A U.S. appeals court has temporarily blocked a previous ruling requiring the Trump administration to reinstate several exhibits that it removed from U.S. national parks, which included slavery and climate change.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals postponed District Judge Angel Kelley’s June 2026 order, which required the National Park Service to reinstall exhibits that it removed under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
President Trump's Effort To Remove Exhibits and Signs
Under President Trump’s “RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY” directive issued in March 2025, the Trump administration exhibits advancing “corrosive ideology.”
According to the EO, the U.S. has experienced “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
“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,” President Trump argued.
The presidential directive ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to “ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” under its oversight “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
Coalition Sues Trump Admin
In response, a coalition of groups representing park conservationists, historians, and scientists sued the Trump administration, arguing that the DOI has been involved in a “sustained campaign to erase history and undermine science.”
Siding with the groups, Judge Kelley placed a preliminary injunction on President Trump’s executive order, arguing that removing the exhibits and signs undermined “the integrity of the National Parks; it sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.”
According to Kelley, the administration sought to “rewrite the nation’s history with a white-out pen.”
The 1st Circuit Panel, however, blocked Kelley’s order, claiming that the Trump administration’s current appeal against her ruling would most likely be approved.
