Trump officials sued over effort to ‘erase history and science’ in national parks | Trump administration

Conservation and history organizations sued the Trump administration Tuesday over National Park Service policies that the groups say erase history and science from U.S. national parks.

A lawsuit filed in Boston claims that orders from Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum forced park service staff to remove or censor exhibits that share accurate and relevant facts about U.S. history and scientific knowledge, including slavery and climate change.

Separately, LGBTQ+ rights advocates and historical advocates sued the park service on Tuesday for removing a rainbow pride flag from Stonewall National Monument, the New York site that commemorates a founding moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.

The changes to the exhibits came in response to an executive order from Trump “restoring truth and common sense to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and monuments. He ordered the Interior Department to ensure that these sites do not display material that “inappropriately denigrates past or living Americans.” Burgum then ordered the removal of “inappropriate partisan ideology” from federally controlled museums, monuments, memorials and other public exhibits.

The groups behind the lawsuit said a federal campaign to revise interpretive materials has intensified in recent weeks, leading to the removal of many exhibits dealing with the history of slavery and enslaved people, civil rights, the treatment of indigenous people, climate science and other “essential elements of the American experience.”

The suit was filed by a coalition that includes 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 an exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington to be restored to its former home in Philadelphia.

The park service last month removed explanatory signs from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital. The judge ordered the exhibits restored on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.

In addition to the Philadelphia case, the Park Service reported the removal of interpretive materials depicting key moments in the civil rights movement, the groups said. For example, on the Selma-Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, officials flagged about 80 features for removal.

Permanent exhibit at Brown v Board of Education National Historical Park in Kansas flagged because it mentions “fairness,” the lawsuit says. Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park indicated that settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” for the park to be established and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing. At Glacier National Park in Montana, authorities ordered the removal of documents describing the effect of climate change on the park and its role in the disappearance of glaciers, according to the suit.

“Censorship of science and erasure of American history in national parks pose direct threats to everything these amazing places and our country represent,” said Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the parks conservation association.

“National parks serve as living classrooms for our country, where science and history come to life for visitors,” Spears added. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell the story of both our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks. We can handle the truth.”

The Interior Ministry announced Tuesday that it had appealed the court’s decision in the Philadelphia case. Updated interpretive materials “providing a more complete account of the history of slavery at Independence Hall would have been installed in the coming days” absent a court order, an Interior spokesperson said in an email.

The new trial is premature and “based on inaccurate and misinterpreted information,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Tuesday.

“The Department of the Interior is engaged in an ongoing review of our nation’s American history exhibits, consistent with the executive order,” but actions have not yet been finalized, she said.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials from the Philadelphia exhibit must be restored to their original condition pending a lawsuit challenging the legality of the removal. She barred Trump officials from installing replacements that explained the story differently.

Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee, began her written commission with a quote from George Orwell’s novel 1984 and likened the Trump administration to the Department of Truth, which revised historical documents to align with its own narrative.

The Stonewall flag lawsuit calls its removal “the latest example in a long line of efforts by the Trump administration to target the LGBTQ+ community for discrimination and vilification.”

The Pride flag was installed in 2022, becoming the first banner of its type to fly permanently on federal territory. After the banner’s disappearance this month, the park service cited a Jan. 21 memo that largely limits the agency from displaying the Interior and POW/MIA flags, although exemptions include providing “historical context.”

The lawsuit argues that the rainbow flag provides such context and that the park service continues to make exceptions for other banners, including Confederate ones, that help explain the history of certain sites. New York politicians and activists raised their own pride flag at the Stonewall monument on Thursday.

The Interior Department on Tuesday reiterated its criticism of New York and its Democratic officials, who are not parties to the lawsuit.

Jeff Mow, who retired in 2022 as Glacier’s superintendent, said the park service “has always taken great pride in its academic research, its focus on telling the truth and being very forthright about it.” He called Trump’s order a “disservice” to the public, “and it makes it very difficult for those who are trying to do their jobs and tell stories and tell the truth.”

“You can’t tell America’s story without recognizing both the beauty and tragedy of our history,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, a nonprofit legal organization that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the advocacy groups.