Judge orders Trump administration to restore national park signage on climate change, slavery
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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore signs related to topics such as climate change, slavery and Indigenous and LGBTQ+ history that were removed under an executive order to purge language at national parks that allegedly cast America in a negative light.The order has prompted the removal of mentions of President Washington’s slaves at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, signs regarding climate threats at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, according to the lawsuit challenging the action.
In California, language related to the internment of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar National Historic Site, as well as the history of Indigenous people in Death Valley and Muir Woods came under scrutiny.A preliminary injunction was issued Friday by U.S.
District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston, who sided with a coalition of conservation and historical groups and ordered all language removed under the order to be reinstated before the Fourth of July.Earlier this year, another federal judge ordered the signage related to Washington’s slaves restored.
California Trump’s directive banning signage he would deem unpatriotic has left free speech advocates in disbelief, wondering how park employees will put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery, internment and other dark chapters.In Friday’s injunction, Kelley accused the Trump administration of seeking “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” and said that national parks play an important role in telling the multifaceted history of America, including “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”“Because Defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th Anniversary of our great Nation,” she wrote, “it is equally important that our shared history be ho...