Trump administration must restore history, science materials at parks, US judge rules

By Nate Raymond and David Thomas

BOSTON, June 12 (Reuters) – A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to reinstall exhibits and signs on topics like slavery and climate change that it had removed from parks and monuments nationwide because they “do not align with its preferred narrative.”

U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston issued a preliminary injunction at the behest of groups representing park conservationists, historians and scientists, who argued that the U.S. Department of the Interior has been engaged in a “sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.”

Removing these signs not only undermines “the integrity of the National Parks; it sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization,” Kelley said.

Kelley said she was ordering the government to restore the signs within 21 days, “by the 250th anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States.”

Attorneys for the plaintiffs – the National Parks Conservation Association, American Association for State and Local History and four other groups – did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did an Interior Department spokesperson.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March 2025 targeting what he called a “revisionist movement” that portrayed the U.S. as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

Trump’s order directed the Interior Department to make changes to parks, monuments and memorials to address any “false revision of history” that the White House said had occurred in recent years.

The plaintiffs had argued that the Interior Department was removing signs and exhibits from parks in violation of congressional mandates governing how more than 430 national park sites should be operated, and had adopted an unlawful policy lacking any reasoned explanation for why various signs and exhibits must be removed.

An Interior Department spokesperson previously said the policy required the country’s parks to “tell the full and accurate story of American history.” 

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and David Thomas in Chicago; Editing by Mark Porter and Tom Hogue)