Restoring “Truth and Sanity”.
Trump officials have ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to climate change, environmental protection and settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans in a renewed push to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
Park staff have interpreted Trump’s directive — which seeks to scrub federal institutions of what it calls “partisan ideology” and remove any content deemed to “disparage Americans past or living” — to include any references to historic racism and sexism, as well as climate change and LGBTQ+ rights. Last week, that included the removal of an exhibit at Independence National Historical Park that focused on George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people.
In a new wave of orders this month, Trump officials instructed staff to remove or edit signs and other informational materials in at least 17 additional parks in Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Utah, Montana and Wyoming, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents also listed some removals ordered in August and September.
The Interior Department said in a statement it was implementing Trump’s executive order.
“All federal agencies are to review interpretive materials to ensure accuracy, honesty, and alignment with shared national values,” the statement said. “Following completion of the required review, the National Park Service is now taking appropriate action in accordance with the Order.”
Among the national parks targeted in the new removal orders are some of the country’s most iconic: Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend and Zion.
The removal orders include descriptions of how climate change is driving the disappearance of the glaciers at Glacier National Park and a wayside display at the Grand Canyon referring to the forced removal of Native Americans.
The administration’s broad attempt to suppress true stories “should offend every American,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Brengel emphasized that Park Service staffers are acting on administration orders. “Everyone understands this history,” she said. “It’s not debatable, but they’re being forced to select stories because they think the administration will threaten their jobs if they don’t.”
Some online resources have not yet been censored.
n overwhelming majority of parks are already at the extreme warm end of their historical conditions. That is a core finding of published research by NPS scientists providing basic climate inventories for 289 national park units.
The study explored which parks experienced “extreme” recent conditions (past 10, 20, and 30 year intervals) relative to the 1901–2012 historical range of variability for seven temperature variables (annual mean, maximum of the warmest month, minimum of the coldest month, mean of the wettest quarter, mean of the driest quarter, mean of the warmest quarter, and mean of the coldest quarter) and seven precipitation variables (annual total, wettest month, driest month, wettest quarter, driest quarter, warmest quarter, coldest quarter). Parks were categorized as “extreme” for temperature or precipitation if the most recent 10, 20, and 30 year intervals, on average, exceeded 95% of the historical range of conditions for any of the seven associated climate variables. As an example, at Everglades National Park, annual mean temperature measured over the past 10, 20, and 30 year intervals has on average been warmer than 97% of all periods of equal length since 1901. Analyses for each park included areas within 30-km (18.6-mi) of the park’s boundary to evaluate recent climate changes in a landscape context.
At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Trump administration took down an exhibit on the contradiction between President George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people and the Declaration of Independence’s promise of liberty.
In some of the first legal pushback against the president’s directive, the city of Philadelphia sued the Interior Department and the Park Service on Thursday, seeking a restoration of the displays.
The complaint, filed in federal court, came after Park Service workers used crowbars to pull down plaques at the President’s House site, where Mr. Washington lived for most of his presidency and kept nine enslaved people. One of the plaques, titled “The Dirty Business of Slavery,” described how the trans-Atlantic slave trade had reshaped Philadelphia and upended the lives of around 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly brought to the Americas.
The lawsuit argues that the removals violated a 2006 agreement between Philadelphia and the Park Service. The agreement stipulated that the site, which opened in 2010, would “commemorate the enslaved Africans who resided in the Washington household,” and that the city could approve or reject any changes to the displays, according to the complaint.
“African American history is American history, and this is an intentional effort to erase history and whitewash,” Kenyatta Johnson, the president of the Philadelphia City Council, said in an interview.
Just a note: Modern plantation tours include a description of slavery culture that supported those businesses.