, of \u201canti-American ideology\u201d at historical and cultural institutions.<\/p>\n

The city of Philadelphia<\/a> sued over the matter, accusing the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, and top officials of breaking the law and asking a judge to restore the exhibit.<\/p>\n

On Monday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania<\/a>, Cynthia Rufe, granted the city\u2019s request to temporarily block the federal government\u2019s changes and ordered the National Park Service to restore the exhibit pending the outcome of litigation.<\/p>\n

Rufe, who was appointed by George W Bush, began her ruling<\/a> with a quote from a section of George Orwell\u2019s 1984 which described the process by which the authoritarian party in the novel conducted a constant rewriting of past editions of newspapers \u2013 as well as \u201cbooks, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs\u201d \u2013 to erase any uncomfortable facts from history.<\/p>\n

The judge then drew an explicit comparison between the world of the novel and the Trump administration<\/a> in the first lines of her opinion. \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 \u2013 to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,\u201d Rufe wrote. \u201cIt does not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rufe\u2019s order granted the city\u2019s request to require the federal government to \u201crestore the President\u2019s House Site to its physical status as of January 21, 2026\u201d, which is the day before the exhibit was removed.<\/p>\n

During a hearing last month<\/a>, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, Rufe called the Trump administration\u2019s argument that a president could unilaterally order changes to exhibits displayed in national parks both \u201chorrifying\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d.<\/p>\n

The judge also devoted a passage of her opinion on Monday to explaining how and why the historical exhibition on slavery was added to the site.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the turn of this century, historians identified the location of the first official residence of the President of the United States, where Presidents Washington and Adams lived during their terms,\u201d Rufe wrote. \u201cThis historical research also identified information about nine enslaved Africans whom President Washington owned, brought to the official presidential residence, and rotated in and out of Pennsylvania, a practice which prevented enslaved individuals from petitioning for their freedom under Pennsylvania law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEtched into a wall within the President\u2019s House exhibit are the names of those nine enslaved individuals: Oney Judge, Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules Posey, Joe Richardson, Moll, Paris, and Richmond,\u201d the judge continued. \u201cOf those nine, Oney Judge escaped the house in 1796, eventually making her way to New Hampshire. Hercules also eventually escaped his enslavement after he was brought to Mount Vernon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither the National Park Service nor the city of Philadelphia responded immediately to requests for comment on the judge\u2019s order.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery exhibit at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-472899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}