The Trump administration detailed to a federal court on Wednesday the signs and exhibits it removed from properties run by the National Park Service that it said “inappropriately disparage Americans,” after a judge ordered those items to be restored to the NPS properties last week.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley, a nominee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the administration to restore the items removed from NPS properties in accordance with President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order meant to reverse the “corrosive ideology” promoted by the Biden administration at NPS properties. Kelley further ordered the Justice Department to provide a list of the removed items and a timeline of when the items would be restored.
The DOJ included a list of 57 items it removed from NPS properties as part of its efforts to implement the president’s executive order, saying it would begin restoring the removed items next week but that it would be unlikely all items could be restored by the court’s July 3 deadline. The items range from signs and exhibits to junior ranger books, which are intended for children visiting the NPS properties.
At Acadia National Park in Maine, for example, the administration removed two exhibits and two signs that discussed climate change and former Native American residents of the land, saying they were removed because they were “unrelated to the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the landscape.”
In the greater Washington area, the administration removed a land acknowledgment from Theodore Roosevelt Island, which “acknowledged” that the land was previously inhabited by various Native American tribes, along with a sign at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial that heavily discussed racial aspects of the 32nd president’s policies, such as the New Deal National Housing Act, among other signs.
Three junior ranger books, designed for children to read and fill out as they learn about the NPS properties, were also removed as part of the implementation of the executive order. A junior ranger book at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site in North Carolina, for example, included several pages decrying “white enslavers,” while the book at Buck Island Reef National Monument decried “European colonists” for chopping down trees.
The Trump administration told the court that most of the removed material was disparaging to “Americans past or living,” including an exhibit at the First State National Historical Park in Delaware about Founding Father Caesar Rodney, which described him as someone who enslaved others when discussing his role in the American Revolution.
Some of the removals were unrelated to left-leaning characterizations of history. Signs encouraging visitors not to use single-use plastic bottles were removed from Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, for example. The status report also noted that two other signs were removed from the NPS property.
In her ruling, Kelley claimed that the Trump administration was carrying out a “sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science” and that it was setting “a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION APPEALS ORDER TO RESTORE ‘INAPPROPRIATE’ MATERIALS TO HISTORIC SITES
The Trump administration has pushed back on that characterization, made by Kelley and critics, arguing that it is not seeking to erase history but to refocus displays on NPS properties toward the high points of U.S. history. The administration has insisted the changes simply remove content presenting historical facts through a modern progressive lens, which has increasingly emphasized race and climate change, among other politically charged matters.
The DOJ appealed Kelley’s decision to a federal appeals court. In a separate lawsuit filed against the administration, a federal judge ordered the NPS to restore a slavery exhibit to the President’s House site in Philadelphia earlier this year. The DOJ also appealed that ruling to a federal appeals court, making similar arguments about how its decision is not about erasing history but curating exhibits that best fit the property at hand.