A Biden-appointed federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore exhibits and other materials at national parks that highlighted slavery, climate change and other leftist ideologies after they were removed under a directive targeting displays deemed disparaging to America. [some emphasis, links added]
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts, appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden in 2021, issued a preliminary injunction Friday requiring the administration to reverse the changes and pause any further removals amid legal challenges.
The move comes amid the America 250 celebrations that will crescendo on July 4.
The Interior Department, in a statement, called Kelley a “liberal activist judge” and said it was reviewing its options to appeal its removal of what Secretary Doug Burgum rebuked as “improper partisan ideology.”
“This ruling is from a liberal activist judge,” an Interior spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Sunday. “The Department will look at our appeal options while we celebrate UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House this weekend in honor of our nation’s 250th with the greatest president in the history of our country – President Donald J. Trump.”
Trump’s March 27, 2025, executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” sought to restore American heritage to national parks and monuments that were “changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” after the 2020 race riots that might have ultimately helped fuel Biden’s election.
Trump ordered Interior to “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law,” to ensure that all U.S. government descriptions and depictions do not “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” – instead putting “focus on the greatness” of America.
While Kelley wrote that the plaintiffs had shown the administration’s actions were meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” Trump said he had issued the order because of the “false reconstruction” of U.S. history under Biden, the president who appointed her.
Removing the disparagement of Americans and highlighting U.S. greatness set a “dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization,” according to Kelley.
The judge also ordered the administration to file weekly status reports detailing its progress in restoring the affected materials.
Among the materials Burgum’s Interior removed were an exhibit at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park describing the ownership of enslaved people by George Washington, the nation’s first president, and signage detailing climate threats at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
“Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths,” Kelley wrote.
Trump signed the executive order to work toward “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks.
Burgum later directed the removal of what he called “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks, and other public exhibits under federal control.
“Museums in our nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” the Trump order read.
Other changes denounced by leftist ideologues included the removal of a sign at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona that included an image of a visitor holding a Pride flag, as well as the removal of films about labor history at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.
“What we were left, like virtually every Cabinet agency, was a complete mess from the Biden administration,” Burgum told Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany on “Saturday in America,” vowing that he is “cleaning up the mess that’s been left with us.”
“They were doing everything from climate extremism to DEI, ESG, you name it, and they were doing it all opposed to what the American people voted for and what President Trump promised the American people we would do.”
Top image created with AI.
Read more at Fox News
