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A Biden-appointed federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore exhibits and other materials at national parks that highlighted slavery, climate change and other leftist ideology after they were removed under a directive targeting displays deemed disparaging to America.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts, appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden in 2021, issued a preliminary injunction Friday requiring the administration to reverse the changes and pause any further removals amid legal challenges.
The move comes amid the America 250 celebrations that will crescendo on July 4.
The Interior Department in a statement called Kelley a “liberal activist judge” and said it was reviewing its options to appeal its removal of what Secretary Doug Burgum rebuked as “improper partisan ideology.”
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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and President Donald Trump sought to remove ‘improper partisan ideology,’ but a former President Joe Biden judge rebuked as a ‘liberal activist’ has ordered them to restore it. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump’s March 27, 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” sought to restore American heritage to national parks and monuments that were “changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” after the race riots of 2020 that might have ultimately helped fuel Biden’s election.
Trump ordered Interior to “take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law,” to ensure that all U.S. government descriptions, depictions do not “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living” – instead putting “focus on the greatness” of America.
While Kelley wrote that the plaintiffs had shown the administration’s actions were meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” Trump said he had issued the order because of the “false reconstruction” of U.S. history under Biden, the president that appointed her.
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Removing the disparagement of Americans and highlighting of U.S. greatness set a “dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization,” according to Kelley.
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The judge also ordered the administration to file weekly status reports detailing its progress in restoring the affected materials.
Among the materials Burgum’s Interior removed were an exhibit at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park describing the ownership of enslaved people by George Washington, the nation’s first president, and signage detailing climate threats at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
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“Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths,” Kelley wrote.
Trump signed the executive order to work to “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. Burgum later directed the removal of what he called “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.
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Other changes denounced by leftist ideologues included the removal of a sign at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona that included an image of a visitor holding a Pride flag, as well as the removal of films about labor history at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.
“What we were left, like virtually every Cabinet agency, was a complete mess from the Biden administration,” Burgum told Fox News’ Kayleigh McEnany on “Saturday in America,” vowing that he is “cleaning up the mess that’s been left with us.”
Shannon “SJ” Joslin, a fired park ranger, was part of a group who unfurled a trans pride flag at Yosemite last summer. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle)
“They were doing everything from climate extremism to DEI, ESG, you name it, and they were doing it all opposed to what the American people voted for and what President Trump promised the American people we would do.”
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Fox News Digital reached out to the Interior Department on Sunday morning for further comment.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.