Judge orders Park Service to restore slavery exhibits and compares Trump to Orwell’s ‘1984’

A federal judge ordered the National Park Service to restore mentions of slavery to a park site associated with George Washington in Philadelphia, scolding the Trump administration on Monday for slipping into “Big Brother’s domain” from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee, timed her ruling to the observance of Washington’s birthday.

She said the park service was “dismantling objective historical truths” in removing displays and video exhibits that referenced slavery and individual slaves at President’s House, the historic site where Washington and President John Adams lived in the 1790s.

She said the alterations violated agreements between the federal government and the city of Philadelphia, which require consultation before making any alterations. That includes the markers, monuments and memorials, the judge said.

Judge Rufe said the removal likely broke the agreement, and she ordered the exhibits restored while the case develops.

“The removal of displays recognizing the paradox of slavery and freedom at the President’s House therefore conflicts with NPS’s own interpretive themes and directives about the site,” Judge Rufe ruled.

The case is an early legal test of Mr. Trump’s push to influence the narrative of American history.

Last March, Mr. Trump issued an executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that directed the Interior Department to expunge any exhibits that “disparage America’s past or living” and instead “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

Last month, the National Park Service, which is part of the Interior Department, pulled down 34 panels and cut off video presentations related to slavery at President’s House.

Judge Rufe repeatedly compared the move to the kind of thought policing the government undertook in Orwell’s classic.

She said the Trump administration echoed the Ministry of Truth.

“The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as defendants state, it has the power,” the judge said.

She specifically refuted Mr. Trump’s logic on the need to elevate Americans’ greatness.

“President Washington’s house would not merit designation as a historic site if he had not commanded the army that won the Revolutionary War, whose presence presiding over the constitutional convention graced it with the gravitas and spirit necessary to the creation of our government’s foundational document, and his restraint and modesty radiated strength and wisdom that defines the ideal chief executive to this day,” she ruled. “The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President’s House until it follows the law and consults with the city.”

In addition to President’s House, the Pentagon has moved to restore the names of Confederate figures to U.S. military bases.

And the Interior Department restored a statue of Alfred Pike, a Confederate general, to a site in Washington. That statue was pulled down by an unruly mob during the riots following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Last week, Delegate Stacey Plaskett, the U.S. Virgin Islands’ nonvoting member of Congress, said signage referencing slavery, indigenous people and climate change was taken down from the Virgin Islands National Park.