A federal judge ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to restore the slavery exhibits that the National Park Service removed from the President’s House last month, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today.
The order does not provide a deadline for the restoration of the site, and the federal government has the option to appeal the judge’s order, The Inquirer said.
The order is below:
The exhibit was taken down in accordance with President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order which states that the government must “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers or similar properties within the Department’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Governor Josh Shapiro of Abington Township filed an amicus brief in late January in support of the City of Philadelphia’s federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior and other federal entities.
Shapiro said in a news release that Trump “picked the wrong city and the wrong Commonwealth”.
“There is no virtue in refusing to acknowledge certain aspects of our history because it is painful to do so,” the amicus brief says. “The removal of the slavery exhibit from the President’s House undermines this commitment and denies Pennsylvanians and others the opportunity to learn more about a part of our history that cannot be ignored.”
Following the ruling, Shapiro posted:
After Mayor Cherelle L. Parker sued and my Administration backed them up in court, a judge just ordered the Trump Administration to restore the exhibit on slavery they unlawfully ripped down from the President’s House Site at Independence National Historical Park.
Here in Pennsylvania, we learn from our history — even when it’s painful. We don’t erase it.
Donald Trump may want to whitewash our shared history — but we will not let him win.
Senator Art Haywood of Abington Township published an opinion piece earlier this month in The Philadelphia Tribune titled “Exhibit’s removal is a harmful act of enslavement denial“.
Haywood wrote that their removal “is an act of enslavement denial that mirrors the mechanics of Holocaust denial. By dismantling this site of ‘hard history,’ we inflict irreparable harm on the legitimacy and dignity of Black Americans.”
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