Court filings reveal extent of censorship in nation’s national parks

The Trump administration removed more than 50 exhibits from dozens of national park sites as part of its attempt to sanitize the portrayal of American history, according to a new, court-ordered inventory provided by the National Park Service. Although 16 of the exhibits have already been “discarded,” according to the court document, a federal judge is now mandating that the Interior Department reinstate all removed exhibits ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

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“The court ruling made us all feel just a little bit more sane because it reinforces what we’ve been feeling all along, that you can’t pick and choose history,” Elizabeth Villano, a member of the advocacy group Resistance Rangers, told SFGATE. “We’re happy with the decision, but it doesn’t mean the work is done. Censorship is still the de facto standing order.”

In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” in which the president claimed that a revisionist movement was seeking to “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

The order was later reissued by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, adopting aspects of the directive as official policy for the agencies under his purview, including the National Park Service. In the order, Burgum gave park officials 90 days to review all public-facing information — including interpretive signs, exhibits, films, books, Junior Ranger handbooks and other written materials — and identify any information that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living” or “emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur” of the landscape.

The response to this request was swift and largely negative. An anonymous employee leaked a spreadsheet of more than 500 items flagged during the review, which mostly targeted references to slavery, the forced displacement of Indigenous peoples, and climate change (although it sometimes veered into far more bizarre territory, such as signs warning about nude sunbathers in Florida). An accompanying reporting system for park visitors was flooded with more than 35,000 public comments, most of which disparaged the review process. 

“It is totally unAmerican to ask our fellow citizens to report on each other for anything that might not be glowingly laudatory toward our nation’s history or current leadership,” one comment read. “This is a sad parody of what the USA stands for, and makes it look like our country is led by a bunch of delicate snowflakes that can’t stand the idea of anyone suggesting we are anything but totally perfect.”

A coalition of conservation, history and science advocacy groups quickly sued the Interior Department to challenge its enforcement of the order, while another lawsuit compelled officials to release internal records detailing how the administration developed the order.

On June 12, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Interior to pause any further enforcement and replace any materials already removed. In , U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley of Massachusetts noted that the administration was attempting “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” before adding that “history cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story.”

As part of the ruling, the court requested a list of materials that have already been removed. The spreadsheet, viewed by SFGATE, includes dozens of items across 37 national park sites. In the court filing, a National Park Service official noted that ​the inventory ⁠likely undercounts the true number of removals.

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Among the flagged items is the first resource removed following the order: a contentious exhibit in Muir Woods National Monument called “History Under Construction,” flagged because it featured amended sections acknowledging the roles of Indigenous people, women, and racism in the park’s history. A sign detailing the massacre of Indigenous people by early settlers in Grand Teton National Park was listed as “discarded,” leaving questions as to how it will be replaced.

The judge required that all materials be reinstated by July 3 — just a day before the kickoff of a nationwide celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary — and that the administration provide weekly progress updates. This week, the Interior Department and the National Park Service filed an appeal seeking to halt the reinstatement deadline, in part over the logistics of completing the task in such a short timeframe.

Many items were listed on the spreadsheet as “discarded,” meaning they may need to be remade from scratch, while other signs have been placed in storage or remain unaccounted for. Because final interpretive products are considered permanent records, they’re subject to federal laws that require their preservation. Some removed resources, including Junior Ranger handbooks and other brochures, can still be accessed through sites like www.npshistory.com.

Following the ruling, Resistance Rangers released an open letter to Burgum urging him to comply with the preliminary injunction and begin restoring trust in the Park Service.

“Some of what you broke can be fixed with a storage key and a Tuesday afternoon. The rest will take years of reinvestment –– if it can be repaired at all,” the letter reads. “The question isn’t whether you know what to do. It’s whether you’ll do it before history — which, as it turns out, is kind of our specialty — remembers that you didn’t.”

To draw attention to the impacts of the information purge, Resistance Rangers have big plans for Juneteenth — a holiday commemorating the abolition of slavery, which the Trump administration pulled from its list of holidays offering free entry into national parks. In partnership with America 433+, a coalition of public land and education organizations aiming to ensure that national parks reflect “the full complexity of the American experience,” members plan to gather for a teach-in at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, which was in the process of developing a new exhibit dedicated to the role that Black people played during abolitionist John Brown’s infamous raid.

“There’s an empty room and a sign there that says it’s coming soon and it’s never going to go up because the park service pulled it” following the executive order, Villano told SFGATE. “We see this as a visualization of all these things that are being taken from the American people.”