A judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstall exhibits honoring the people George Washington enslaved—affirming that the First Amendment cannot be twisted into a license to censor the nation’s past.
In a sharply worded order, U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe instructed the Trump administration on Monday—George Washington’s birthday—to reverse course and restore exhibits that depicted and paid homage to the enslaved people who labored at Washington’s home in Philadelphia. Citing George Orwell’s novel, 1984, Judge Rufe (first appointed by President George W. Bush) chastised the administration for operating as if the U.S. has a “Ministry of Truth” whose motto is “Ignorance is Strength.”
The panels in question were installed at the President’s House in the early 2000s, after years of advocacy by local Black leaders and activists, to commemorate the nine men, women and children enslaved by Washington there: Ona (Oney) Judge, Hercules Posey, Richmond Posey, Christopher Sheels, Joe Richardson, Austin, Giles, Moll and Paris. (Philadelphia was formerly the capital of the U.S.)
However, last month—a week before the start of the United States’ 100th anniversary of Black History Month—National Park Service (NPS) workers arrived unannounced at the historical site in Philadelphia and removed these panels and video exhibits.
The move was met with immediate backlash from activists and local leaders. Many of the same Black activists who pushed the city to place the panels in the first place, reorganized in support of their reinstatement.
“You cannot erase our history,” said Mayor Cherelle Parker in a video posted on social media announcing the city’s lawsuit against the Interior Department and NPS over the removal of the displays. “Yes, it is flawed. Yes, it is imperfect, and yes, it includes the real-life lived experiences and stories of people who endured a great deal of pain, so that America could realize its promise.”
A Pattern of Censorship
NPS defended its unlawful actions last month citing 2025 Trump executive order: Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The agency has said the displays were removed to ensure “accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values”—a move that fits into a broader Trump-era push to reshape how U.S. history is presented at national monuments and parks.
Ironically, Trump’s executive order claims that Americans have faced “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
Yet a close reading shows the order sidesteps well-documented historical realities, while elevating white nationalist grievances, stoking resentment and warning of a supposed “revisionist movement” that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievement of the United States.”
Trump Tramples the Constitution
The Trump administration’s fixation with censorship finds no relief or safe harbor in federal law or the Constitution.
In response to the January site dismantling, U.S. Reps. Dwight Evans, Brendan F. Boyle and Mary Gay Scanlon (Democrats from Pennsylvania) sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and NPS acting director Jessica Bowron: “When a government starts hiding parts of its past, it begins to look more like a regime that rewrites history rather than one that learns from it.”
They are correct. As Judge Rufe’s order from this week notes, “Each person who visits [George Washington’s] House and does not learn of the realities of founding-era slavery receives a false account of this country’s history.”
Shamefully, that is what the Trump administration seeks: a misleading telling of American history that bleaches away the stains of slavery and Jim Crow, hides colonialism’s dark past and Native American history, distorts by omission women’s fight for equality and advancement, and renders invisible the history of violence against LGBTQ Americans.
Trump seems bent on an overly simplistic, helplessly sophomoric reading of American history—one that lacks both credibility and complexity. This reading cannot hold two truths at once: George Washington presided over the 1787 Constitutional Convention; served as the first president of the United States; expanded the U.S. by adding Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee … and he enslaved over 300 Black people, subjugating them to horrific conditions of uncompensated labor.
By erasing this history, the story of Washington’s life becomes reductive—and ultimately, incomplete: He also ordered the emancipation of the people he enslaved in his will.
This case is not just about the erasure of slavery—which on its own is historically important. It’s also about the separation of powers and the First Amendment, which the Trump administration repeatedly violates. As to the latter, the NPS argued that removing the exhibits was simply a matter of conveying “preferred speech,” and that restoring them would infringe on the administration’s speech. Such arguments barely merit recognition—clearly the Trump administration is not muzzled.
Rufe put it this way: “The government can convey a different message without restraint elsewhere if it so pleases, but it cannot do so to the President’s House until it follows the law and consults with the City.”
Simply put, the Trump administration misinterprets the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment does not protect the administration’s interests in suppressing speech or rewriting history. Rather, its protection of speech is a specific promise to the American people that they will be free from tyranny and abuse of the state when they seek to speak, write, assemble and petition the government.
Judge Rufe’s order, which requires the federal government “reinstall all panels, displays, and video exhibits that were previously in place,” is a victory not only for the city of Philadelphia but also for all American cities, with their unique and complex pasts.
