Judge orders Trump administration to restore park exhibits on slavery, climate change

A federal judge in Boston ordered the Trump administration to put back park exhibits and signs on slavery, climate change and other subjects removed from national parks and monuments. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley said the government must restore the materials within 21 days, escalating a fight over who gets to shape public memory on federal land.

Kelley issued the preliminary injunction on Thursday and required the administration to file status updates within five days and then every week as the case moves forward. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of park, history and science groups, including the National Parks Conservation Association, the American Association for State and Local History, the Association of National Park Rangers, the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, the Society for Experiential Graphic Design and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Democracy Forward represented the coalition.

The plaintiffs said the Interior Department had carried out a sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science. Kelley agreed the removals threatened the integrity of the National Parks and set a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization. The dispute centers on materials covering slavery, enslaved people, civil rights, Indigenous history, climate science and other core parts of the American story.

The policy traces back to Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directed federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to be made into “solemn and uplifting” monuments. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum followed with a May 20, 2025 secretarial order implementing the directive inside the National Park Service. The lawsuit said the administration removed or censored interpretive materials at more than 430 national park sites and did so without a reasoned explanation or regard for congressional mandates.

The stakes reach far beyond any single park. The National Park System now includes 433 units covering more than 85 million acres in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories. The ruling lands amid a broader legal and political battle over how federal sites present slavery, racism, climate change and Indigenous history to millions of visitors.

The Boston order follows another setback for the administration in Philadelphia, where U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ordered restoration of slavery-related exhibits at the President’s House Site at Independence National Historical Park. In that case, Rufe invoked George Orwell’s 1984 to describe what she saw as an effort to rewrite historical truth.

Advocates hailed the Boston ruling as a major check on the administration’s approach. PEN America called the removals a “blatant erasure of history” and an attack on the freedoms to read and learn, while the Union of Concerned Scientists said the decision would help protect national parks from an unprecedented campaign to erase history and science. An Interior Department spokesperson has said the policy was intended to ensure parks tell the full and accurate story of American history.