Federal Judge Orders Restoration of Slavery Exhibit at Philadelphia Historic Site

The decision temporarily blocked changes made last month based on President Donald Trump’s directives on federal presentation of U.S. history.

People view an informational panel at the President's House Site in Philadelphia on Aug. 19, 2025. Matt Rourke/AP Photo

A federal judge on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall panels and displays on the history of slavery at the President’s House Site in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia.

The decision temporarily blocked changes made last month based on President Donald Trump’s directives on federal presentation of U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted the city of Philadelphia’s request for a preliminary injunction. The order prohibits further changes, additions, or removals to the exhibit sans a mutual written agreement between the federal government and the city.

The President’s House Site, part of Independence National Historical Park, has served as a public memorial to both the executive branch’s early history and slavery in the founding era.

The exhibit is in the city’s federally protected historical district at an open-air pavilion, where George Washington resided while Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital from 1790 to 1800. It described the lives of nine African American slaves Washington owned. It also addressed broader themes of slavery and African American history in Philadelphia.

The National Park Service dismantled the panels and video elements last month after the Trump administration cited an executive order targeting what it stated was divisive ideological content from federal sites.

Philadelphia sued the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service, and top officials, arguing that the unilateral removal broke a 2006 cooperative agreement, the result of work by historians, stakeholders, and community representatives to present the history of the location. The city paid for much of the original development. A survival clause in the agreement kept key provisions in effect after the original term expired.

Rufe’s 40-page opinion opened with an epigraph from George Orwell’s 1949 novel “1984”: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”

Rufe then expanded upon the analogy.

“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote. “It does not.”

She also stated that the city showed a likelihood of success, citing its allegations that the removal was arbitrary and capricious and went beyond the agencies’ authority.

Trump’s March 27, 2025, executive order titled directed actions aimed at “restoring truth and sanity” to federal historical presentations.

“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” reads the executive order.

“Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.”

The White House has not returned a request for comment as of publication time.