US judge orders Trump administration to restore Philadelphia slavery exhibit

A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Monday ordered the National Park Service to reinstall a slavery exhibit at a Philadelphia historic site, pending the outcome of ongoing litigation after the city sued the federal government over its removal.

The National Park Service last month dismantled and removed a long-established slavery-related exhibit at the Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington, in response to Donald Trump’s claims, which have been rejected by civil rights groups, of “anti-American ideology” at historical and cultural institutions.

The city of Philadelphia sued over the matter, accusing the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, and top officials of breaking the law and asking a judge to restore the exhibit. On Monday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania, Cynthia Rufe, granted the city’s request to temporarily block the federal government’s changes and ordered the National Park Service to restore the exhibit pending the outcome of litigation.

Rufe, who was appointed by George W Bush, began her ruling with a quote from a section of George Orwell’s 1984 which described the process by which the authoritarian party in the novel conducted a constant rewriting of past editions of newspapers – as well as “books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs” – to erase any uncomfortable facts from history.

The judge then drew an explicit comparison between the world of the novel and the Trump administration in the first lines of her opinion. “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.”

Rufe’s order granted the city’s request to require the federal government to “restore the President’s House Site to its physical status as of January 21, 2026”, which is the day before the exhibit was removed.

During a hearing last month, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, Rufe called the Trump administration’s argument that a president could unilaterally order changes to exhibits displayed in national parks both “horrifying” and “dangerous”.

The judge also devoted a passage of her opinion on Monday to explaining how and why the historical exhibition on slavery was added to the site: “At the turn of this century, historians identified the location of the first official residence of the President of the United States, where Presidents Washington and Adams lived during their terms,” Rufe wrote. “This historical research also identified information about nine enslaved Africans whom President Washington owned, brought to the official presidential residence, and rotated in and out of Pennsylvania, a practice which prevented enslaved individuals from petitioning for their freedom under Pennsylvania law.”

“Etched into a wall within the President’s House exhibit are the names of those nine enslaved individuals: Oney Judge, Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules Posey, Joe Richardson, Moll, Paris, and Richmond,” the judge continued. “Of those nine, Oney Judge escaped the house in 1796, eventually making her way to New Hampshire. Hercules also eventually escaped his enslavement after he was brought to Mount Vernon.”