Federal judge cites Orwell, gives Trump admin deadline to reinstate slavery exhibit

A federal judge cited George Orwell in ordering the administration of President Donald Trump to reinstate a slavery exhibit that was quietly removed from the site of George Washington’s presidential home in Philadelphia.

“All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place,” Judge Cynthia M. Rufe wrote in her opinion.

The quote is pulled from early in Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 in a moment in which the main character, Winston, is sitting at his desk in the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical records to agree with the party line. In that scene, Winston realizes that there is no stable past because everything from the past is subject to revision.

“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 in her opinion. “It does not.”

Last month, Philadelphia filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration on the day it learned that educational panels referencing slavery were dismantled from the President’s House Site exhibit. The lawsuit support from Gov. Josh Shapiro, who penned sweeping criticism of the Trump administration in his brief to the court.

Located in Independence National Historic Park, the President’s House Site is where the nation’s first executive mansion once stood. It housed George Washington and John Adams, who conducted presidential business there through the 1790s until the White House’s completion in 1800. Nine of Washington’s slaves had lived at the site.

In its lawsuit, Philadelphia moved for a preliminary injunction to restore the President’s House exhibit as it existed on January 21. It also sought a temporary restraining order to prevent the government from damaging items from the site or making any further alterations to the President’s House. The Trump administration had opposed the motion.

Rufe approved the preliminary injunction Monday, while dismissing the temporary restraining order as moot. The Trump administration appealed the decision. But on Wednesday, citing the Trump administration’s failure to comply with her order, Rufe set a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday to reinstate the exhibit.