Josh Shapiro hits at Trump admin over slavery exhibit removal

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has filed a brief with a U.S. federal court in support of Philadelphia’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over the removal of a slavery exhibit at the President’s House site in Independence National Historic Park.

In the brief, Shapiro took a wide swing at the Trump administration for a variety of grievances including the deployment of National Guard troops to quell protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions and for having “weaponized federal dollars” to coerce states to embrace or abandon certain policies.

Shapiro said he has strong interests in ensuring that historical monuments in Pennsylvania present an accurate picture of the state’s history and in protecting the role of the state and local governments within it “from the abuses of federal executive power.”

“Dismantling the President’s House without any notice is yet another example of the federal administration’s acting without any regard for the limits of its power and without any regard for the collaboration clearly required with another arm of government, in this case the City of Philadelphia,” Shapiro said.

Philadelphia had filed an emergency lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, the day it learned that educational panels referencing slavery were quietly removed from a President’s House Site exhibit.

The President’s House 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.

“It is critical that this court not permit conduct from a federal administration that ignores the limits on its authority or that fails to respect the powers bestowed to other governmental bodies,” Shapiro said.

“That is true under any circumstances, but especially so here where the federal administration’s unilateral acts were taken to selectively fashion a vision of the country that lauds confederate figures while simultaneously tucking away the pain of slavery and neglecting the complexities of important historical figures.”

Shapiro noted that the President’s House is far from the only Pennsylvania marker of the history of slavery. In fact, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission has listed more than 70 locations across the state important to the history of slavery.

“Gettysburg National Military Park honors the Civil War’s most decisive battle. The history of Gettysburg cannot be told without acknowledging that the country’s deadliest war was fought over slavery, which the federal government acknowledges for now,” Shapiro said.

He also pointed to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site in Berks County, the history of which he said would be incomplete “if the federal government were to erase that the person who ran the business enslaved individuals or were to scrub from public accounts of the site those individuals’ possible contributions to the business.”

“There is no virtue in refusing to acknowledge certain aspects of our history because it is painful to do so. The removal of the slavery exhibit from the President’s House undermines this commitment and denies Pennsylvanians and others the opportunity to learn more about a part of our history that cannot be ignored,” Shapiro said.

“The current administration evidently views acknowledging the truth of someone having enslaved other individuals as disparaging. In taking that position, and in tearing down an exhibit like the President’s House, the current federal administration is whitewashing the painful and complex realities of the founding era.”

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