Conservation and historical organizations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over National Park Service policies the groups say are erasing history and science from America’s national parks.
According to a lawsuit filed in Boston, orders from Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum forced Park Service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant US history and scientific knowledge, including slavery and climate change.
Separately, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and historic preservationists sued the Park Service on Tuesday for removing a rainbow pride flag from Stonewall National Monument, a New York site that commemorates a foundational moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.
The changes to the exhibits come in response to Trump’s executive order to “restore truth and integrity to American history” in the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It ordered the Interior Department to ensure that those sites do not display material that “inappropriately offends past or living Americans.” Burgum later directed that “inappropriate partisan ideology” be removed from museums, monuments, landmarks, and other public exhibits under federal control.
The groups behind the lawsuit have stepped up a federal campaign to review explanatory materials in recent weeks, leading to the removal of many exhibits that discuss slavery and the history of slaves, civil rights, the treatment of indigenous peoples, climate science and other “core aspects of the American experience.”
The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of the National Parks Conservation Association, the American Association for State and Local History, the Association of National Park Rangers and the Union of Concerned Scientists. It comes as a federal judge on Monday ordered the restoration of a display of nine people who were enslaved by George Washington at his former home in Philadelphia.
The Park Service last month removed explanatory panels from Independence National Historical Park, where George and Martha Washington lived with their nine slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. A judge ordered the restoration of the displays on Presidents’ Day, a federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.
In addition to the Philadelphia case, the groups said the Park Service flagged for removing interpretive materials depicting key moments in the civil rights movement. For example, at the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, officials flagged about 80 items for removal.
A permanent exhibit at the Brown v Board of Education National Historical Park in Kansas is flagged because it mentions “equity.” Signs disappearing from Grand Canyon National Park say settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing to establish the park. In Montana’s Glacier National Park, officials have ordered the removal of materials describing the impact of climate change on the park and its role in the disappearance of glaciers.
“Censoring science and erasing American history in national parks are direct threats to these wonderful places and everything for our country,” said Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the Parks Conservation Association.
“National parks serve as living classrooms for our nation, where science and history come alive for visitors,” Spears added. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell our nation’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”
The Interior Department said Tuesday it has appealed the court’s ruling in the Philadelphia case. Updated interpretive materials “will be installed in the coming days to provide a fuller account of the history of slavery in Independence Hall,” pending a court order, an internal spokesman said in an email.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Tuesday that the new lawsuit is premature and “based on inaccurate and misrepresented information.”
“The Department of the Interior is engaged in an ongoing review of our nation’s American history exhibits in accordance with the president’s executive order,” she said, but the steps have not yet been finalized.
US District Judge Cynthia Roof ruled Monday that all materials in the Philadelphia exhibit must be restored to their original state, but a lawsuit challenging the legality of the removal was filed. She barred Trump officials from installing replacements that would interpret history differently.
George W. Bush appointee Roof, Georgia Orwell begins his written order with a quote from his novel 1984 and compares the Trump administration to the Ministry of Truth, which revises the historical record to suit its own narrative.
The lawsuit against the Stonewall flag calls its removal “the latest example of the Trump administration’s longstanding efforts to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and opposition.”
The Pride Flag was installed in 2022, making it the first banner to fly permanently on federal land. After the banner disappeared this month, the Park Service cited a Jan. 21 memo that largely limits the agency to displaying interior and POW/MIA flags, but provides “historical context” among the exceptions.
The lawsuit argues that the rainbow flag provides such context, and notes that the Park Service continues to grant exemptions to other banners, including Confederate banners, that help explain the history of certain sites. New York politicians and activists raised their own Pride flag at the Stonewall memorial on Thursday.
The Interior Department on Tuesday repeated its earlier criticism of New York and its Democratic officeholders, who are not parties to the suit.
Jeff Mow, who will retire in 2022 as superintendent at Glacier, said the park service has “always taken great pride in its scholarly research, focusing on telling the truth and being very forthright about it.” He called Trump’s order an “insult” to the public, and “makes it very difficult for people who are trying to do their jobs and be storytellers and tell the truth”.
“You can’t tell America’s story without acknowledging both the beauty and the tragedy of our history,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal firm that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the advocacy groups.
